Have patience?

[leezard]

Build a tank plan ahead of time

That's what I want to do.... the friends of mine who I got the tank from lost alot of animals, many due to what I may now be considering poor hubandry, and many others because of the eel they purchased without knowing anything about it. Yep, really cute, but they've lost alot of things to it.

I think, then, I'm going to start my reading on seahorses. They're awfully dumb, but neat to watch.... dont' know if it's feasible or not, but nothing like looking into trying while I get everything switched over!

[Snaz]

http://www.seahorse.org/

Seahorses are not begginer species but if your interested this is the website to start. Read EVERYTHING before you go with seahorses.

[leezard]

Woot! Thanks! I definitely will.

[leezard]

It's been awhile since my last newbie question. Now it's just a matter of making sure I"m on the right track.

As a refresher -- I have a 20 gallon tank that had been running empty for nearly a year -- no water changes, no live rock, nothing. There HAD been rock and livestock in it previous to that, but they got a bigger tank and simply decided to get rid of this one and gave it to me.

There is a hagen Marine-Glo light in the hood, which I want to replace with a 50/50 Coralife tube so that I can eventually get into corals and such.

I'm still running the Fluval 303, but have added the AquaClear 30 powerhead and have a Koralia powerhead on order, as well as the Nano Rio protein skimmer (which I found out is apparently a piece of poo and craps out quickly, but I'll use it until said day and get a better one later). When the protein skimmer comes in I'll stop running the canister filter.

I now also have about 25 lbs of cured live rock in the tank, as well as 20 lbs of aragonite sand.

I had problems with high nitrite levels until just recently, most of which I attribute to adding the live rock. Everything seems to have finally balanced, and when I brought my water sample in for testing to double check the staff were very pleased (they seem to have gotten to know me very quickly).

So now I have added two snails, two hermit crabs and a conch.

Opinions? How much more of a cleaning crew do I need? Anything I should be doing differently?

Thanks!!!

[leezard]

(This is not only to share the neatest creature I've recently learned about, but to bump back up on the mainpage. I'm greedy!!)

[Flash]

go get yourself a few hermit crabs! AND post a full tank pic! lol!

[leezard]

Yeah yeah. I'll get to that!