Cloudy Water Question

[wstadnick]

Hello,

First time posting on the forum, as i recently just started up my first tank. Now for the background on the tank. I was talking to the salter water store owner here, and he explained that with a 55 gal tank, its easier to mix the salt in the water (with the tank being emtpy of everything but the water) and then add in every later. So i went cool. So i did the salt mix, let is sit for two tanks mixing every so often to make sure all was well. (Did not have an hydromter at the time as all store in area were sold out, and took me a lil while to find one). Anyways i then went to add the crush coral (aragonite) to the bottm. I was going with the fine stuff first, and then put the big chunk stuff over it. But as i pored it in it went to the opacity of milk.

Well yesterday it had finally settle down, so i added some live rock and grabbed the hyrdometer and did a test. The test read below what it should. So then i thought it had settled on the bottom again and try to mix it up again, which of course has my tank now in milk state again. But when i tested i was not above the required reading.

Now my question are :
1. Is the crush coral at the bottom usually that easy to stir up?
2. When it is cloudy will it usually give a false reading?
3. Have i some how messed up my tank?

[leebca]

It's one way of starting up. Have you read through this guideline? Setting Up a FOWLR Aquarium

1. Things will settle. Eventually the lighter, finer pieces will be filtered out. See 3.

2. Not usually, providing that cloudy is solids that won't dissolve. If they are not dissolved then a reading will be incorrect.

3. No. You must keep up with the mechanical filter -- filtering out solids. It may take a few days to clear up, but it will. Use the finest (tightest) filter you can for the time being.

I would definitely read through the above post and shift your procedure to the one advised, as soon as you can. I would suggest that, with that sized tank, you should invest in refractometer to make your specific gravity measurements. You'll get the advice you need from the above linked post.

[wstadnick]

Cool thank you.

As i'm reading more and more i'm figuring out that it's normal somewhat, just kinda scary.

i just did my first test, and it shows about .50 ammonia. Have no fish in it just the live rock and the bottom stuff.

Some sites say this is normal for the cycling process. Is this true?

[leebca]

There are few 'normal' things in this hobby! Almost anything is possible. ;)

You wrote you added live rock, but I don't know the quality nor the quantity of that. If the quality of the LR was high and the proper amount added, there would likely be no ammonia detected. As you go 'down from there' the amount of detectable ammonia goes up. For more info about live rock, you'll want to read this: What is Live Rock, Anyway?

Do NOT try to put the system together piece by piece over a long time. Either you have the resources to do it correctly from the start, or save up to do it. Just don't try to put in a little of this then a little of that into the system as you go along. Live rock is the most abused in this way. Obtain and put in ALL the live rock you should have, from the very start.

[wstadnick]

I put in about 30 lbs of live rock.

Also i have begun the search for a refractometer. The stores i have available to me so far don't have any for sale, so i have moved to Kijiji, hopefully some pop up. If not i'll most likely have to grab one off of ebay.

[leebca]

The ones I own all came from eBay.

[wstadnick]

Just thought of another question. After reading through your guide, i notice that it says not to do a water change until about 2 weeks after the tanks been running. Only thing is the water is slowly going down, should i be adding more water to it to top it off, or wait the two weeks out, and then just add new water?

[leebca]

You don't want to mix the two concepts: "water change" with "top off"

You want to maintain parameter stability more and more as the aquarium matures. So to start you want to keep the system topped off -- replacing the evaporated with with distilled water or water that has been through an RO/DI treatment.

[wstadnick]

Leebca Thank for all the help.

Just did my first test, and started me a log sheet

The results are :

Ammonia - 1.0
Nitrate - 10
Nitrite - .5
Ph - 8.2
Sal - 1.22

Does this seem about right for 4 days of running with live rock? And only one lil fish in it, was a damsel someone gave me, rather then him flushing it.

[leebca]

With ammonia present and this being a young aquarium, you are harming the fish. Give the fish away but stop hurting it. There must be no fish in the tank at this time. Please follow the guideline: Setting Up a FOWLR Aquarium

[wstadnick]

Alrighty i'll try getting rid of it. I figured it was better in my tank then the fish bowl.. i'll try throwing it up on kijiji free to good home.

Other then that are my readings pretty normal for a new tank?

[leebca]

They're okay. No right or wrong at this point in time.

[wstadnick]

Just started getting these lil white, spider leg looking things on the aquarium. Are they by chance the pods i keep reading about?

[leebca]

Could be. Search the Internet for some pictures of marine copepods and see how many hundreds of different ones there are!

[wstadnick]

Everything is going good in the tank. Just wondering.. im at the point of adding frozen fishfood to the tank. Just wondering if there's something in particular i should be getting. I beleive the local store has frozen blood worms, and frozen brine shrimp. I heard i should stay away from the brine shrimp.. would hte bloodworms be fine to start with?

[leebca]

Try a bit of raw shrimp tail. You want something that will sink and be 'visible' to you. For just feeding the live rock, actually pieces of frozen marine fish food is good. This means things like prepared foods that are gelled that may contain a variety of different ingredients. Nothing wrong with using bloodworms, but it's always best to stick to something from the sea and something that will pretty much sink.

[wstadnick]

I'll have to check and see what other raw frozen fish foods they have there. i thought i only saw the bloodworms and the brine shrimp

By shrimp tail, do you just mean like a tiger shrimp, uncooked veined like in the grocery store?

[leebca]

Uncooked (veined or not) shrimp tail for human consumption is what I mean. The best store to shop in at this stage of the aquarium setup is a large grocery store with raw seafood for sale (squid, clam, shrimp, scallop, etc.). Just be sure the 'shrimp' and any raw food you get is from the sea. Some shrimp being sold are actually freshwater. (At this point in time, probably not a major issue, but it's worthwhile getting into the habit of just choosing things from the sea rather than freshwater things and things from the land).

[wstadnick]

Cool, i'll be stopping on the way home to check it out. Now is the sea weed also the same, im able to use the stuff found at the local grocery stores? And is there something i should be looking for/staying away from?

Thank for all the help also.. seems to be getting more and more interesting as i go.

[leebca]

You need to read these posts:
Feeding Marine Fish and Fish Nutrition
and
How To Feed Macro Alage to Marine Fishes