K
king_nothing_
Guest
hey, I cut corners on all sorts of stuff when setting up my tank, cause i have no patience. I've done somethings wrong deliberately just to see if it really makes a difference. Here's what I've done wrong. In list form:
1. tap water
2. forgot to take the peice of shrimp out used to cycle for like 3 days, and spiked my ammonia to like 4.0
3. got sand from underwater at the beach, instead of spending 40 bucks on "live sand" in a bag.
4. added live rock in seperate 10 pound increments at seperate poitns of the cycle instead of all at once (not sure how bad this is, but whatever)
5. added a clownfish to the tank when my ammonia was still at 2.0-ish just to see what would happen
6. I have no filters whatsoever, only liverock and my ocean sand. ( i do have circulators though)
after I added the clownfish, the ammonia dropped to 0 in like 3 days, and it took 2 weeks to go from 4.0 to 2.0. Then everythign else dropped to 0. I cycled fully in 2.5 weeks. I thought that was weird. So I wated another week to get anythign else, just to keep an eye on the levels, but they were perfect the whole time. So I got a 6 lined wrasse and a royal gramma and a snowflake eel. added them all within an hour of each other. The snowflake eel immediately ate my clownfish cause the pet store I guess hadn't fed him that day. The other 2 fish did perfectly fine. I waited a week, no spike of anything from "overloading my bioload" or anything. Nothing. So I went out and bought a coral beauty. Added that. Then the next day my LFS got in a flame angel and was sellign it for 19.99.....I figured they didn't know what it was, and thats like 1/3rd the price they usually are, so I bought it, forgetting I had a coral beauty in the tank already and everyone advises agaisnt 2 angelfish. I added it anyway to see what would happen, cause I thought that theyde lookreally cool in the tank together, lots of color. I added the flame and they fought for about 5 minutes, chasing each otehr around and I thought I'de just killed them both, so in a last ditch effort I fed a cube of mysis shrimp. Both ate the food and stopped fighting, and havent messed with each otehr sense (been about 2 weeks). And my levels are still all at 0. I also have never done a water change. I also have had zero evaporation, and my corals are all thriving. my zoos and GSP are actually spreading already.
Why did so many thigns work out? by all means, I should have 2 dead angelfish, crazy high nitrates, algae everywhere from no filtration, and an overall crashed tank. Am I just the worlds biggest lucksack, or have all these thigns I've done "wrong" simply thigns noone's ever tried themselves, but just parrot the "right answer" to people everytime they ask a question (like "you CANOT keep coral beauty and flame angels togehter PERIOD").
What gives?
1. tap water
2. forgot to take the peice of shrimp out used to cycle for like 3 days, and spiked my ammonia to like 4.0
3. got sand from underwater at the beach, instead of spending 40 bucks on "live sand" in a bag.
4. added live rock in seperate 10 pound increments at seperate poitns of the cycle instead of all at once (not sure how bad this is, but whatever)
5. added a clownfish to the tank when my ammonia was still at 2.0-ish just to see what would happen
6. I have no filters whatsoever, only liverock and my ocean sand. ( i do have circulators though)
after I added the clownfish, the ammonia dropped to 0 in like 3 days, and it took 2 weeks to go from 4.0 to 2.0. Then everythign else dropped to 0. I cycled fully in 2.5 weeks. I thought that was weird. So I wated another week to get anythign else, just to keep an eye on the levels, but they were perfect the whole time. So I got a 6 lined wrasse and a royal gramma and a snowflake eel. added them all within an hour of each other. The snowflake eel immediately ate my clownfish cause the pet store I guess hadn't fed him that day. The other 2 fish did perfectly fine. I waited a week, no spike of anything from "overloading my bioload" or anything. Nothing. So I went out and bought a coral beauty. Added that. Then the next day my LFS got in a flame angel and was sellign it for 19.99.....I figured they didn't know what it was, and thats like 1/3rd the price they usually are, so I bought it, forgetting I had a coral beauty in the tank already and everyone advises agaisnt 2 angelfish. I added it anyway to see what would happen, cause I thought that theyde lookreally cool in the tank together, lots of color. I added the flame and they fought for about 5 minutes, chasing each otehr around and I thought I'de just killed them both, so in a last ditch effort I fed a cube of mysis shrimp. Both ate the food and stopped fighting, and havent messed with each otehr sense (been about 2 weeks). And my levels are still all at 0. I also have never done a water change. I also have had zero evaporation, and my corals are all thriving. my zoos and GSP are actually spreading already.
Why did so many thigns work out? by all means, I should have 2 dead angelfish, crazy high nitrates, algae everywhere from no filtration, and an overall crashed tank. Am I just the worlds biggest lucksack, or have all these thigns I've done "wrong" simply thigns noone's ever tried themselves, but just parrot the "right answer" to people everytime they ask a question (like "you CANOT keep coral beauty and flame angels togehter PERIOD").
What gives?
