Any advice for a begginer will help :)

[hesshouse]

My boyfriend and I just purchased a used 90 gal tank that had been set up for years. We took all of the live rock, some leather coral (mushroom I believe) and there was one pajama cardinal in there, and we also took about 40% of the water. Living a block from the beach, we filled the rest with water from the ocean. We added a maroon clown fish and a bubble tip anenome this week. The clown fish (okay I'm a chick so I of course had to give him a name-Leroy) is staying within inches of the BTA but the BTA seems to want to hide way back in the tank. Also, the coral retracts its little polyps at night when the light is off and falls over, but during the day when the light is on is perked up with the polyps extended fully, is this normal?. It has been a good two weeks since we set the tank up (there was a two day lag in getting it and setting it up) It seems like the algae cycle just happened as we just started to get more algae then usual (snails are on their way in the mail today)

Any advice on levels that everything should be at?
Also, how often do you recommend feeding everything and with what? I noticed that all of the food containers we have says to feed them more often then what I read in here. Right now we have regular marine pellets, frozen silversides, some phtoplankton, some calcium for the coral.
Leroy has yet to eat and it has been two and a half days since we acclimated him. He seems to be doing fine otherwise. Frank (cardinal) seems to not be getting enough to eat. I was feeding him pellets twice a day and started feeding him some finely chopped silversides today.

Any advice and words of wisdom you may have would be greatly appreciated!!!

[LCP136]

About the coral, its called a toadstool. Mushroom coral is a different animal. Ammonia and Nitrites should not be detectable (under 1 ppm). Nitrates should be low, mine are around ten ppm. Specific gravity should be 1.024-1.025. In my experience, adding calcium has done nothing for soft corals. My toadstool sometimes falls over at night, and I wouldn't worry too much about that. What kind of lighting do you have? The BTA needs at least T5s. If the lighting isn't sufficient the BTA will not be happy. Also, you should be giving the BTA supplemental feedings of marine flesh like shrimp or silverside or something of the sort every few days. If the water quality isn't very good, the BTA and toadstool will not be very happy. Corals and Anemones are very sensitive animals. You should be feeding a majority of frozen food. For feeding, see "Feeding Marine Fish and Fish Nutrition", which is a post by leebca under Marine Fish:Care, Health, Disease, and Treatment. I feed my fish 2-3 times a day with a homemade blender paste of clam, scallop, shrimp, mysids, and formula 2. There is also a macroalgae culture in my tank for herbivores. Watch out for the maroon clown, as they can get very nasty. You'll have to keep fish that can stick up for themselves, and you CANNOT get any more clownfish of any species. Forgive me if you've heard any or all of this before.

Good luck


LCP

[Ilovefisshies]

when i acclimated my clownfish he didnt eat for the first 4 days with pellets, got some frozen brine shrimp and he ate it up right away. good stuff just make sure you switch up the food so you dont get him hooked on it. -good luck

[Ninong]

Hi hesshouse,




Check out the various marine topics on this website. Fenner covers a lot of territory for new hobbyists. Then, if you have specific questions that you didn't see covered there, ask them in this thread.

It's virtually impossible to answer all of the questions necessary to tell you everything you need to know about setting up and maintaining a new tank without writing a book.

[black_ice_pc]

For future reference, it's usually a bad idea to use water from the ocean, as you don't know what might be coming into your tank in that water. It's a very easy way to introduce disease or parasites. My friend did it and he had marine ich and some fungus problems a few weeks after setup. All the fish were healthy when they were introduced to the best of my knowledge.