My first reef (90g)

robzilla · #1 02-23-2007, 03:03 AM

welcome to canreef

keep us posted with progress

woodcarver · #2 02-23-2007, 03:09 AM

I find the details and progress of new set ups very informative and interesting ! Keep, the info. coming and if you can post some photo's even better ...............Thanks

...................Dave

muck · #3 02-23-2007, 05:46 AM

Welcome to the board Eric!!
Sounds like you are off to a good start. The Tek T5 setups are great lights.

Rikotek · #4 02-23-2007, 07:21 PM

Wow, thanks for the welcome

I have my first (albiet low quality) picture of my tank.
Still clearing out some of the murkiness and just letting the one piece of liverock start the cycle process. Will be buying more rock next month!

-Eric

Rikotek · #5 02-26-2007, 06:43 AM

Well, the tank has been cycling for about a week now, I decided to take my first batch of measurements to see how things are progressing.

Temperature: 76

Salinity: 1.025 (added some water just now, trying to get it back to 1.023)

pH: 7.5 - I am told that my pH should always be above 8.1 I don't know yet if this is something remedied by the cycling process or if there is some sort of pH adjustment chemical/proceedure I need to use. If anyone knows that would be great!

Ammonia - 0.04 - Looks safe to me. I figured there would be more Ammonia this early in the cycle process but I guess it's going along better than I thought.

Nitrite - 0.0

All in all it looks like the cycling is going well but it is going to take a while longer before I begin to introduce any livestock or anything like that. Picking up some more rock from a coworker who got out of the hobby a while back. I will work on adding that and aquascaping until all of my levels read safe.

-Eric

BCOrchidGuy · #6 03-02-2007, 04:51 AM

Wouldn't be a bad idea to measure your Calcium and your Alk, you'd have a better idea of what to do to adjust your pH. Read the chemicals sticky in the Reef section it will explain how to adjust each of your parameters safely. The staff put a lot of work into that stuff to make it easier for us so don't be afraid to use it.

Doug

Rikotek · #7 03-08-2007, 06:30 PM

Thanks for the advice BCOrchidGuy!
I didnt know about the chemicals sticky, it IS really useful.
I haven't gotten any test kits for alk or calcium, but the pH did manage to hit 8.5 which is nice.

Now for the bad news. I now have a small outbreak of Green Hair Algae in the tank. I caught it early enough so I am working with it now. Because I have no fish or snails or anything in the tank, I am simply performing regular water changes with store bought R.O water (to keep the phosphates down) and I have disabled my lights. I figure if there is no light for about a week, the GHA can't spread much more and if there are no phosphates to feed on then all the better.

All of my tests for pH, Amonia, Nitrate/Nitrite and Salinity are in the safe areas. I am going to introduce some herbivorous snails in a couple days. They should be able to eat at whatever GHA is left and I will slowly increase my photoperiod over the next week or so. If anyone can recommend a type of snail for this purpose I would really appreciate it.
I hear Turbo snails are good for this but I am not certain.

PoonTang · #8 03-09-2007, 04:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rikotek

Well, the tank has been cycling for about a week now, I decided to take my first batch of measurements to see how things are progressing.

Temperature: 76

Salinity: 1.025 (added some water just now, trying to get it back to 1.023)

pH: 7.5 - I am told that my pH should always be above 8.1 I don't know yet if this is something remedied by the cycling process or if there is some sort of pH adjustment chemical/proceedure I need to use. If anyone knows that would be great!

Ammonia - 0.04 - Looks safe to me. I figured there would be more Ammonia this early in the cycle process but I guess it's going along better than I thought.

Nitrite - 0.0

All in all it looks like the cycling is going well but it is going to take a while longer before I begin to introduce any livestock or anything like that. Picking up some more rock from a coworker who got out of the hobby a while back. I will work on adding that and aquascaping until all of my levels read safe.

-Eric

Your ammonia reading will of course read really low because you have nothing that ads ammonia to your tank. You need to add ammonia to your tank to get your cycle started. Also your going to need atleast 1.5 pounds/Gal of LR for your tank. Tank will not be anywhere cycled after 1 week, this is going to take about 2 months. Dont worry about your algea outbreaks, they will come and go naturally as your tank progesses through the cycle.

Rikotek · #9 03-21-2007, 06:32 PM

I dodged a bullet yesterday with regards to a protein skimmer purchase.
I don't really need it yet but I have the budget for a cheap one so I figured I would get it out of the way.

I didn't do too much research as this was sort of an impulse buy online while at work but I put in an order for a Seaclone 100. I deciding, after I had placed my order *dumb*, to see what others thought of this model and the results were frightening. Luckily I was able to cancel the order before it shipped.

Does anyone know of a good, preferrably cheap, protien skimmer that I can 'set and forget' somewhat? I was looking at a couple of the AquaC Remora's that everyone seems to like but they are a fair amount more expensive. I will go with it if I have to but that may mean putting it off for a while.