first post! new to salt water. Hey Guys

[splice]

hey hope im doing this in the right place, but just wanted to say hello and i love your site. my name is tim. my tank is currently running but empty since november of last year. i am trying to take as much advice as i can from everyone and they all say to wait along time so i am. im pretty sure my tank is ready to go but i dont want to make any mistakes.

its a 125g rr with a 55g sump i made pretty much a berlin style. its got a precision marine bullet 2 skimmer, deltec calcium reactor, current usa chiller, small fuge and about 30-40 pounds of crushed live rock. 2 vortec powerheads, and a aquaticlife HID fixture. around 175 pounds of rock and sand bed about 3-4 inches of pink caribsea sand.

tank has been doing very well i think. coraline algae growing like crazy. still fighting cyno a bit in my sand though, but thats about it. no fish or corals. i figure months ago i could have started adding stuff but i've been holding back and trying to read as much as i can before buying anything. i dont know if im going to do fish yet. im thinking mainly sps and lps corals so far.

just wanted to get some advice on if what i have sounds good so far or if anything should be changed around and if anything i have is no good.

also, anymore in my area reccomend any pet shops by me? i go to natures cove so far to buy all my big products and just use online so far. ive been to absolute fish and loved it! just fish by me closed down awhile ago. anywhere else in my area good you would reccomend?

thanks alot guys and girls, hope to make friends and keep drama levels down with me lol.

 

[splice]

also, what does "bump" mean. i see it alot on here. does it stand for something?

 

[cthoughts1]

Welcome aboard.

Bump = a method used by people that involves placing a new response (hence "bump") to their thread in order to bring a thread that's gone out of sight back to a more viewable area for the purposes of eliciting a response.

 

[Chiefmcfuz]

Welcome to MR.

What are your water parameters?

 

[jadakiss]

welcome

 

[Josh]

Welcome, sounds like a nice setup. All you need now is continued patience and you'll be golden.

You can get some queen conchs, cerith and nassarius snails and maybe even a serpent star which will clean up the cyano in no time. It seems that the cyano season has passed and you just need a cleanup crew.

As chief said, go ahead and post your test results. You want to check:

SG
NO2
NO3
Ammonia
PH

If everything looks good you can probably get a couple of corals to start. I would recommend zoanthids or mushrooms and a nice LPS like a hammer coral or frogspawn. Don't bother with SPS until the tank has several more months on it and your levels have stabilized enough.

 

[felix110]

Welcome...


Sent from my iPhone using Reefs

 

[NL146]

welcome

 

[TrIsTaTe05]

welcome. and the jets are the best!

 

[splice]

wow thanks alot everyone for the welcomes!

water par i use "Elos" test kits that i got off a site called marine depot. dont know if there that good but i seem to like them.

ph-8.3
amm-0
nitrite-0
nitrate-0-.05
salinity-23-24
calcium- 510
mag- 1200
phos- .2-.5? i dont know its hard to read that test kit because the color card is so close.

i cant find a dkh test kit anywhere. is that the same as carbonated hardness or alkalinity?

im going to be taking some pictures shortly once i start adding some corals within the next several weeks. patience is easy when it comes to me so im not jumping to some shop to buy any coral yet until im done reading this book i picked up about corals. then i think ill go to a shop and look for awhile until i find what i want.

absolute fish is really the only place ive been to to look at corals. natures cove really does not have any live stock and kinda pricy, but then again so is absolute fish. i mean i know im new and should not say anything about prices yet and could be wrong. and reef encounters which was nice as well but only went once. thinking about going to "ocean gallery II" i saw them on this site so i think i may take a trip out there today.
anyone here like any other shops in northern jersey thats around an hour trip for me? i like in sparta nj, near sussex county.

 

[masterswimmer]

Tim,
Welcome to MR. Glad to see you're heeding the advice given and taking it slow. I can tell you will succeed in a grand way.

As chief and Josh said, post some of your tanks parameters. With knowledge of how those #'s read I'd say you're ready for livestock. Let's hear the #'s first.

We'd love to see some pix of your setup. It really sounds nice.

Best of luck,
Russ

 

[masterswimmer]

You just beat me with your parameter post. lol

Your calcium is a bit high. If you're dosing calcium you might want to consider reducing the amount. You want the Ca to come in at 420-460

Magnesium is a bit low. You'd like to see it at 1350

Most people run their SG for reefs between 1.024-1.026

Otherwise you're not far off. Great job for starters.

Russ

 

[splice]

thank u masterswimmer lol. i like your name lol.
well i saw a few other people with good results like high calcium? if its better at that level i will get it down asap! magnesium ive been having problems getting up. it goes up, but slowly. im still dosing for that. and i just got my salt levels today at .24 so it should be ok now. it got a little cloudy today, but i guess thats normal since i played with it alot today.
i went to reef encounters today and got a small clean up crew. seems to be doing ok... but i hate having to travel so much. i will NOT go to petco near me because i see how much everyone hates them lol. im going to try "animal house" tomorrow on rt 23. then maybe take a trip to "wayne pet place" or i think thats what its called. are they vendors on this site? any other pet shops in that area i might want to wonder on to?

 

[dubs]

welcome to mr

 

[chuck116]

First off welcome to MR. Stuff sound very nice. I am also in your area of Jersey, well Parsippany. It seems as though all the good shops are in central or south jersey. Dover Pet used to had salt water stuff but i have not been there in a long time, when I was tthere last he was willing to order something for you if you needed it. Also Aquatic Visions On rt10 in East Hanover, used to be the old hanover pet, is good. They are in the shoppoing center next to the Home depot. Thats the close stuff that I know of. Now farther away.... Aquatic Obsessions is in Avenel. Will is a great guy ! also Red Sand is in Dunellen Feng is the man there ! There are others farther south. Fishtown is nice , but its in Bergen county I believe , I think 17 or rt4.

 

[kaOzGrUnT]

You came to the right place for advice, I've gotten great ideas from the members here.
Look through other people's posts.

 

[masterswimmer]

well i saw a few other people with good results like high calcium? if its better at that level i will get it down asap! magnesium ive been having problems getting up. it goes up, but slowly. im still dosing for that.

Nooo, please don't take what I said about optimum levels and do them asap! When you want to change the levels in your system, ALWAYS do it slow. That is probably the reason for your cloudiness today. Always make adjustments in small increments over the course of a few days or even weeks if the parameter is way off.

Russ

 

[jrobbins]

Welcome to MR!

Sounds like your are off to a great start. My only advice at this point would be to run some GFO to help fight the phosphates, and get a RO/DI if you don't already have one.

Good luck with the tank!

 

[daisy]

Hey - welcome to MR!

Just to elaborate a tad on what Masterswimmer said - the reason you want to increase or decrease parameters that need to be increased or decreased slowly are three fold -

One - the living organisms in your system (and you already have many!) are okay with change over a long period of time, but many of them are less likely to survive sudden changes in parameters.

Two- when you add chemicals to change parameters drastically and quickly you risk precipitating "stuff" out of solution. There are many different "stuff" things (sorry to be so vague, but I'm not the right person to get into all the science, only the concepts) dissolved in the water. When we dose the tank in large quantities suddenly, we risk taking out of solution "stuff" that we want in solution. This can be very bad for the tank.

Lastly - sometimes,when you add something very quickly, you end up not only increasing what you wanted to increase, but also increasing or decreasing other things in the system, as everything in that water exists in a balance! pH, alkalinity, dissolved oxygen and even salinity, are all inter-related.

So take Masterswimmer's sound advice, and when you do need to adjust your paremeters, do it slowly and keep tabs on everything while you do it.

Best of luck and we're looking forward to pictures!

tahl

 

[masterswimmer]

Nicely said Daisy

R