my sw journey

[chefjamesscott]

Well, I thought to update this thread since I now effectively have 2 sw set ups running.

I picked up a sw set up that I had put a deposit on saturday, and saddly it seems like the person sort of let tank maintenance etc... go since getting the deposit from me until the pick up time. I can say this because the pictures I took when I put the first deposit on it to the time I picked it up show a very different tank.

The ammon level in the tank was way spiked, I don't want to crash the tank but I am pretty sure that the ammon level will kill everything if I don't do a few consecutive wc. Which is also why I searched out this site to get advice on this matter.

I was sort of hesitant when I first saw the tank but figured algae on the glass I can deal with, the corals looked real nice. Here are 2 shots of the tank as I first saw it.



and the center piece fish of the tank


Now I don't know the names of all the corals, but by my guess over half of them are either now dead or dying, which leads me to believe therein is the heavy ammon problem with the water chemistry leading as well to spikes in nitrate and nitrite. Which brings me to a ? what would be considered safe levels of water change without wiping out the needed nutrient levels for the corals.

Well I put the showpiece fish in the 75g I set up in my bedroom and moved all the fish upstairs to this tank as well, so now it looks like this






When I reset up the new purchase tank , I put 3 bags of chem pure in the aqua hob filter and 3 in the canister as an emergency measure to keep any potential nitrate,nitrite spikes from killing the fish. Yet, 2 of the fish had disentigrated fins when I picked them up.


the only fish in the tank are 2 clowns and 1 which i dont know


also some crabs, shrimp and a clam



I presentlly have the salinity at 1.027 and am thinking of putting it up to 1.031 any thoughts would be appreciated. Temperature ranges from 74-80 degrees.