Looking for a diagnosis!

[fishoholic]

Hi Shaun I hate to say it but I had a feeling you were going to have some issues. Your tank has been set up for two months and from your facebook pic's it looks like you used one piece of live rock and the rest dead rock, when you use mostly dead rock it takes a very very long time for the dead rock to become live rock. It usually takes 4-6 months for the dead rock to start to seed and up to a year before it actually becomes live rock, obviously the more live rock you have the faster this process will take. Since live rock is your main filter for your system, when you use dead rock it's like running your tank without a filter. Until the dead rock becomes live you will have issues with your tank, think of it like the tank is constantly cycling itself until the dead rock becomes live.

Put it this way; about a year ago I added 20 pounds of marco rock (dead rock) to my system. I have around 500 pounds of live rock in my system (my two 230g's and my 80g all plumbed together) and it took 4 months to turn the 20 pounds of marco rock into live rock, and that was with 500 pounds seeding it

During this time you can only really count the amount of live rock you have not the dead rock when it comes to stocking your tank. So (for example) if you have 20 pounds of live rock and 50 pounds of dead rock, stock like you only have 20 pounds. I know you recently added a foxface and a regal tang (which I mentioned a 75g was way to small for, and you said you planned on upgrading to a 180g in the future) but with the extra bio load (not to mention the stress of largish fish in a small tank) and with not enough established live rock, I'm betting that is a contributing factor to the problems you are having.

There is a product called Stability by Seachem which may help. Here's a link http://www.seachem.com/Products/prod...Stability.html, or prodibio is another similar product.