How fast is too fast + add your advice to a newb.

[Matt]

Good afternoon,
My adventure setting up a 10g nano... I just found this forum (thanks Beverly). My apologies if you've seen this post over in the Edmonton forum.

We started with about 10lbs of LR and waited for a couple of weeks. We were away for the second week of its young life. We haven't seen any amonia or nitrite spikes indicating a cycle. After about three weeks, we added a peppermint shrimp and an emerald crab, along with a couple of snails and a mushroom. The shrimp died within 3 hours, but everything else is doing well. Another week went by, and we weren't happy with the aquascaping. We added another 5lbs of LR, and on impulse (I've got to work on that impulse control...) we also added three blue-legged hermits and a small colony of yellow polyps.

I was worried that we were moving too quickly, and when we tested water two days later, we saw slightly elevated amonia and nitrites. I imagined that the cycle was now going to start, and warned my family that things might get ugly for the livestock if the cycle was long and/or extreme. However, the amonia and nitrites went back to zero the next day, and there isn't any perceptible change in nitrates. All the critters seem to be happy.

I feel that we went a little too quick at the start. I don't want to have new tank syndrome... It's been another week since the last additions, and the water parameters haven't changed. How long, do you suppose we should wait to add a fish or other anemones/corals?

Regards,
Matthew

[Matt]

By the way, this is it so far...

[Coldwater]

Looking good. I was the exact same way when started. I think I bought like $150$ worth of stuff in the first two weeks . When putting inverts in your tank you should take a little while longer than fish. The slower the better. You might want to wait another month or so before the next addition. After that about every 1-1.5 months you can add another fish. But then again you can do whatever you want. Oh ya you have a good name .

Matt

[megatron_55]

Hi . . . just thought I'd let you know . . . when my cousin started his reef system (about 3 weeks ago) he put live sand and live rock for the first 7 days . . . on the 7th day he actually added 2 hermits 1 yellow tang and about 3 different kinds of corals (green frogspawn, button polyps and anthelia) Everything seems to be fine . . . no losses yet (He's got it running for about less than a month now) You can check his post on the newbie forum in this website . . . its titled tank cycling and its by knightryder . . .

OH . . . by the way . . now his tank is prolly running about just a little bit over three weeks and he's got atleast 20 different corals a yellow tang two clownfish 2 cleaner shrimp and tons of inverts . . . Still ... no losses

ChEeRs-

[megatron_55]

PS. the survival of your livestock depends also on your acclimating process . . . Did you aclimate your shrimp for atleast an hour??? Shrimps are very delicate but once they are acclimated . . . they are very hardy

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Welcome to the addiction Matt:

To be on the safe side, best to take it slow & easy. It'll be better for the health of your tank inhabitants. If you go too fast, you risk an ammonia spike because your bioload is too high for the available "good" bacteria in the system to process. Especially important in a Nano, since you don't have the necessary water volume to dilute any toxins or nutrients.

PS. DON"T put any LFS water into your tank since many places keep their fish water treated with copper - better safe than sorry.

Anthony