apos
Member
I got a 55gal reef setup with tons of LR and CC substrate cheap recently. It's got a 10 gal or so sump with bioballs, and skimmer and return pump in a 3 chambered sump, lights, a pretty solid setup all in all.
The thing is, the tank is basically a breakdown/set up of an established tank, rather than starting new, so I'm not exactly sure what to expect or where I'm at: my various levels have been good and stable almost right from the start. 0 nitrites, 20ppm nitates, stable ph, stable alk, no bad trace metals. And none of that has changed. That is, of course, great, but I'm worried that I'm missing something and that the tank will crash.
Basically, the established tank was drained, LR wrapped in wet paper, and transfered. We set the tank up again almost immediately: filling it with prepared saltwater, and letting it run for two days with the LR in it (I know normally you'd add it later, but the guy I got it from said that the longer it was out of a running tank, the more in and on it would die). I measured the levels with test strips, and they were all fine (as above). At this point I drip acclimated and put the survivors from the old tank back in: a clown, a snail, and some hermit crabs. I pretty much expected they wouldn't do too well, but they had no where else to go: it was either in this tank or heaven. But the levels have stayed solid.
It's as if I cycled in just the two days that it was just water and LR. Is this perhaps because the live rock and substrate preserved a lot of the nitrifiers somehow?
After two weeks, the survivors are all fine, and I've added some more snails and hermits steadily. There's a fair bit of detritus building up from, I assume, things on the LR having died and decaying, I assume. I've siphon vacuumed what I can and gone through one 20% water change so far. Little white "trees" (they look more like roots) are growing on the rocks (no idea what these are: they are plantlike, not hydroids or worms), and some purple fuzz on one of the rocks, but otherwise not much algae bloom (occasional tufts are slowly growing, but not going nuts).
Should I be worried that things are just too good to be true for a tank this young, and that this stability can't last?
I'm mostly interested because I'd like to add some more janitorial critters (not planning on going for more fish or corals for months until everything is like clockwork and the water is perfect) but I don't want to start spending money on banded stars, crabs (thinking of getting an emerald, though SWF only sells them in 3s, boo) or shrimp if things are still iffy.
I've got lots of neat hitchhikers in the meantime: a tiny fireworm (detriutus eating kind it seems), a HUGE hair or spaghetti worm somewhere in the rock (one or two tentative transparent tentacles at a time come out every so often to pick at the underside of other rocks), lots of tiny red hair worms, and even a small red/white feather duster, which seems to be thriving. I'm even seeing tiny bugs frolicking on the CC which I assume are pods (hopefully not the bad kind of isos). The surviving hermits have picked out new shells, the clown is frisky (though it never seems to go anywhere near the rocks or deeper than the top 1/4th of the tank) and the snails are eating themselves silly.
The thing is, the tank is basically a breakdown/set up of an established tank, rather than starting new, so I'm not exactly sure what to expect or where I'm at: my various levels have been good and stable almost right from the start. 0 nitrites, 20ppm nitates, stable ph, stable alk, no bad trace metals. And none of that has changed. That is, of course, great, but I'm worried that I'm missing something and that the tank will crash.
Basically, the established tank was drained, LR wrapped in wet paper, and transfered. We set the tank up again almost immediately: filling it with prepared saltwater, and letting it run for two days with the LR in it (I know normally you'd add it later, but the guy I got it from said that the longer it was out of a running tank, the more in and on it would die). I measured the levels with test strips, and they were all fine (as above). At this point I drip acclimated and put the survivors from the old tank back in: a clown, a snail, and some hermit crabs. I pretty much expected they wouldn't do too well, but they had no where else to go: it was either in this tank or heaven. But the levels have stayed solid.
It's as if I cycled in just the two days that it was just water and LR. Is this perhaps because the live rock and substrate preserved a lot of the nitrifiers somehow?
After two weeks, the survivors are all fine, and I've added some more snails and hermits steadily. There's a fair bit of detritus building up from, I assume, things on the LR having died and decaying, I assume. I've siphon vacuumed what I can and gone through one 20% water change so far. Little white "trees" (they look more like roots) are growing on the rocks (no idea what these are: they are plantlike, not hydroids or worms), and some purple fuzz on one of the rocks, but otherwise not much algae bloom (occasional tufts are slowly growing, but not going nuts).
Should I be worried that things are just too good to be true for a tank this young, and that this stability can't last?
I'm mostly interested because I'd like to add some more janitorial critters (not planning on going for more fish or corals for months until everything is like clockwork and the water is perfect) but I don't want to start spending money on banded stars, crabs (thinking of getting an emerald, though SWF only sells them in 3s, boo) or shrimp if things are still iffy.
I've got lots of neat hitchhikers in the meantime: a tiny fireworm (detriutus eating kind it seems), a HUGE hair or spaghetti worm somewhere in the rock (one or two tentative transparent tentacles at a time come out every so often to pick at the underside of other rocks), lots of tiny red hair worms, and even a small red/white feather duster, which seems to be thriving. I'm even seeing tiny bugs frolicking on the CC which I assume are pods (hopefully not the bad kind of isos). The surviving hermits have picked out new shells, the clown is frisky (though it never seems to go anywhere near the rocks or deeper than the top 1/4th of the tank) and the snails are eating themselves silly.
