reef tank cycled. buy Fish or Coral first

oozy

Member
with a clean up crew, only add what your tank can support. like dont drop in 20 torbo snails if you dont have much alge...
a few hermits would be a good start they will survive off the LR and waist, extra food...
also if you wanted a clown you can probibaly add 2 small ones in your 125,
the basic thing with adding fish is to wait a week before you put in another.
also check your parameters before you add.
a sally light foot is a good cleanup critter, but you cant add a puffer or it will eventualy eat it.
shrimps too
so...just add things slowly, fish make waist...inverts dont, but youll need to make sure they have enough to eat!
good luck and use your best judement
-oozy-
 

reefnut

Active Member
Originally Posted by Jer4916
no, but i've been told its there..and its more expensive then ro...so i just go with ro
I don't disagree with using RO water, although I would much prefer RO/DI water but distilled water is fine also, and it's purer than RO water. There have been this rumor about copper for some time but the fact is these days high grade stainless steel tubing is used (NOT copper tubing) in the distilling process.
 

legendary

New Member
I hope this post is not to long but I detect some problems here... First lets hit the water problem, as it was posted pre to this one, RO water is best or better than tap water, distilled should be used if that is not aval. for saltwater systems tap water should be avoided, im not going to go into all the chemicals in tap water and what they do to a saltwater ecosystem. You also can buy a RO unit that produces 50 gallons a day for about 150 dollars if you still have ?s please ask we want to get you off to a good start.....
PART 2
What you should do add what first, the problem is no one does it the same if we did there would be less problems lol.. I do the same things most of time with very little change because it works. it seems you have already added your live rock i would try 50lbs per 30 gal of water,,,, the care of your tank held at optimum levels for the next 6 to 8 weeks is paramount. during that time you can expect to see a series of algae blooms (brownish diatoms and cyano this will be followed by a fliamentous green algae. This IS NORMAL.. if proper maintenance of your ecosystem is kept the algae will abate and the purple coralline algae will start to appear which tend to grow best is dim to mod light ( use an algae scrapper for the front and sides leave the colonies on the back glass undisturbed) This type of algae is important for a mini reef ecosystem. Now good coralline algae growth is a indicator that the tank is suitable for sessile invertebrates. Now you should add your snails and hermits 1 per gallon of water for your tank then add your scavengers in 1 to 2 week intervals when this is done you can intrduce fish Grammas are a good start i would start with 3, I will stop here If you need addl help feel free to ask?
 

mikegray

Member
im getting the dark brown now.. with hardly any green. my fuge has tons of brown since no powerhead in it... so yea.. and it has a little green im not cleaning it.. im waiitng to add up so i can get my 100+ reef package here.. and im hoping to get tons of coraline but my luck i wont get any at all.. i get chaeto on saturday with pods and mysid so yea. that will help with trates....
1.023-.024 going to be 1.025
PH - 8.2
Nitrite 2-3
Nitrate 25
Ammonia - 0
(overflowd the tank today left RODI on so its all messed up.. good thing it was before everythign was in tank huh) so im hoping by saturday nitrites will be back to 0 and salt will be 1.025 no problem..
nitrates will be taking care of by changing water and chaeto on saturday..
but thanks for that advise..... yea i dont wanna starve the cleanup crew so im not going to clean glass or rocks at all.
as for coraline algae my luck i wont get any. i have 4 250watt MH and 2 140watt VHO's on during day. no mod light at all ahaha. and i love when all the rocks are covered.. looks sooo SWEET... but ill give it some time....
 

legendary

New Member
I have to say thats a lot of light, the 4 250's is all u need and that is great for corals but to get your live rock to florish you will need to dim those lights abit maybe using 1 or 2 on for daylight hours 6 hr a day on a timer i think you will do just fine..
 
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