Suggestions for beginner (pics attached)

[Jagerman]

Here are a few pics of my setup (I hope they are clear). I am new to this having just taken over maintaining the tank from a service we had used previously.

I am hoping to get any comments/observations/suggestions. Thanks in advance.

[Kibouchi]

Great looking tank

I'm not an expert at all and I, too, am a beginner. I've learned a lot in my research, but I don't think I'm quite qualified yet to start giving advice.

It's going to be a bit difficult for you because you weren't involved in the setup of the tank it sounds like. Getting the tank started forces you to learn everything. And the cycling period gives you time to learn about the fish and coral and get in the habit of doing your routine checks and maintenance without actually risking any life. With all the fish and coral already in there and flourishing, you have very little time to learn this before things start getting hairy in there.

Here's some advice that won't cause any damage; use microsoft excel to create a log. Have the vertical columns labelled according to their chemical or whichever, and the horizontal rows have the readings. Also list the date and time you make each log. It'll help you get into the routine of doing your checks and water changes.

Best of luck!

[tedlepplin]

Hey jagerman nice looking tank

I too am unfortunatly not really in a position to offer much advice, I am also a newbie, but others here will be able to help you.

I would however look to identify eactly what you have in there already first, if you dont know you could ask the service company to come back one more time, or post close up pics and ask for names.

As soon as you know exactly what you have you can easily google their basic care requirements, then ask here for further advice...

I have no idea how much you know or understand about keeping a s/w tank so just as a piece pf advice for what its worth, if you know very little I would maybe seriously consider asking the service co to come back one more time? To show you exactly what they do, how they mix up r/o water, add salt what salt they use, then run you through the testing of water and what the results all mean.

i'd start by looking at the forum here called "click here before you ask", there aregome great articles and information contained there and I found it very helpful.

good luck and let us know how you get on

[gregr]

You've got a great looking tank there. I guess in order to make good suggestions for you it'd be helpful to get an idea of how much you know already in terms of keeping a healthy reef tank. Have you get some test kits (which ones?)? Have you got the equipment and salt on hand to do water changes and replacement water for evaporation? Have you got any kind of reverse osmosis filter? A refractometer? I assume there's a sump because it looks like the tank has a built-in overflow-- is there a protein skimmer in there?