Back in the game, 72g bowfront reef

Cycling about 4-5 days now. Have 3 damsels and 3 hermits in there. A light brown coating started on the live rock, the base rock no so much. Are these diatoms? Should I be looking to follow this with another livestock addition.

This site called Indo-Pacific Sea Farms says Diatoms are proof the ecosystem is starting up. They of course say you answer this with their Amphipod clean-up kit. Should I be looking into that or maybe a banded shrimp and some snails?
 

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No, the diatoms will go away on their own when all the silicates in the system is used up.

Also you should not have added any livestock until your cycle is over. Your tank wont cycle any faster with them, and to kill them with ammonia toxicity is very cruel. Please return them.

Plus damsels are horrible starter fish. They are extremely aggressive and will try and kill anything else you add to the tank.
 
little_fish said:
No, the diatoms will go away on their own when all the silicates in the system is used up.

Also you should not have added any livestock until your cycle is over. Your tank wont cycle any faster with them, and to kill them with ammonia toxicity is very cruel. Please return them.

Plus damsels are horrible starter fish. They are extremely aggressive and will try and kill anything else you add to the tank.
Click to expand...

Kill them with ammonia toxicity? My ammonia levels have been ok as well as my pH. Ammonia is about 0-0.25mg/l and the pH is between 8.0-8.3. I agree they'll be a pain in the ass to remove eventually but besides that, they are taking in food, providing waste and I don't see how that can hurt my little man-made ecosystem?
 

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It's not hurting your ecosystem. It is hurting the fish. It is considered an outdated practice to use fish to cycle your aquarium when a piece of shrimp works just as well. Plus then you don't have to go through the hassle of removing the fish.
 
Was browsing Youtube and one poster opened a video with, "When cycling your tank turn off your protein skimmer as it defeats the purpose of letting bacteria grow".

Thoughts?
 
No, I disagree -- most of the bacteria is living on the rocks and sand. Not much is in the water column. Running your skimmer is not going to hurt. In fact, if the skimmer is new, it's going to take a couple weeks to break in and start working anyways, so while the tank is cycling is a good time to get that going.
 
So I added a new Koralia and about 20lbs of Nature's Ocean Bio-Activ Live Aragonite Reef Sand about a week ago and alot of my negatives numbers went down. Ammonia, Nitrate, and the brown algae all but disappeared. The two damsels in there seem to be more active and now I need to decide on lighting since this tank should be ready to introduce stuff by the end of the month.

I want to go with a 48" AquaticLife system but I can't decide between T5HO and Compact Fluorescent. They both look good and I know I'm not going to grow anything that requires MHs. When it comes to aesthetics I like the slimmer/more sleek CF unit since the T5HO unit is a bit more boxy. I'm about 90% sure with the AquaticLife but I'm also interested in trying out 2 strips of the TrueLumen LED strips. The downside to them is they are $184 a strip and they require you to buy a $43 power adapter for every 2 strips you buy. So 2 strips (with adapter) would run me $411 while the CF's are $400 and the T5HO's are $370...
 
Actually those numbers went down because your tank cycled, not because you added some sand. And for future reference, you should never cycle a tank with fish. It is needlessly cruel.


Also, the PC lighting is going to limit you to basically softies. Get the T5 lighting. The same watts of t5 will give you way more options. Make sure that the light you are getting does have individual reflectors for the bulbs, that also makes a huge difference.
 
Lights arrived yesterday. Adios 2x crappy compact fluorescent, hello AquaticLife 4x T5HO! :bounce:
 

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So the bio balls are out, and I have 2 pieces of live rock in the wet dry now. I'm going to start using Chaeto (Bif!) and I think I am going to change form a wet/dry to a sump/refugium. My question is what size aquarium should I throw below the 72g stand. My usuable dimensions are approx 20" high, 28" long, and 10" wide. What is that a 20?

I want to do dirty water into 1st chamber, pump that into my skimmer, have that skimmed water flow over a 2nd chamber with live sand, live rock, a light and chaeto. Then have that water pass filter media by the sandbed into a 3rd chamber with a return pump back to my DT.

Thoughts? That stupid diagram took me 45 minutes in MS Paint...
 

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i wouldnt worry about the filter media, it can be a pain to clean and upkeep in my opnion. Your protein skimmer and liverock should be plenty of filtration for your aquarium as long as youre doing at least 2 water changes a month. I'd also recommend putting active carbon in your first chamber (this will also help filter your water as it removes toxins, impurities, and can help with odor). I would lower the last baffle going from your fuge to your return pump area an inch. this will cause the water from your fuge to flow over into your return area and pump back out to your display tank.

But then again, theres many ways to do things in this hobby and most of it is by trial and error. Your diagram looks similar to my sump except my water passes over my last baffle, my skimmer is internal, and i have a bubble trap which you may want to consider installing to prevent having micro bubbles in your main tank
 
My sump is set up exactly the same way, including the external skimmer. The only (small) difference is my skimmer pumps back into the first chamber. It's worked well for us so far!
 
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