wasp

For lighting leds are best as they add the least heat to the tank. To grow seaweeds you will need a decent amount and quality of light.

My very first marine tank was very basic, I simply fossicked around the rock pools & chose a few rocks with awesome growths etc living on them, put them in the tank, and it worked. Cycling didn't happen because the rocks already were cycled. However our rocks are not porous in the right way for nitrate filtration but that happened via a deep sand bed. The sand was taken from a layer of coarser sand at the beach, it was definitely a budget tank. Even though the DSB had to cycle there was no spike in any part of the nitrogen cycle because it got seeded very quickly off the rocks, and the bio load was light only had one fish, a blennie, which quickly got very tame and would eat out of my hand. Other than that it was invertebrates such as shrimps and anything else I could find. Initially I used a canister filter out of ignorance and lack of good info in those days. Once I discovered that was wrong for marine and removed it, the health of the organisms in the tank did improve. Added a protein skimmer later which improved things. However to do a cold water marine right, coral rock should be used, it has the right type of porousness to achieve nitrate reduction and greatly increase the bioload capacity of the tank. Coral rock does not have to be cycled in the tank. I have cycled it by leaving it in a rock pool for a couple of months. That way it gets every bacteria type you would find in the sea in that situation, and comes back to the tank smelling good and ready to start work at purifying the water. In terms of water quality and filtration, the exact same rules apply to a cold water tank as a tropical one, what is described in the Basic Marine Starter Guide applies equally to cold water marine. Link here - viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23675

Here is a useful video about the light

For my clowns I got some live mussels & boiled lightly, just enough to get them out of the shell in one piece. Then deep freeze & once frozen grate on the cheese grater & re freeze immediately before it thaws. This closely mimics a clowns natural diet and they thrive on it. However clowns are tough and adaptable little fish and will do well on just about anything including flake. The trick is not overfeed, in nature a fish does not know where it's next meal is coming from so if opportunity presents they will gorge themselves. No point adding unnecessary phosphate to the tank ecosystem.

Can't answer your tank specific question. As to the skimmer, it's good if you can run it, but some skimmers cannot be run during a cycle because they overflow real fast. But if you can run it then do so. This other stuff you are adding to the tank to make ammonia or whatever, is not necessary and really just adds more phosphate. Really the focus should be on cleaning stuff out of the tank or it will be a mess of algae later.

You should take the mussel out entirely, it will only add phosphate. There will be more crud in that rock than you would have imagined possible, it is quite capable to rot on it's own without adding a mussel to the mix. While rotting (cycling), it can smell pretty bad, if doing it in the house you live with it. Other thing though, while cycling, lots of crud comes out the rock and settles on the bottom. It contains phosphate and junk that you want to remove from the tank or you will have massive algae problems later. Although you may not want to, you would be best at this stage to remove all the sand. That way as crud builds up on the bottom it's easy to syphon out. Syphoned water can be replaced with new water if you can.

Nice work so far Boom it's exciting watching stuff develop! Re the rock / bacteria thing, rocks from the sea will only support a low tank bioload, plus they will not be very good for nitrate reduction. Nitrate is reduced by anaerobic bacteria, so you need porous rocks with low oxygen areas inside the pores for these types of bacteria to live. Scoria does not cut it, because if you have a close look, it is full of lots of little bubbles. But they are not connected, for bacterial purposes it is not near as good as coral rock which in effect is full of little tunnels, perfect for what we need. The other thing that will reduce nitrate is a deep sand bed, a crude one can be made with washed beach sand, taken from an area with a larger grain size. If you get some uncured coral rock, putting it in the tank now might kill all your creatures. A good way for you is to go & drop it in a rock pool & leave for a couple of months, after that it is ready to go straight in the tank. Have used this method myself it's good because the rock is exposed to all kinds of salt water bacteria. There's lots of people around where I did it so found a deep pool, moved a few rocks on the bottom & put my coral rock in, then put the natural rocks back on top. Which also saved my rocks from getting washed out in rough seas.

To make that sea lettuce grow somewhere, point a pump at the place you want it to grow, it will start, even on a bit of glass. That anemone is not photosynthetic, however that is kind of a bad thing because you have to feed it, chopped mussel is good. But that adds nutrients to the tank, and if you don't feed they slowly die. In the comparative stillness of a tank they tend to gradually shrivel up also. Ideally you want some kind of way to really blast the crap out of it very 6 hours or so, same as they get bashed around by waves in the tidal zones they live in. If you can do it they are pretty though.

It's not that it harbours nitrates, it just won't get rid of them because the needed anearobic conditions do not exist inside a flowing cannister. the two nitrate removers are you liverock and your sand bed if it's deep enough. in your case the sand is only an inch deep, not really enough, so it's your rock.

Pretty little tank!

Yes, you have what i THINK, is a sarcophyton (toadstool leather), next to the heater, plus what is commonly called a "cabbage leather". However, they are there, nothing you can do just hope for the best. However i did notice in the pic those leathers are not looking the best, to me they look like they are suffering from a lack of water movement. But at least they are not showing any signs of infection. But longer term they will want more flow than it looks like they have, they can handle a lot of flow.

Ouch! Well heads up to your Dad, must be a good keen man!!

Oh well, happens to most of us, especially when moving corals or setting up a new tank. But no need to feel bad about it, once your skill levels come up you will be breeding more corals than you need as they grow & you are forced to prune them. But don't get another leather for a little while, those bacteria will lurk in the tank for a while and can spread to other leathers.

Oh I See! It looks so still, I was surprised the anemones where staying open.

How's it going now Cichlid? I would be interested in some updates on this.