what to do now?

roberts

roberts

New Member
we let our 55 gal. tank sit for 3 months because we lost all our fish to ick. We have live rock and hermit crabs, cleaner shrimp, chocolate chip starfish and a feather duster that have survived and even flourished. Our question is: Do we need to start the "bio-thing" over again by starting with damsels?
Thanks in advance!
 
alix2.0

alix2.0

Active Member
as a first fish or if you are going to cycle the tank? for first fish a lot of people like clowns (perculas and occelaris are popular, because the look like nemo) but im more of a fan of gobies. other good starter fish are royal grammas, sixline wrasses, cardinals, and chromis, among others.
if your going to cycle a tank just toss a raw shrimp in your tank and wait for it to get fuzzy.

and BTW your chocolate chip star is not reef safe. if you arent planning on having corals you will probably be fine, but ive heard they are known to eat inverts as well. (crabs, snails, basically anything they can get ahold of)
 
nietzsche

nietzsche

Active Member
if the tank is up and running with inverts and live rock, i would stay youre already cycled. the only thing it doesnt have are fish. dont add too many fish at once either.
what kind of fish are you looking at? as the previous poster stated, those are some pretty easy fish to start off with. you might want to avoid the sixline since many say they can be aggressive, especially if added first to the tank.
start off slowly and make sure you can quarantine the fish before adding them to your display tank; you dont want to end up in the same situation again
 
sepulatian

sepulatian

Moderator
Originally Posted by roberts
we let our 55 gal. tank sit for 3 months because we lost all our fish to ick. We have live rock and hermit crabs, cleaner shrimp, chocolate chip starfish and a feather duster that have survived and even flourished. Our question is: Do we need to start the "bio-thing" over again by starting with damsels?
Thanks in advance!
Have you been feeding your CC star this entire time? You will not need to cycle again, but if you have not been adding food to your tank for your inverts then you should start. Your biological filtration may be weak. Add a little more food than your inverts can handle and wait for a .25 ammonia spike. When that goes to zero then do it again. Watch for nitrites. I would not add a fish just yet to the display. You can go ahead and add a fish to your QT tank. I sure hope you have a qt tank after losing all of your fish to ich.
 
grouperlover

grouperlover

Member
Originally Posted by alix2.0
as a first fish or if you are going to cycle the tank? for first fish a lot of people like clowns (perculas and occelaris are popular, because the look like nemo) but im more of a fan of gobies. other good starter fish are royal grammas, sixline wrasses, cardinals, and chromis, among others.
if your going to cycle a tank just toss a raw shrimp in your tank and wait for it to get fuzzy.

and BTW your chocolate chip star is not reef safe. if you arent planning on having corals you will probably be fine, but ive heard they are known to eat inverts as well. (crabs, snails, basically anything they can get ahold of)
not quit true about the chocolate star. True star;s really arent reef safe but if you feed them they wont also i dont think thyll even mess with the snails or hermits as long as you feed them i had 4 and i fed them and they didnt bother anybody but my grouper sure did bother them
 
roberts

roberts

New Member
We checked our water stats. Amonia is fine, nitrites are .5. The book recommends to add stresszyme. What do you think?
We buy our water at the LFS. (we live in calif., 45 min from the ocean)
Thanks in advance.
 
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