Allow myself to introduce.....myself

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Aleks

Well found life on the rocks tonite, set up my light (thanks BahCan), got a good look at my rocks, and found a few feather duster worms.....Hey its better than nothing! Looks like a very teeny tiny 3 head orangy zoa colony on there too (?), have to see how that develops.....Still testing every couple days waiting for my ammonia spike, been hanging at 4ppm since day 1......CaribSea comes with that active bac packet that they claim you can add inverts when the water is clear.....I added a couple snails and a hermit to see what would happen.....Snails are happily trucking around, crab likes hiding but he's small....

Anyone have experience with the CaribSea packets? I don't plan on adding anything swimming until I see the 0's with Ammonia and Nitrite.....

Filtering the water now with coarse foam, water polishing foam (just finer stuff), some ceramic bio loops and a little charcoal for clarity with that Fluval 204.....picking up a powerhead in the future for some oomph....

All other values (dKH, Ph, SG) within normal values.....

Welcome to Canreef!!

What kind of lights did you buy? Take a pic of the Zoas you found, and we can confirm they are Zoas. I'm just worried they might be some type of pest like hydroids, aiptasia or majanos. I'd also just like to see a pic of your new tank!!

You should not have added any invertebrates to your tank yet with the ammonia at 4ppm. That would be like bathing you for a week in bleach. I don't think you'd like that! Those bacteria packets or bottle bacterias are a well done advertising scam. You could have bought dry sand for half the price and you wouldn't be any further behind. Sorry to break it to you. You should do several large water changes (like 50-75%) to bring that ammonia down under 2ppm. With the ammonia so high it will be killing off some of the biodiversity that's on the live rock you just paid a pretty penny for.

I would suggest you remove the Bio Loops from your filter because they are designed for freshwater tanks and will become a nitrate factory in your reef tank. Be sure to throw out and replace the rest of the media at least once a week but twice a week is better. You can keep costs down by using bulk sheets of filter media that will be about 1" thick or so, just cut to size.

Take a read through some of the guides in my signature, which simplify a lot of things for you.