Newbie 10gal nano start up.

[tedlepplin]

Hi All!

I am new to the reefland forum and to SW keeping, I wanted to share my experiences so far in the hope that I will learn from others mistakes, successes and gain some knowledge of this vast subject of keeping a SW aquarium. My LFS are pretty good but often also busy, and hence I kinda rush forget stuff I wanted to ask!

I have kept freshwater fishies for a number of years I think I was about 20 (now32) when I got my first tank a 20 gal GF bowl, I moved onto a 28gal, then up to a 55 gal and now am moving back down to a small nano 10gal wavebox 45.

I have always been in or around the sea all my life. I live in jersey in the channel islands (UK) I surf, scuba dive, snorkle and have always had a fasination with rockpools and marine life.

I set up my 10gal about 3 weeks ago and have a few questions I wanted to ask. I will post some Pics later on and hopefully people will be able to help.

So to the TANK!!

I have, a 10gal, 750l/h maijet, 55w heater, 20w 50/50 solaris hang on light and a niagra HOB filter that just has filter floss and carbon in it.

As I live 2 mins from the sea I collected seawater, used a eheim ecco to filter the water from bucket into the tank and it sat in there circulating for a week. I added one KG piece of (long and flat) uncured dead rock, added my live sand (not sure how live it was in a bag!) and mixed it with a few small pieces of crushed coral, this then sat for a further week. I chose not to use sand from the beach due to the chance of adding something hidden I didnt want in there.

I found a guy locally breaking down a 530l SW and managed to buy a further 4kgs of what was originally fiji LR, and arranged this in my tank. I did give him £60 for the 4kgs but was happy to do so as I got one large feather duster, some polyps, a unidentified coral, some type of bubble plant, some type of red seaweed lots of growth on the rocks, oh and 2 turbo's and 2 hermits one red leg one blue.

I appeared to have an initial rise in Ammonia, then a drop off to 0 a slight rise in nitrite then a drop off to 0. SG 1.023 ph 8.2 but my nitrate is still 20, and has been for the last 10 days.

I have not yet done a w/c as I though I was supposed to not do a w/c until the cycle had finished but I'm getting worried for the stuff I have in there, some of the Polyps appearto be shrinking and not looking as good as day1.

Can I do a w/c now even thou the cycle is not complete?

[kevinpo]

Hello,
Yes you can do a water change. If you are going to use natural sea water you collect I would test is for nitrates before you use it just to be sure it is not a source of nitrates. I would also recommend an SPG of 1.025 or 34-35 ppt.

Regards,
Kevin

[tedlepplin]

Hi Kevin, many thanks for your help and advise. I think I might do a 2gal water change tonight, I will test the seawater I collect and will post my findings. I will also look to raise my SG up, It was just over 1.024 when I set up on first collection of seawater, but my hydromiter has a scale and it appeared to be that the ideal salninity is 1.022-1.024?

I was a little surprised Nitrate is still much higher than I'd like it to be, I originally tested my RO top up supply from my LFS thinking that might be a problem but I got a 0 from the test kit.

I have then started to wonder if perhaps it is something that might have been or is in the LR when I got it that has died and has left me with the high Nitrate reading? I have quite alot of life in the tank, I know the chap had quite alot of fish in his tank, and kept live brine shrip and copeopods for feeding. I have noted quite a few small shrimp like things that have legs and walk around on the LR, I wonder if it could be that some of these creatures have been dying off? I have spotted the odd dead one in the filter wool when it gets chaged every 2-days. Perhaps it could have even be overfeeding on his part, I noted alot of detrius floating about in the tank when I first put the LR in, that must have been caught in the rocks nooks and crannies.

I have also wondered if the seawater is the best idea, as there is always the chance life manages to get into the tank even though it passes through the canister before filling the tank. The local seawater is currently 14degc here and perhaps the life in the seawater cant be supported at tropical temps and hence there is also die off from that?

[kevinpo]

Hello,
Most places that collect natural sea water for sale also pass it through a UV sterilizer to be sure to kill those tiny animals, bacteria, viruses etc. Most likely the animals you see are amphipods and you are finding their molts rather than dead animals. Like many crustaceans they molt to grow.

Live rock remembers its past history. One way to clean it up is to shake each piece vigorously in a bucket of salt water. You will also dislodge some desirable life but some will be left and will quickly reproduce (90 days or so).

Cheers,
Kevin

[tedlepplin]

Hi Kevin,

I collected and tested some seawater and its reading 0 for nitrate?

Like you pointed out about the L/R memory, I think this could be my issue, perhaps there is some detrius in the holes of the rock.

I guess my best bet is to do a few w/c's and keep testing and see what happens. I do have a uv unit on my fw tank so i'll give it a clean and use that.

I'm not sure if it has worked but I am trying to upload some pics. I was hoping you might be able to help ID some of the stuff I have in here.

I think I may have bristle worms, if you look at the pic of the feather duster, theres one jus above and one a bit futher over to the left.

[Parrothead]

Good Morning Ted,

Quick questions for you,

How are you collecting the seawater, are you just going down to the shore and throwing a bucket in or??????

[tedlepplin]

uploading photos isnt working 4 me at the min, old pc and a weak wifi signal, I'll try again a bit later.

[tedlepplin]

Hi Robert ,

Yeah pretty much, I try and time it so I go down an hour after low tide and collect it. We get some pretty big tides here, anywhere from 26ft up to 40ft, so I though the water just after low as the tide turns and starts to push back in should be reasonably fresh a and human contact fee. That s the idea anyway!

It gets 10 mins to settle in the bucket for the large particles to drift to the bottom, then I use the canister to transfer it from one bucket to another holding one end to syphon a few inches under the water surface, and it sits in the 2nd bucket with a thermomiter and ar pump tll it gets warm enough then I just add it to the tank. I think I will add a uv next time as the water heats up.

[Parrothead]

Becareful using seawater that way, don't know about over there, but here in florida, even our beautiful keys are polluted beyond being able to use the water for tanks. You could be adding stuff to the tank you can't test for, e.g. gas, oil, fertilizer runoff from ground water, and the list goes on, the stuff you see being sold in lfs as natural sea water has had the hec filtered out of it many times over.....

[tedlepplin]

that is a very good point, I am sure that we would be in a similar position here. with boat fuel oils and there could be land fert run off....

i was starting to wonder how good an idea using seawater i sand this could be a major factor, i guess its okay, well not really okay but its there and the sea will manage better due to the water volume, the volume in the tank 10g that after sand and rock only hold 7.5-8g its much more of an issue.

[Parrothead]

that is a very good point, I am sure that we would be in a similar position here. with boat fuel oils and there could be land fert run off....

i was starting to wonder how good an idea using seawater i sand this could be a major factor, i guess its okay, well not really okay but its there and the sea will manage better due to the water volume, the volume in the tank 10g that after sand and rock only hold 7.5-8g its much more of an issue.

Thats what I was referring to, In that small of a system it does not take long for levels to rise to the point of being a problem:eek3::eek3::eek3:, sometimes free isn't what it is cracked up to be, go get some ro/di water and some salt mix, if you can get it, I recommend Reef Crystals, good stuff;);)

[tedlepplin]

Hi Robert,

I took your advise and went to the lfs, I ended up just buying 25l of salted, it will last me a months worth of changes, and was £4/$6 , although in the ong run it might be slightly cheaper mixing my own.

Got home and changed 5l, waited 20 mins to make sure the water was fully mixed and now I am getting a reading of either 5 or 10 (API test kit). I'm not sure as the colours are so close even quite difficult to tell the difference on the chart. I think I will assume its at 10, and wait a little longer. I might even do another 5l midweek and see how it goes.

I am going to wait a further week at least but I'm starting to think about stocking and I'm not sure what to go for, I think I will need to really look into whatever goes in there to make sure its going to be suitable. I would rather under than overstock, so I have a feeling I might end up moving more towards some corals, a shrimp and possibly goby. A pistol shrimp goby combo could tempt me, would you have any reccomendations as to what might be suitable?

[Parrothead]

At this point in the proverbial ballgame, let it finish up the cycle, in the mean time, do some research on a clean up crew, with your size tank you won't need much, but research what you have available over there.

Also you should not add any corals for several months, just because a tank has gone through the nitrogen cycle doesn't mean it's ready for corals, softies or otherwise. Start with the clean up crew, and after you get them in there and the tank has a chance to adjust to their presence, yes, even they are small, your tank will need to adjust to them being there, keep in mind that your whole tank is one organism, everything affects everything. So be patient.

Now on the subject of fish and shrimp, you have a very, very small system, which means things can go to hell real fast should something go wrong, I'd start researching gobies, blennies, etc. and keep in mind, when doing this research, pay attention to full grown size, not the size you buy them at;)

Lets just take this one step at a time, we are all here to help

[tedlepplin]

OOps I prob did it too soon then....... I put water in the tank at the end of may with a pice of deadrock, it was prob in the tank just over a week, added L/R & L/S on the 5th of june, I went back a week later on the 12th and bought another piece of LR and under the advise of the guy I bought the rock from (local advert) took 2x hermits and 2x turbo's.....

I am trying to upload photo's but I always seem to wait ages while it says upload so I have tried a to use a mobile phone photo, and it seems to work sorry about the quality.....



If you can see do you know what any of the stuff on the rock is, the only one I know is the feather duster..

[tedlepplin]

files were too big, worked out how to compress them! can only seem to up load one at a time tho.

close up of r/l hermit this one is far more active than the blue leg, he is always moving around the tank I look away for 5 mins and he's gone from the sand bed, up to the top of the l/r
Attachment 14733

[tedlepplin]

Would anyone is able to identify whats on this piece of rock, I think I have zoa's of some sort, not too sure about the green bubble type looking stuff, any ideas?

Attachment 14735

[tedlepplin]

any idea on the coral on the right hand side?

I not sure if I need to be supplementing this one with something?

I guess its not ideal that I ended up with what I have in there so early on but I got everything from a local advert I wanted the l/r because its hard to source here, my lfs said they didn't really sell the stuff they had in their display tanks, or holding tanks but i could order some. Unfortunately I would have needed to order 10kg's, way too much for my little 10g so when I saw the advert i jumped at the chance. I took a bucket of salted heated water it was out of his tank and into the bucket in 30 secs, and back home and in my tank 30 mins later.

Attachment 14736

the rock was covered in a fair bit of alge, and I started to get a little red slime type stuff growing on the rock. When I went back a week after placing the first bit of l/r I added another kg and he asked if I wanted the 2x turbos and 1x r/l & 1x b/l hermit at a really good price. the little chaps have done a great job of cleaning stuff up, but i guess as advised by robert (parrothead) i think I need to sit back and wait for my levels to sort them selves out before I add anything else. I guess I be best to wait at least a few weeks after my readings are spot on.

sg now up after the w/c to 1.024 (working toward 1.025 but am going to do it slowy when I do my next w/c I'll work on getting it up another .001)
ph 8.2
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
nitrate 10 still after the w/c the other day

all looking happy in there and a little brighter in the tank after using salted r/o from the lfs rather than home collected seawater.

one thing i have noticed is that i have a little less gunk in the filterwool-i guess seawater has quite alot of suspended particles and micro gunk in it. i did filter it first but i'm sure a bit made it through.

[twisted]

Would anyone is able to identify whats on this piece of rock, I think I have zoa's of some sort, not too sure about the green bubble type looking stuff, any ideas?

Attachment 14735

hey! the bubble stuff is bubble algae. this is one thing you want to get out of the tank asap. it does look cool, but is a nuisance! before you remove it either research the best way to, or wait for someone to chime in and give their advice. its real hard to win the war with this stuff, but you can with some patience and alot of time with tweezers..good luck and welcome to Reefland!

[tedlepplin]

Hi twisted,

Many thanks for your input, I googled bubble algae and it looks like I need to get it out of the tank asap.

I guess the good bit is that its on a very small piece of rock, about the size of a can of pop, so I will be able to take the piece out and try to sort it outside the tank.

I just read an article on google about it and this is what I think I will do.

1. remove the piece of rock as soon as I get home.
2. apparently twist and pull gently and the bubbles should come off easily without bursting.
3. take a flat head srewdriver, and use it as a chiesel to scrape off whats left of the algae.
4. dip the half with the bubble algae on in boiling water on the affected area, and then place back into the tank.

does anyone disagree with this method?? do you think I should do something else??

I am a little gutted actually, the rock is really nice and purple (corraline I believe) and has a few zoas on it, but I guess the good news is its pretty well split with half the rock with the bubble algae the other half the zoas.

I am a little annoyed with myself, I noticed it in his tank and he told me it was a plant, so I asked to buy it!!!! What a dummy I am, I thought it looked nice!!!!

I guess that will teach me, I did ask what it was called but I dont think he knew. I'm really blaming myself here for not being a bit more on to it with what I have put in the tank. I thought it would be fine as its come out of someone elses tank, he said he'd kept marines for a while and was breaking it down as he was moving away.

I thought as the l/r had been in his tank for a said year, and he'd had marines for a little longer as this tank was an upgratde to his old one, I took his word without question....

I guess the giveaway would have been not knowing the name of if!!

Oh well I'll do my best later and post as to how I get on.

Thanks again twisted....

[twisted]

dont feel bad. some people actually like it in their tanks. i guess because it looks neat. i would do all the steps you listed except the part with boiling water. just pick it off then scrape it. i have a few rocks with it on it that are stubborn and i just pick it off when it shows back up. its just part of having a reef tank.