New setup - first post

[Yohimbe]

Hello guys, this is my first post here. I had a 55 gal reef tank setup 17 years ago,Much of the hardware, Lights etc I built myself as there wasn’t near as much equipment available then. It ran quite well for 5 years, then I had to move and gave my liverock and inverts to a friend. Well, I recently had a chance to get a small tank full of LR given to me, so I took it. I still had my RO unit so I setup a 29 gal with a DSB composed of 75%
Caribsea live sand and 25% crushed coral. I put an AquaC Remora skimmer on and a 135 watt 10,000 k power compact fluorescent light. I want to avoid a sump if at all possible. I hung an old Whisper 3 on the back with charcoal in the media bags and its providing nice water circulation. I’m not planning on a huge bio-load. I hauled the LR in buckets w/water, less than 10 min trip. Systems been up for 2 weeks, no ammonia, no nitrites. I have a couple questions. First I'll post a pic.

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First question is: how successful do you think this setup will be without a sump and is there anything I should add ? ( I did have ozone and a redox controller on my old setup but want to avoid that here also.)

Second question is: with no ammonia or nitrites should I add some bio-load soon so as not to lose the filter capacity of the LR, ( previously in a FOWLR that was running less than a year) or should I wait awhile ?

Thanks for help.
Yohimbe

 

[Yohimbe]

Sorry bout the double post -not sure how that happned.
Perhaps the admin can remove the second one.

 

[MartinE]

First question: I think the tank will be fine without a sump, ozone and redox controller. There are plenty of tanks out there your size that do not use them. The only things I would add are a heater unless your home/tank is very stable on water temps, and possibly more light down the line depending on coral preferences (fish only/low light corals your fine).
Second question: If you have been reading zero ammonia, nitrite and nitrates for a while, you could add something and check your levels again and if you have a rise I would not add until it went to zero again.
Hope that helps,

:welcome:

 

[mr_X]

i did something similar and didn't get any spikes either. i did get the normal algae/cyanobacteria blooms though, so maybe i had some sort of spike that my test kits didn't pick up?
this tank was much larger though, and i had a large refugium in place, so that might have had something to do with the "0" readings.

before you add livestock, i'd sift out that crushed coral. you could pull out heaps of sand with a basic fish net and sift it with a spaghetti strainer.
the reason for this is-
1. it will definitely rise to the top and look ugly
2. it will capture detrius
3. the sand dwelling creatures that will fit in a 29 gallon prefer sugar sized sand (they told me so :wink: )

 

[Yohimbe]

Thanks for the replys guys, I appreciate the info.

I do have a heater in the tank. Im using Salifert test kits so I think they are reasonably accurate. On the lights, the 135 watt PC comes out to about 4.5 w/gal, would this be enough for mushroom and some soft corals? The tank isnt realy that deep. It is 65 w 10000k and 65 w attinic tho. Would another 65 w of 10000k be the best addition?

I added the crushed coral because im cheap, lol, and was trying to achieve 3 1/2 to 4 inches of material without buying another $40 bag
of live sand. In hindsight I should have made up the diff with non live sand. I'll definatly sift out what I can of the crushed coral and add some regular sand.

Was thinking about adding a 30 gal cleaner pack of critters to keep on top of cyano and algae. Is that a good or bad idea for first additions?

Thanks alot for your help.
Yohimbe

 

[MartinE]

Your lighting for mushrooms and some soft corals is fine, IMO I would just use astrea snails and clibanarus hermit crabs for the first clean up crew. I have just had best luck with them in new tanks. I would also stock low at first on them (add as needed) as they will die without enough to eat, or the crabs will eat the snails. Also with good flow and low nutrients you should not have cyano (hopefully).