Help!!! New Aquarium Guy!!!!

[jonnywater]

I am having some issues with my new aquarium. I have a 55 gallon and am setting up my first saltwater tank. This is what is in or on my tank so far. I started with some earlier then others and the tank is about 3 weeks old (maybe a little younger)
50 Nassarius Vibex snails
2 Percula Clowns
1 AquaMedic Biostar - this is actually a rather interesting new product by aquamedic. It has a needle wheel counter current skimmer where the water enters and waste goes into the skimmer cup first. 60% of the water then overflows onto a rotating blue sponge wheel that takes about a full 15 seconds for a complete rotation. The wheel is never fully submerged because the outlet for the water is a tray at the bottom,
1 Regular media filter that has no media because I hate media. It is just there for water circulation
1 Rio 600 powerhead for further circulation in the rear upper right hand corner of the tank
10 pounds of live fiji rock that was pre cured but the purple is still turning white
60 pounds of Caribsea aragalive Fiji Pink fine sand
1 AquaMedic 4x60 watt oceanlight (2 actinic and 2 daylight white bulbs)
I had an ammonia spike that was so bad today I had to use A LOT of Prime to get it down. The sulfur smell actually began burning my eyes. What am I doing wrong here? The Vibex snails are breeding and I have corals coming out of no where (so far a purple mushroom and a few trumpets as far as I can tell). However the Ammonia spike really worried me. I dont like using media in my hang on media filters because I view them as dumpsters. Basically after any feeding, clean water enters and decomposing water exists from the way that I see it. I mean what other way is there to see it. The Vibex snails POP out of the sand in heards when i drop some brine shrimp in and I unhook my Biostar so I dont get used food build up in the bottom of that. Plus the Vibex snails will eat nearly anything that hits the sand (fish poop, food, detritus, anything) so as far as I am concerned they ARE mechanical filtration.

 

[bigarn]

First question .... did you ever cycle the tank? :thinking:

 

[1journeyman]

Doesn't sound like it Big.

 

[jonnywater]

I read about cycling. Then I read that with the way that I set it up, the cycling time is cut extremely short. With the live sand and rock. Plus I have another 60 pounds of rock on the way. So many people that I spoke to said that the live sand and water should sit in the tank with good filtration and water circulation for about a week and then I can begin adding other items. So I did. The Percula's are actually also laying eggs and guarding the "seachem meter" like crazy. There is a HUGE egg clutch there and if I stick my hand within 10 inches of it, they start trying to nip at my arm. It's hilarious. The snails and everrything else are doing fine though. Should I just expect everything to die and wait till the tank cycles? How long does that usually take? Does it weaken my system if I use chemicals to rid it of ammonia and nitrate? or it doesnt matter either way? Like, does my system need to learn to maintain itself on its own with the filtration or I will have to add chems all the time to keep it normal?

 

[littlebuck]

well i would say that you tank never cycled fully.

 

[1journeyman]

not sure where you read that.. but if your ammonia is a 3 then YES, you can expect EVERYTHING to die.
Cured live rock and live sand can make a cycle very quick. UNCURED will keep your cycle the same as anything else.
I think the general feeling is that the less chemicals the better. Too many chemicals mask the problems.
You've got to be patient with a saltwater tank. Cycle, stock slowly, make any changes slowly, etc.
Unless you bought your rock and sand directly from a local pet store that had already cured it; and unless you immediately got it in the water, it is not really "cured".

 

[littlebuck]

well when you get the other 60 lbs of LR you will need to cure it if not when u put it in the tank you are gonig to send ur system into a mess. Also using chems to make you system stable will not last for long and if you keep adding them i do believe that you will kill everything in there if im not mistaken. Do you have any pics of your tank? Would like to see what it looks like

 

[jonnywater]

Yes I got it from a pet store. The sand was actually from Caribsea and was the Fiji Pink stuff with the water in the bag with it. 3 bags of that. Then the rock that I purchased, I actually picked the pieces out 3 months ago, labeled them, and then went and picked them up about 2 weeks ago. So it was cured in the pet stores tanks. Rock around here can be REALLY high in price. 6 bucks a pound seems normal but many places charge 9. I have a feeling in the future i am just going to cure my own in a 50 gallon plastic can with two venturis, a powerhead and heater. Since i was able to find it directly from Fiji to my front door in under 2 days for 1.97 a pound. Seems like the curing would be worth it. The tank has to fully cycle at some point. But I am using mainly seachem products. I am using calcium suplements, Iodide, amino acids and vitamins with traces (VERY SMALL) of heavy metals....coppers etc. and PH Buffers along with whatever that is that they make that cycles the tank and detoxes ammonia and nitrate. My Ammonia was hovering around .5 for about 3 weeks there then I had a MASSIVE spike yesterday and today when i added this hang on filter with 4 media cartriges (I knocked the carbon out because it strips the water of trace elements).

 

[littlebuck]

you add copper to your tank on a reg basis?

 

[jonnywater]

No, unfortunetely I do not have any pics yet. I want to get some though. I am just, well my eyes are burning a bit right now because I am next to it and used a lot of prime today. Oddly enough the cured rock is still dying off. The puple is beginning to turn white. It just seems all kinds of weird based on what I have read. The corals that I never say on the rock are flurishing, I have about 5 different worms popping out of the rocks and am getting some sort of whiteish greenish algea on the walls of my tank. The Nassarius are doing their jobs and I am most likely getting two sand sifting sea stars within the next 2 weeks because my sand bed is over an inch. Then i am also getting some trochus snails to take care of the algea. Everything just seems to be "The Twilight Zone" in this tank. As in the hardy things are having problems while the things that cant survive any ammonia are flourishing. Not to mention that everything is breeding. Including several of corals shooting white globs of junk all over my tank. It's just........well.........weird.

 

[jonnywater]

The copper is in the trace elements. Gonna go grab the list
Boron .096 mg
Iodine .18mg
Iron .009 mg
Copper .001mg
Zinc .005mg
Manganese .062mg
Bromide .3mg
Cobalt .004mg
Molydenum .016mg
Vanadium .0003mg
Nickel .00035mg
Tin .000029mg
The rest are vitamin and minerals like vitamin B12 and what not. You only add small doses twice a week and from the research I have done on actual seawater that is based around coral reefs, this additive is slightly lower then all of them

 

[littlebuck]

well i would suggest not getting anything else for your tank untill u get it under control. Also i would stop usig all of those chemicals in your tank. you have had it up for 3 weeksand you are still addign stuff sooner or later you are gonig to kill everything. And adding copper to you tank is gonig to mess it up and also mess up your LR and LS. so adding stuff to your tank would just end up dieing. You may want to talk to some one about your tank before you spend anymore money. You LR turning white i think is a bad sign but im not to sure on that. Also u said there is white stuff coming from your corals i dont think its breedign as you say i think it might be dieing.

 

[jonnywater]

Yeah I didnt purchase the corals. Three days ago they werent even there. Then when my ammonia spiked..WHAM.. I have purple mushroom corals and trumpets popping up everywhere. I will most likely listen to what everyone is saying and quit adding everything other then the "stability" from Seachem. That is basically the same thing as Cycle. The other similar product. Hopefully I have one MASSIVE spike that everything lives through and then things start to settler down. I will just use my filtration and light. The coral turning white I heard was normal. That a good deal of die off will turn white then eventually grow back. Where some is dying other purple and maroon is forming. It's just weird I tell you. Best way to explain it would be that the lower half of my tank is fine and the top half is having MASSIVE spikes. I dont know what it went to. But my meter read .50 everyday until today where it read 2.5 then I detoxed it.

 

[1journeyman]

Too many additives..... doing regular water changes with decent quality salt mixes will add all the trace elements your tank needs.
Adding charcoal to a reef tank is a neccessary evil. It *might* pull out needed nutrients, but it definitely pulls out toxins produced by corals in the never-ending chemical war going on between your corals.

 

[littlebuck]

well i would defentily wait and talk to some one that been doing SW for a while and ask about adding all that stuff to your tank. From what i haev been told adding all that stuff isnt good for your tank. Why do you need to add stuff you just started your tank? Might want to ask a couple more people about your tank to me it sounds like you are adding all this stuff not needing it. I haev never added anything to my tank so i dont know what it does to a tank but im sure its not that good. But i hope you can find someone that can assist you a little bit better beacuse im lost about adding all that stuff.

 

[jonnywater]

The only reason that I am adding it now is because of the initial die off of elements. Nearly every book I have read said that regular water changes adds some nutrients back (good point there) But no where near the amount that is in actual sea water saying as if I lived in Fiji or something. It does replenish readily available elements such as calcium, but the rest of the minor trace elements it does not. Believe it or not Copper is actually more heavy around reef systems then outside of them in the actual ocean. I suppose that I am working against myself though. The things that I have now are trying extra hard to do their jobs (the sand and rock) and most likely I am just gut punching them by adding them now. There's about 15 bristol worms (or whatever they are called - the red ones with the white leggies) crawling all over the rock right now. They seem content. But the mushrooms got mad and curled back up. The trumpets are still flying around though. Clownfish are doing fine (guarding their clutch as usuall) and the Nassarius's are all buried with their little syphons hangining out of the sand with the select few that are hoping to get something that one missed, LOL.

 

[1journeyman]

What books have you read that say that? I'm curious because I've been trying to red a lot and I haven't come across that yet.
If you read the ingredients on the slat mixes you'll see that they actually do contain all of the trace elements. Add that to the fact that trace elements leech out of your live rock and sand.
If your Nass. snails aren't moving around when you feed the tank that could be a bad sign. They should come out of the sand and start going for food as soon as you feed the tank.

 

[watertight]

I'd say that all these new found things in your tank have been flushed out by the ammonia spike - I run a 10 gal nano and never use any chemicals whatsoever, I get my water from the local beach. I did have a tank crash a little while ago, caused by me taking out my filter media for just 12 hours, the nitrite spike was 0.25 ppm and the same thing happened - worms crabs and starfish appeared from nowhere - they all died though, along with 3 fish.
I'm amazed that anything is still alive in there at the moment, if the spike is so high it makes your eyes burn!!