Now I'm getting excited

Gdbyrd

Gdbyrd

life's a beach
I got my new pumps in, got them in and situated where I have plenty of flow to the whole tank. Modded my skimmer, it's pushing out a ton of water and the bubble chamber is opaque..getting lots of gunk out...Did my 50% water change a few minutes ago...Now I'm getting psyched!

So, after tomorrow if my parameters are all good I'm going to go ahead and get some fish. Decided to go with a pair of clowns as my first purchase. My tank has been cycling for a full month now.

My question is, before I take the plunge what else do I need to do/consider? Getting psyched, lol.
 
Yep.Now comes the fun part:D But its also the part where a lot of people forget the go slow.
Just dont get in a hurry,and have fun with it.
 
Well, son of a monkey. My levels were pretty good. only thing was Nitrates were at 20ish. I went to my LFS instead of getting my stuff from San Antonio. They would not sell me clownfish, lol. And I was willing ot pay the 40$ for common clowns too! He said they would not do well with the high nitrates. He talked me into a bicolor Damsel. Looking at liveaquaria, I think it's an Azure damselfish.

Anyhow, he's cute as hell..he uses the height of the tank too. It was great, within an hour or two in the tank he was going to the top of my tank, riding the powerhead stream to the bottom, then taking one on the bottom to the top. Really funny little guy. Not sure if I can keep him with the plan I have for my tank, but he sure is fun to watch for now.

I had a quick question. Every two days I have been doing: pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and specific gravity levels. Do I continue with that or do I do ammonia daily and the others weekly?
 
That Azures cute right now,because its the only fish in the tank.When you try to add anything else,your probably going to have a hell of fight in there.
As far your testing goes.Test it to where you feel comfortable with it.If you like to test daily,then by all means test it every day.
I hardly ever test for nitrates and never ammonia or nitrites.But calcium,magnesium,and alkalinity get tested daily.
 
Yikes..that's what I figured. The guys up in SA had told me damsels were good for two things, establishing tanks and feeding stuff in the sewers.

Quick question, let's say I want to get another fish in 3 or so weeks. Can I take him out and put another fish in(about same size) as well as a new fish? Or is that ill advised?
 
Catching damsels is the worst! lol. As long as you keep up with your water changes you really only need to test for calcium, alkalinity, and pH. If your pH is out of whack and your alkalinity is where it should be then you should test for ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite. Magnesium is a good test to start doing once your system starts going through a large amount of alkalinity.
 
You guys suck : / Total buzz kills. Sigh. Well, I'll just drop a little hook in there or make a small fish trap...I'll figure something out....maybe rent a lionfish? Hell, I dunno..

I wish to hell I could carry you guys around with me when I'm in the fish shops..stop me from doing stupid stuff. In all honesty I have no clue why they would not sell me clowns..My nitrates weren't THAT high, isn't 20 totally acceptable for fish? I had always read that clowns were really hardy too.
 
wow! your LFS is tough and really care! My LFS asked me about the water parameter AFTER I paid for the fishes.
 
You know it's really weird. They actually DON'T care..even with high nitrates, he refused to sell me my clowns but tried to sell me some invertebrates. They have a really long history of very bad advice, they are super nice people, don't get me wrong...

That's the reason I have been getting almost all of my stuff from a 4 hr drive, one way, supplier.
 
Heres the deal.
They sale you something that going to die,not do good in your tank,kill everything you add.Then you come back and buy replacements,which puts more money in your pocket.
Just keep yourself informed so you can make the right decisions for your tank.
 
That makes perfect sense..I'm doing as much as I can with reading into this stuff, but there's just so much. They also tried pushing a hawkfish on me. I had remembered reading something about them not being reef friendly..but everyone was telling me how great an addition they are to reef tanks.

I think I won't have too much trouble catching that little guy. I'll give it a couple weeks and give it a go. See if I can build a little box out of plexi or something....Too bad they can't do well with other fish, he really is a neat little guy. Very friendly and sooo fast.

What I was amazed at was their ability to find crevices and stuff. I had no clue there was so much space between my rock.
 
now here comes the damsel defender!! LOL. out of all the damsels i've had (and i've had quite a lot of them) i have only ever had 1 damsel that was a pain! we called him "Bluto" (like on popeye) because he was a bully and would go after the others, but right now my sisters tank has 2 damsels (sunny and squibbie) and a chromis (june) and all 3 of them get along great... in my display tank i have a pair of mated clonws, a very tiny mandarin, and Blue (my blue damsel). I honestly have never had much of a problem with fighting or them being terrortorial, in fact blue likes to swim around with the mandrin...


i guess it all depends on the fish but my advice would be just introduce your clowns and watch what happens over the course of a day or so, if your damsel is really that bad take him out and take him back to the lfs... or send him to me ;D hehe
 

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