Greetings!
I've only kept small freshwater tanks, never anything too serious until I was given a brand new Biocibe Hqi. I've been doing research and collecting supplies for the past few months and finally got to it about 6 weeks ago. I ultimately would like to end up having 5 or 6 small fish, an assortment of coral, starfish, and maybe an anemone.
I started with 25lbs of live sand and about 30 lbs of live rock, taken out of established tanks, and filled the tank with store bought real seawater. I put a handful of live rock rubble, some chaeto and red gracilaria in the refugium chamber. I use the protein skimmer that came with the tank, the standard biocube filters, and a 100w heater. I have the lights set up so that the main lamp runs for 8 hours then the light over the refuguim window is on when the main one is off. There are what appears to be several different colors of coralline algae on some of the rocks so ive been adding PurpleUp to encourage its growth. Ive been doing weekly water changes of around 15%, and checking water parameters at least twice a week.
After about a week I started noticing diatom and algae growth along with some snails, slugs and worms on the rocks. The LPS said the water tested out good and there should be no reason I couldn't start adding fish. I actually started out with a couple Nassarius snails, a blue claw crab, and 2 peppermint shrimp. Over the next few weeks the rocks started getting fuzzier and fuzzier so I placed an order with reefcleaners.org. The cleaning crew they sent me made quick work of most of the algae in the tank. After that I introduced 2 tiny clownfish who seem to be doing quite well so far.
I have many questions and issues to go over so please watch for my posts in other threads. Oh, and my family insisted on the decorations, hopefully they will let me remove them once i start adding more life.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post!
-Tonyg
I've only kept small freshwater tanks, never anything too serious until I was given a brand new Biocibe Hqi. I've been doing research and collecting supplies for the past few months and finally got to it about 6 weeks ago. I ultimately would like to end up having 5 or 6 small fish, an assortment of coral, starfish, and maybe an anemone.
I started with 25lbs of live sand and about 30 lbs of live rock, taken out of established tanks, and filled the tank with store bought real seawater. I put a handful of live rock rubble, some chaeto and red gracilaria in the refugium chamber. I use the protein skimmer that came with the tank, the standard biocube filters, and a 100w heater. I have the lights set up so that the main lamp runs for 8 hours then the light over the refuguim window is on when the main one is off. There are what appears to be several different colors of coralline algae on some of the rocks so ive been adding PurpleUp to encourage its growth. Ive been doing weekly water changes of around 15%, and checking water parameters at least twice a week.
After about a week I started noticing diatom and algae growth along with some snails, slugs and worms on the rocks. The LPS said the water tested out good and there should be no reason I couldn't start adding fish. I actually started out with a couple Nassarius snails, a blue claw crab, and 2 peppermint shrimp. Over the next few weeks the rocks started getting fuzzier and fuzzier so I placed an order with reefcleaners.org. The cleaning crew they sent me made quick work of most of the algae in the tank. After that I introduced 2 tiny clownfish who seem to be doing quite well so far.
I have many questions and issues to go over so please watch for my posts in other threads. Oh, and my family insisted on the decorations, hopefully they will let me remove them once i start adding more life.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post!
-Tonyg
