Newbie. Can you please help.

[rsalinas5]

Hello,
I currently have a plant grow, 65000 and a 10000. Should i get rid of the plant and 65000 and buy another 10000 and a antinic (SPELLCHECK)? I converted from fresh to salt. I have had it running for about a week (My Tank). I have about 20 pounds live rock and 30 pounds of live sand. I have had a friend give me about 2 gallons of his established tank, when can i introduce a fish or clean up crew?
THANKS.

 

[cmaxwell39]

First of all welcome to SWF.
The first thing this new tank will need to do is cycle. You could do a search to get a lot more information, but the basics are that you are allowing benificial bacteria to build up ion the rocks and the sand (they live on the surface of the substrate, not in the water column). These bacteria break down the waste products produced by fish and food as it breaks down from ammonia to nitrite, and then from nitrite to nitrate. You should be checking your ammonia, nitrite, nitrate levels to know when the tank has fully cycled and once it has you can slowly begin to introduce fish. It could take as long as six weeks for the tank to cycle, but it may happen much sooner than that.
As far as your lights go, what type of lights are they? Power Compact, T5 or metal halide? I would probably change out the 6500K bulb, but it depends on what you want to keep. Is this going to be a reef tank or a fish only? What size tank is it?
Welcome once again. It may seem like there is a lot of information out there sometimes, but take it slow and do lots of research and you will be hopelessly addicted in no time.