New member intro

Hey everyone, i attended my 1st meeting last night. The people i sspoke to last night asked if ii was online and if i introduced myself on here. before i do… is this the right forum, spot to do it?

Welcome to the forum John. :Welcome)

Hey John, welcome to the club. PBJ! good luck with your tank. GolfC

hey john, welcome :Welcome) whats your setup like?

fish-welcome

Hi, my name is John, I’ve had a fishtank of some sort for 25 yrs now. Mostly freshwater, although i did fail miserably at a salt tank 3 times, so i figured this time i’ll finally do it right (hopefully), and the wife’s as hooked as i am so that makes it easier, but we have to take turns being the voice of reason… thats not working out too well though… can you hear our Mac card begging for mercy? We plan on a mixed reef tank… heres the setup so far :
125 gallon dt 72’
2-3 inch reef sand
100 1bs rock 1/2 of it live
2 k4’s
cpr overflow
30 gallon sump w/ fuge (11 x 11) w/ chaeto and 3 in sand bed
sock
Asm g2 skimmer
light…not quite enough, but a new one will be on dpa’s next aquaticlife order
72’ w/ 12 t5’s, moon lights, fans
the tanks been up for about 7 weeks now
coraline growing all over, copepods and ampipods (sure i spelled those right)
have a xenia frag double in size over past month. yellow ttang, hippo, naso, occ clowns, musroom frag, zoo frag all doing great, coral banded shrimp, skunk cleaner, sea hair, 20 snails, 20 little hermits, all doin good… no losses at almost 2 months… every other salt attempt never had anything live for 2 months, so i’m very optomistic, and DPA is right down the street from my house, and Charlie and everyone else there have been a HUGE help.
Met some of you last night, hope to meet everyone else soon.
John

Sweet welcome. Is the K4’s enough flow for you? a

Hey John welcome!

Was good to see you at the meeting.

Not sure if this is the proper forum to introduce yourself, but then again I am not sure where else your supposed to. The officers and moderator will move the thread if necessary. No worries.

Two K4s may be a bit low as far as flow goes unless you went really light with your rock work and are pushing a lot of water through your over flow boxes.(and maybe still a bit light) Would be hard to say without standing in front of your tank…….or can you upload videos of some of your corals so we can see how they move?(tip, may help us even more to see the flow if you feed right before you start taking the video, so we can see it move around. Just don’t over feed your tank just to get a good video, lol)
Amphipod, but no worries. Likely more than half the people in the club who have been keeping reef tanks twice as long as you wouldn’t know how to spell them ore identify them, lol. One of my funniest jobs at the Marine Bio labs at UD was identifying the stomach contents of juvenile flounder and weighing them. IE (body of an amphipod, copepod, tail of a mysis shrimp, head of a copepod…) and then weigh them!

I’ll be responding to your PM in just a moment.

Once again welcome.

I’ve been wondering about the flow level myself. i started with 3 k4’s, but then took 1 out after a couple days because it was blowin the sand around too much. got double the rock now, so probably thinking to put it back now. or do you think another k4 is too much? i also was thinking of adding a second overflow box…

Probably wouldn’t worry about adding another overflow box. Was their an overflow box, like a megaflow, already on the tank or did you add an HOB(Hang on back) one?

Flow is very complicated and it is difficult to say. Some corals like Euphyllia(Hammer, torch, frogspawn) can easily be damaged by too much flow. Other corals which are placed on the bottom of the tank could easily die if too much sand was blow onto them. All corals could die with too little flow.

In general I would say three K4s would be better then two for sure just pay attention to your corals, make sure sand isn’t blown too much or no particular coral is getting upset.(upset being difficult as well until you learn what each coral will look like when it’s, “happy”)

I have a hang on… cpr 800gph. its very quiet most of the time.

I wouldn’t worry about pumping a massive amount of water through your sump. While it may help I think it would be crazy to do with HOB overflox boxes and more flow in the tank via power heads would help more significantly.

A few pics of my DT

Looking good…

Looking good.

Do you have a stocking plan in mind? IE “Introduce this fish at this point”, “Start introducing this type of this coral at this point”.

Good looking tank, John. Everything in it looks healthy. Just take your time, have some patience and enjoy the ride.

Actually Jon, i could use some input with a stocking plan, want to do a mix of coral, lps, sps. I’m not sure of when to add what, but i want it all!!, i probably got a little ahead of myself already, but the things in there so far are doing good… brown star polyps and xenia are growing, colt/kenya? doing good, mushroom, zoa. most pieces are frags, or small. i do have a toadstool that is going through a third shed now in 3 weeks, but its the only thing acting goofy…
anyones thoughts of when to add what, would be a big help… i’d love to get some monti cap growing soon
whats good, what should i stay away from now? clam? when

Very hard to say. Broadly speaking. There are some general guidelines random hobbyist who don’t really know what they are talking about put out on the web like, “Wait X months after your tank stops cycling to add SPS.” Well if your tank has stopped cycling you must have thrown some radioactive material in the tank or something crazy and I would just run away from the thing.(The Nitrogen cycle will NEVER stop) Also saying the term “SPS” and saying they should be kept in high light and flow conditions can be compared to something like… large furry mammals should be kept in the woods and eat meat. Well camels are large and furry and don’t eat meat and are fine in the desert. Many Acropora might be ok with high flow and high light, but Montipora and Echinophyllia(Chalice) many not require or even be able to tolerate it.

What do you test in your tank and what are the current levels? How long have they been stable at those levels? Include salinity and temp. How much is your skimmer pulling out and how often are you emptying it. Do you have a regular maintenance/water change schedule? Do you use carbon, phosban, or other media in your system at all?

If you have a large algae overgrowth all of a sudden you might slow down your plans depending on the type. If you start to get a massive amount of cyanobacteria(red slime) I’d start your timer over again. If things continue on course with such a large system without a massive bioload then things should progress quickly.

Personally not a clam expert, but I would say wait another 4 months at least before trying a clam and do your research first. I wouldn’t touch Acropora for another 5 months at least. Monti caps you could probably try at this point, but I wouldn’t buy a $200 massive colony yet. Try a small frag of one color and if it does well you can buy larger pieces of other colors if you like in a couple of weeks.

BTW identifying softies like the “kenya/colt” coral can be very difficult even to species. I personally would refer to the one you have as a colt coral and put a wild guess that it is Alcyonium, but don’t quote me on it. Most hobbyist would prefer a Colt vs a Kenya. They don’t “drop branches” as often and over run your tank. They also grow a lot taller and larger and help fill in the tank relatively quickly.

Oh and as far as other stocking plans if you see something just read up on it a little bit first and if you want ask on the forum and get some more opinions if your tank and you are ready to care for them. For at least the next year do NOT buy Heliofungia(Long tentacle place), Catalaphyllia(Elagance), Tubastrea(Sun Coral), Yellow or Red Gorgonians, or any sponge.(and it is likely you and the tank will never be ready for these)

Keep looking at softies at this point and see what you might like and you can start to think about LPS at this point, but I wouldn’t go crazy.