New reef tank! 41 Gallon Fluval Osaka. Suggestions?
 

Hi everyone!
I am Tasha and am starting a reef tank.

It is a Fluval Osaka 41G

I have in it so far:

30lbs argonite
50lbs live rock (Some is lava?)
2 powerheads, (1 small and one large)
A small fluval internal filter.
A Current USA SunPod 250W MH Fixture
5 hermit crabs
2 pink turbo snails

I also added some green zoos and green star polyps

All of my levels are now good and at zero, but I just got a bunch of brown algae all over my rock, pumps, and sand! it looks terrible, I am thinking this is a normal process though?

Anyways I know I will need to add more things soon, and figure out something for a skimmer/filter. and stocking help too :)

I am fairly new and have been doing a lot of research but any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks :)

nice start better get to frag fest 4 at blue world on sunday lots of people there to answer questions

The Brown algae is Diatoms normal in a new set up. IMO you may want to beef up filtration or look into a sump this will clean the electronics out of the display and add to your over all water volume which is always a plus. Not necessary though if your on top of water changes.

Any algae at startup is normal
You're going to go through some cycling before it calms down

Read, read, and read some more
There are SO many posts here to look through :razz:

Ditch the internal filter

I read for months before I started my tank and still had to ask questions ...

I've heard mixed things on lava rock, the general consensus seems to be not to use it.
http://www.thereeftank.com/forums/f6...tank-1754.html

another thing that helps is listing exactly what is in your tank
example powerheads, filters.
who makes them? what size?
example a maxijet 900 or 1200
or a tunze 9002 protein skimmer?
Information helps everyone help each other.

Nice start!

Thanks! I will certainly put more information up later on today.

The quality of your rock looks questionable, some being lava and the rest I can only assume being made up of lead being that you have 50lbs in a 41 gallons and it looks empty :razz:

You might want to consider new rock all together, unless your rock was freshly shipped/uncured then you shouldn't get major algae problems right off the start. I'm guessing it's just a bunch of random rock from another hobbyist, so not only is the wrong stuff but probably polluted as well. Not a great way to start your first tank!

Thanks for the input. It may not be exactly 50lbs.. We didn't weigh it. I may Get rid of one of the lava rock pieces, and replace with some different live rock. The lava is still live rock and came right out of an established tank. And I like the caves that it provides.

There are many little things growing all over the rock. I am by no means an expert but it looks pretty healthy to me. All of my levels are still testing great.

As I mentioned elsewhere, ditch the internal filter and the lava rock. You have no idea what's in it, and you don't want to spend thousands on corals and have to ask one day why they keep dying. Lava rock is an unknown and should not be in a tank. Save yourself a lot of potential grief right up front and go buy 15 pounds of fresh live rock at the LFS. Make sure it's new rock, not something they bought off someone else shutting down. IMO the biggest mistake in this hobby is using somebody else's old rock.
Other than that, the list looks fine. Brown stuff is diatoms, perfectly normal and will go away on it's own.