SWC order

[Delphinus]

Thread is getting a little eclectic, whew!

Kim, the flight is due in at 5:20. This means livestock in our hands no sooner than 6:30 - 7:00 (half an hour to unload the plane, half an hour to drive home, etc.)

Six months of age is the number I like to throw out as a measure of when a tank hits "maturity" (I guess the equivalent of reef tank "puberty"??? :eek: ). That does not always mean that things can't be put in the tank sooner than six months, just that up until that point, things tend to swing from one extreme to the other rather quickly. A good "balance" takes about 6 months IME/IMO, and certainly, there are many things that should not be attempted in an unbalanced, not-yet-mature tank, but the flip side of the coin is that six months is an awfully long time to wait with a tank with nothing in it to look at. There are some things that will do just fine after the initial ammonia/nitrite/nitrate cycle is complete (some fish, for example, hermit crabs and other cleanup crew) and those are the things you can start looking at within a few weeks, or after the first month, or so. But you have to watch your levels, if you have any ammonia or nitrite it of course will be best to wait until those are undetectable before plopping anything in. Snails in particular, I have found through my own experience, tend to be rather sensitive in an immature tank, and they'll drop like flies in such a situation. This is all just my $0.02 of course, and since every system is a little different, YMMV.