[quote=“aonemarine, post:40, topic:4319”]
i couldnt resist the green polyp, its emerald green just screamed buy me![/quote]
It screamed “buy me”, but if you put it into a tank that hasn’t cycled yet it may soon, “why did you buy me for this tank!”. No animal should ever be placed in a cycling tank regardless of how hardy the animal is. It’s very possible it will live through it, but it is a colony of live animals and they shouldn’t be put through the hellish conditions of a cycling tank.
Impulse buys help LFS, wholesalers, and importers justify yanking animals out of there natural environment that no hobbyist knows how to keep alive. If nothing else helps with impulse buys consider this one. Many of the people on this forum have the exact coral you purchased that was screaming “buy me”. Many consider it a weed and would give it to you dirt cheap or maybe even free.
Impulse buys very often result in some of the worse experiences hobbyist have with marine tanks.
date=1318871595]
one thing i am sorting out now is my pH the API test kit said it was 8.2 [/quote]
Toss the hobby test kit in the trash. pH test kits made for hobby use cause more harm then they do good. Low pH is often just as influenced by what’s outside your tank as what is inside. High CO2 in a house closed up for significant time can significantly drop your pH. Try just opening some windows and see how that effects the pH. It’s great having weather like we’ve had the last couple of days, makes it easier to air things out.
Yea impulse got the better of me I admit it, I attridute my previous tanks failure due to this and not using di water. The live rock i have in the tank has been cured and is minimal so im hoping for a cycle without any high peaks. Time will tell. The brown polyps were not purchased, just found them on the lr alond with what looks like a baby glass anemone, guess i should get it out of there now?
My windows have been open for a month now, didnt know that co2 in the air could effect pH, thought pH was just related to the carbonites bicarbonates and hydroxides in the water, think i need a chemestry lesson on this one, something about carbonites and co2 rings a bell but i havent had my coffee today so the brain is on strike.
Being a new tank and looks like a softy tank, try to resist the best you can to dose anything, you should not have to dose that size softy tank at all, test your ph morning and early evening but do not try to adjust it, just chart it for awhile. If you can keep the temp stable and do weekly water changes after your cycle is done, that should be all you have to do.
Glass anemone remove immediately. Make sure to get a decent id, but if it looks like “Aiptasia” remove immediately. A google search will give you a million pictures with that name and thousands of people screaming for help trying to get rid of them.
To clarify all healthy systems maintained for a significant amount of time will need some dosing, but your levels haven’t likely dropped significantly already. Over dosing is very easy to do. Find out what reasonable ranges are for each parameter and understand what would cause them to go outside of this range. Make sure you understand each and don’t target one exact number. All systems can tolerate some fluctuations.
If your Mg drops from 1400 to 1100 over night DON’T DOSE. Reason is there isn’t anything that could possibly cause this and it is more likely that your test kit is wrong or a mistake was made in testing.
Well its day 20 of having the 10 gallon set up and running, its doing well ammonia is 0, nitrites 1, nitrates 20.
I watched the tank go from brown diatom to green hair alge in the past 5 days and today i noticed an explosion of all kinds of little critters “bugs”. What i was wondering is where to go now? partial water change? clean up crew? or just let it run?
[quote=“aonemarine, post:45, topic:4319”]
Well its day 20 of having the 10 gallon set up and running, its doing well ammonia is 0, nitrites 1, nitrates 20.
I watched the tank go from brown diatom to green hair alge in the past 5 days and today i noticed an explosion of all kinds of little critters “bugs”. What i was wondering is where to go now? partial water change? clean up crew? or just let it run?[/quote]
mmmmmm? nitrates arent crazy high, but most cuc are sensitive to it. what animals do you have now? or is it just the couple frags still? how they all doing btw?
Hey John, I have the frags I got from you and a another gsp that i bought, some brown polyps that came on a piece of live rock, and a small zoa frag with green and orange zoas that are pretty cool. Everything is doing well and that pally? frag i got from you looks like it is going to go nuts!! In the past few days the bugs have really started showing up, not sure what they are but I got ones that run along the bottom and look like little silverfish, little white specks that stick to the glass then dart off, and a few that slide along like slugs with horns? on the rear of them and then there is a snail that is about 3/8" long that is doing a good job of cleaning the glass off, and i also saw 2 bristle worms of some sort that have a red front end and a bluish black rear end. I dont know much about these bugs so Im a little concerned about a couple of them.
[quote=“aonemarine, post:47, topic:4319”]
Hey John, I have the frags I got from you and a another gsp that i bought, some brown polyps that came on a piece of live rock, and a small zoa frag with green and orange zoas that are pretty cool. Everything is doing well and that pally? frag i got from you looks like it is going to go nuts!! In the past few days the bugs have really started showing up, not sure what they are but I got ones that run along the bottom and look like little silverfish, little white specks that stick to the glass then dart off, and a few that slide along like slugs with horns? on the rear of them and then there is a snail that is about 3/8" long that is doing a good job of cleaning the glass off, and i also saw 2 bristle worms of some sort that have a red front end and a bluish black rear end. I dont know much about these bugs so Im a little concerned about a couple of them.[/quote]
they mostly sound like copepods and amphipods…and should all be safe…except the “slugs with horns” they could possibly be a nudibranch of some sort, and a lot are pests to us. there are zoa eating ones, and they camo themselves the same colors as the coral. Don’t sweat anything yet, just try to post a pic if you can, i know the little stuff is hard to photograph so just google and compare if no pic.
Ill try to, so far the the bugs with the horns on thier butts seem more interested in the alge on the glass then anything else, so i guess they can live “for now”. I dont know what that snail is but man it is doing a job of cleaning the glass off, busy busy busy. I could use a couple more like it…
Tim, it does kinda look like #6, but im only seeing it from a belly view.
Anyway, what should i be doing with the tank now? anything? im thinking of getting an emerald crab to get rid of some of the hair alge…
emerald crabs will not do much for hair algae and are mostly used for the sole reason to remove bubble algae
you have a very small tank so you want to be very careful what and how much you add, if your nitrite is all the way down to 0 and nitrates dropping and you are interested in crabs I would suggest 2 dwarf blue legged hermits and 1 scarlet hermit I would wait on snails for a bit.
Now that your done your cycle, I would suggest small weekly water changes I wold start with a 1/2 gal water change at first for the first few and if no issues with them then go to 1 gal water changes weekly.
Remember with that small of a tank you will really want to pay close attention to temp, ph and SG of your water change water and make sure it matches your tank as close as you can.
Well I opted to take the do nothing route, tested the water today and nitrites are down to .5 and nitrates are down to 10. It looks like the protein skimmer kicked into overdrive last night so i cleaned it out this morning.
The only thing i did yesterday was to clean the front glass off. Maybe everything will be 0 0 0 tomorrow…
Keep in ind that unless you’ve got a significant amount of macro algae growing, or something else using nitrates as food, water changes are really the most effective means of reducing / removing them.
Well its day 22, and finally everything is 0-0-0 YahoO
Now i just need to start cleaning out that green hair alge thats growinglike a weed.
Think im going to pick up some hermits thes weekend and maybe a small fish, any suggestions?
Ill try and shoot a video later so you can see how this gha took over…
If I can find a light for it cheap ill keep it running. On a budget here lately, too many bills!
Then again I still have 5 - 29 gallon tanks to play with too :: :: who know…
i was mainly asking because of the stocking plan, a lot of animals will outgrow/ or be too big, but if they’re moving to the 40 soon that would make a diff…
how soon are you gonna have it running? are you putting a pair of clowns in there? I’d like to know what others think, but i think they’d be fine in there for a bit. maybe a cleaner shrimp or peppermint?
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