Establishment question

[Hudson99]

I am a long time freshwater tank keeper who has not run a tank in about a year or so. The last time I established a tank was nearly 10 years ago. In the downtime I've decided to take a shift into a reef aquarium and I have just setup the new tank. I'm typing this from work so forgive me if I don't have complete specs, but I can get them if they are needed. My setup is as follows:

60 gallon 48'l x 12'w x 18'h
Eihem 2960 canister filter
HoT protein skimmer
48' 10,000k daylight tube
48' Actinc 03 uv tube
internal tank heater set at 78 degrees
55lbs worth of live rock
3' of crushed coral substrate covering the bottom of tank
I also have a water jet on the one side of tank to create some circulation
Salt water mix is currently at 1.021 salinity

I have set this up and I'm about 2 1/2 weeks into running the tank. I currently have the timer of the lighting set for 10 1/2 hours. When I setup the tank I first added the water to the tank, added the dechlorinator and let the water settle. I then added the salt mix until it reached the salinity I was looking for. I started the filter at this point as well as the water jet, letting the salt mix dissolve and spread evenly within the tank. The next day I added the substrate and then waited another day or two after that in which I finally added the live rock to the tank. From this point, I've let the tank sit and work out establishing itself over the past 2 weeks.

Now to the questions:

In the 2nd week, I've started to notice brown algae starting to form over everything in the tank. Not being one to be hasty, I've simply sat back and monitored it. It has been a few days and the algae is progressing further within the tank. I though I recalled an algae outbreak when I last established a tank but it has been so long that I cannot recall if this is something I can simply ride out and as the talk establishes, the conditions that currently exist which allow this will go away, or if I need to take some other measure to resolve this. I have gone ahead and purchased a couple of snails for the tank to assist.

Second question is that just last night I've now noticed a sort of white cloudiness filling the tank water. I thought I recalled this occurance as well and that it'll naturally balance itself out.

To recap, should I be concerned about the algae? If so, what course of action should I consider taking? Secondly, should I worry about the white cloudy water?

Thanks for the help.

 

[Len]

:welcome:

Algae is normal for new tanks. New aquariums require time to balance out, and during this time, you'll experience all sorts of algae. It may take several weeks to months. The fact that you used tapwater may perpetuate the algae blooms a bit further. I highly recommend you use either a reverse osmosis filter for your freshwater, or buy distilled (unflavored) water at your grocery store. A RO filter at home is more convenient and economical in the long run.

Don't get snails until your tank is fully cycled (nitrogen cycle that is). If you don't have a test kit, get one that tests for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. Only when the former two are zero can you safely add inverts. Otherwise, you'll just kill them and increase your algae problems.

As for the cloudiness, it could be a number of things. Organisms on the live rock could be releasing chemicals, or there could be some precipitation of compounds in the water, or something spawned (due to stress of cycling), or some organism kicked up sediment into the water column, etc. I would wait a few days and see how it progresses. A water change (with high quality water, i.e. not tapwater), is recommended if the condition worsens.

Raise your specific gravity up to 1.025 or so. Natural seawater is closer to this level. I'd personally also take this time to swap out the crushed coral with some fine aragonite sand. Crushed coral tends to trap lots of decaying organic matter, and it makes a terrible habitat for bottom dwelling microfauna (worms, clams, etc.).

Over time, you'll want more lights if you want to keep corals. I'm not sure what type of bulbs you're using, but if they are normal 40W output bulbs, these will not do for corals. You will either want to change to powercompact lighting, T5 fluorescent, metal halides, or very high output (VHO) fluorescent. You will also want more current. The ocean is a very circulated and dynamic environment and that is what you should aim to recreate. Some nice pumps for this purpose include Seio and Maxijets.

Hope that helps.