wasp

Those orange zoos are nice!

What stage of the cycle are the rocks? If they are cycled enough that the bacteria in them are eating both the ammonia and nitrite, (no ammonia or nitrite when you test the water), then you can put the rocks straight in. If the rocks are not yet fully cycled let us know where they are up to and we will tell you what to do. To get good water quality, ie, low nitrate, it is best to let the liverock do the job and not use noodles. However I'm not sure if you have enough liverock I know nothing about seahorses or how much bioload they create. If in doubt you could put in some noodles, as a temporary safeguard, but with a view to slowly removing them once things are stabilized, testing the water as you go, for ammonia and nitrite, to ensure the liverock is handling the bioload. These fish will eat any food MUCH faster than your seahorses can. They will not leave anything lying around for the seahorses to pick away at. The shrimp will take longer to feed and will not be such an issue. CB shrimps can be aggressive, there is some debate about this as some people claim their cb shrimp has eaten some of their fish, and other people claim their cb shrimp is not agressive at all. However just in case, a cleaner shrimp or two could be a safer option. Should add that some lawnmower blennies do not eat food we add to the tank if they have not yet figured it out yet, they just eat algae that is growing. So they would not steal the seahorses food. But the problem is that once they have eaten all the algae they will starve.

:lol: :lol: :lol: No offence at all Cheesejawa we all have our own tastes. In fact I think that second part of your sentence was quite funny! :lol:

Not at all, there is no reason not to start with marine, long as you get good advice, and actually follow it. One advantage of not doing fresh water before moving to marine, is you don't have to "unlearn" anything, such as not using cannisters for biological filtration. A lot of people struggle with that. But if going marine you need to commit lots of money, and lots of time on research. Although the research could be considerably easier if you find someone you can buddy up with who has a good marine tank, and just do what they say, long as you can understand the why.

That is the parent (great grandparent, actually), of that biddy little frag you got Marko, the one I said last night will end up the biggest coral in your tank! Better make sure you get a pic of it now!

Hmmm... I can't remember what the pump was called, it was a brand Jansens used to sell but now they don't. When I imported the skimmer, the remora pro, I didn't want the American pump so i wouldn't have to use a transformer. However I discovered I couldn't get one here with the correct flow + headpressure, so had to go a bit more powerful than recommended. Perhaps this was the problem. I got all my info from an Aqua C thread on RC that was running in those days, a lot of people were upgrading to more powerful pumps than recommended, and a lot of people were having problems with eratic skimming also, so I assumed this was just part and parcel of this brand of skimmer. Find it odd though that you found it hard to get it to skim wet though, was the 1060 the right specs, especially head pressure, for your skimmer? Good plan. Even this though is fairly minimal light but will do.

Hi Gannet, that all looks pretty good you've obviously done your research! Only thing slightly unstandard would be the lighting, you have a bit less than normal, however the corals you suggest keeping can do well under this much light, you can experiment with the best placement of them and find out where each one will do best. Also the flow arrangement you suggest will probably be OK, many of those corals don't like too much flow. Good to see you are starting out with a decent skimmer, the skimmer is probably the most important part of your filtration system. The way an aqua c works is it has a very chaotic bubble chamber with bubbles of all different sizes. This can make the skimmer hard to tune at the fine end if you want dry skimmate, and some people don't like aqua c's. But the trick is to run them fairly wet, and they will keep the tank nice and clean and perform fairly well. They can be a bit erratic, so when I had an aqua c I had an overflow pipe out of the collection cup running into a bucket. Plus, I had a float valve in the bucket that would turn the skimmer off if the bucket got too full, just in case. So obviously the skimmer ran really wet. When I was doing things that way, with very wet skimming, was when I had the cleanest ever tank, and also the best coral colours and healthy corals I've ever had. For live rock, just put in whatever amount looks good to you. Under do it if anything, because as your corals grow they will fill up the tank and get way over crowded if you started out with too much rock. If you have a lot of fish you will need more rock for filtration, but sounds like you are going to be sensible with this and not overdo things. yes, small "community" type fish are the best / easiest / happiest in a tank your size, no reason why you could not keep a bubbletip anemone with some clownfish in it, provided it is nearish to the halide to get enough light. As well as the community type fish, you would be able to keep a small yellow tang in this tank. It might stay small but if it did get big you could sell it. Good luck it will be great to watch your progress!

Sounds Good! The anemones though sound like a pest anemone called aptaisia. They are a pest cos they breed so fast and take over, plus they have a sting. They can be killed with a product called Joes Juice, or even a turkey baster with boiling water can do it if you are thorough. It takes a long time and persistence to wipe them all out, but in a smallish tank you can do it, just spend 5 - 10 minutes every day killing them. Here is some stuff about aptaisia including pics http://www.talkingreef.com/forums/how-a ... aisia.html I liked this bit, i think part of the fascination with marine is that there are problems that have to be solved, but also the interesting things we discover as per your post

Good point. My LPS do best where there is almost no flow.

Low calcium and alkalinity are less of an issue, short term, for LPS, long as there is enough alkalinity to keep pH where it should be. How's ammonia and nitrate? BTW, when your bottle of reef builder runs out, use baking soda instead. Baking soda will do the same thing & save you a few $$$. Baking soda, not baking powder though!!

This cannot be answered definitely because there might be so many causes, such as a contaminant in the water, overheating, or getting picked on by a fish. But you should start by checking the basics such as ammonia, salinity, maximum temperature. How are you checking salinity, a swing arm? If so, the results might be suspect. If all these check out, there could be too much light, which can cause exactly what you describe. To test this you just raise the light a decent amount and see if there is an improvement over the next few days. Has the tank got a lid on it interfering with proper aeration? Have you been using any additives & could you have overdone something? If none of this helps, you could do a 100% waterchange, which will be simple enough for you with your small tank. Just preheat the water, although I just 100% waterchanged a tank a few days ago without preheating it with no ill effects because the new water had been sitting in a warm room for several hours before use. When you do the waterchange, give the tank a good vacuum. Hope a few other people got some good suggestions also.

Funny actually, not so long ago we had a whole bunch of people all setting up Red Sea Max tanks. Now it looks like the thing is FO tanks. :lol: Good though to have some FO people among us, it enables some of the less common fish to be kept, and it will be great to see some nice pics when the time comes!

Put the protein skimmer in it. As to what else, for most marine tanks a protein skimmer and the liverock is all the filtration there is. However for you, you will probably want the liverock in the tank for decoration, rather than the sump. If you decide to use other filtration, such as, carbon, UV, phosphate reactor, or whatever, all this goes in the sump. I'm assuming you mean in the tank for flow? If so, there is no min or max, but more flow will tend to mean cleaner water, with dirt getting shunted around till it's filtered, plus better aeration. Personally I wouldn't consider anything less than 5 x's flow for a FO, but more, perhaps 10 x's would be better. So, to achieve 5 x's, you go 540 litres, x's 5 = 2,700 litres per hour. But that is not the whole story, the other part of it is to make sure there are no, or hardly any, dead spots in the tank, this requires some experimentation when you are placing your pumps. Dead spots create foul water and should be dispersed. YES!!! And that's at a minimum, until nitrite measures zero, it might take more than 6 weeks.

Also, I guess probably everybody knows by know how I feel about using cannisters for biological filtration in a reef tank, I keep prattling on at people not to do it. :oops: . However, in a FO tank, you CAN. - BUT, not too much the major bacterial media should still be liverock. The reason is, fish can handle a reasonable amount of nitrate, although none is still better for them. The thing with cannisters and other such as HOB, is that they respond quicker than liverock to an increase in bioload, or just to get started in the first place when the tank is new. But they will only reduce ammonia and nitrite, you'll want the liverock for the nitrate. So if you cannot afford a big amount of liverock straight off, in a FO a cannister may be used. But nitrate will need to be regularly measured, and if you can add some more liverock in time, remove a bit of media from the cannister, to keep nitrate as low as possible. If nitrate is just too high, turn the cannister off. BTW, about what fish, there is a bit of a discussion on that in the other thread.

OK well here's a bit of a suggestion. Since you are FO, you have an opportunity to keep a lot of fish that nobody else can if they want coral. So, a lot of butterfly fish are Very attractive, and reasonably well behaved tank mates. Some will not get on with another of the same species, and some prefer a mate of the same species. If you work it right you could have a number of very beautiful butterfly fish in the tank. A point of interest could be some kind of puffer, and a cowfish is AWESOME. Years ago when I had a FO I had a cowfish, they are very intelligent and always watching what's happening in the room. They look at and study each person carefully, and when there were a few vistors at the tank the cowfish would always hang out by me. It would only eat if I hand fed it, and if it got hungry, would spit at the water surface. They are personality plus. A tang or two will add interest plus eat algae, and there are some amazingly beautiful angelfish. Angelfish also seem to be quite intelligent and have a personality. Some of them will get to like you and even enjoy an occasional scratch.

Yes light is not a factor, just whatever looks good to you. In fact in an averagely lit room the fish will be fine with no light at all, so lights can be timed to come on, say, at 6.00 when you get home from work, and off as soon as you like, which will be an elecrticity saver. Long as you keep their wake up and go to sleep times more or less the same each day.

Wanna bet? :lol: Even a FO will need reasonable skills and good filtration, but do make it a FOWLR, is best. You will probably get away with a 10% water change per month, and may have to dose a little baking soda, to keep alkalinity up, and thereby assist pH, which should be 8.0 or better (long as it's less than 8.5). Eventually you WILL want to try some corals, happens to us all! :lol:. But you will learn along the way. Looking forward to see how it goes .

Your idea of the school of clowns, cardinalfish, and batfish, MIGHT work. Clowns start life as juveniles, then become male, then ONE in the group becomes a dominant female. If you accidentally introduce 2 females, they will hate each other, it won't work. In nature they live as a group in an anemone. The group will be a female, a male, and several juveniles. If the male or female die, then others will move up the ranks to take their place. So the safe option is to start with juveniles, and let them sort themselves out. They will only behave as in nature, if you have an anemone for them to live in, or something they can use as an anemone substitute. Cardinalfish can be OK, but can be shy, and depending just which fish, difficult to get feeding. And batfish I haven't kept so cannot comment, other than I know batfish get HUGE. But as you can see, the "what fish should I keep" question is complex, more than can be answered in one post. But here is a fish compatibilty chart http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/comp ... _chart.cfm The chart will help you sort out a list of possible fish, then I would suggest posting the list here for further discussion, people may suggest ones that should be left off it, or possible other additions.

I have a chiller, but can tell you they are expensive to buy, noisy, and expensive to run. We are in peak overheating time of year now. Because a fan is so cheap, it could be a plan to install one NOW at least on a temporary basis, ugly as it may be, just to keep your tank alive. Several of the posts above show some excellent fan setups, I'm impressed guys. And girl. But if you don't want to get too technical at this stage, even an ordinary household fan, purchased at the Warehouse for less than 30 bucks, pointed at the water surface can do a good job.

Keep us tuned in with this project Henward if you go ahead. A FO tank can in some ways be quite good because you can keep all those non reefsafe fish, some of which are real nice fish. It can also be done cheaper than a full reef tank because lighting is not so critical.

How are nitrate levels?

This is for flow, or sump return? If it is sump return you want something reasonable quality such as an Eheim or Laguna (among others). Eheim more expensive, but also a better pump, than Laguna. If it is for flow wouldn't you be better with more than one pump, perhaps a couple of streams? In a 350 litre tank they would still perform well without a controller. Or if you don't want that much flow some nano streams. Or you could if you wish go cheap & get a few of those 20 buck no name type pumps, if you used several, and one failed at some point, the others will still be working so no harm would be done.

Had a DSB, and plenum DSB, plus tried a plenum waste DSB. Read a lot of Ron Shimek stuff, plus other DSB stuff, when I was a newbie and decided DSB would be the way to go, although I always had this nagging doubt about what would actually happen to heavy metals and phosphate. However the literature of the day confidently stated that DSB is the way to go provided you have the right critters. Anyway turned out they are awesome for nitrate reduction, plus they did work quite well for general nutrient reduction at first. But in time they all got clogged with waste & the tank started to suffer. This was probably speeded up by the fact I had crap skimmers back then, and I still believe a properly run DSB can work. But they didn't work long term for me. I also think the idea that you just install a DSB, then you are set without any maintenance, is a fallacy. To run a DSB successfully for several years will require good tank keeping skills and a reasonable understanding of the processes involved.

When i checked out those bulbs, some time ago, the kelvin rating was something around 3,000, which is too low for corals to do well. The kelvin rating is the light "colour". Nearly all marine aquaria use bulbs with a kelvin rating as low as 10,000, and up to 20,000. 10,000 gives the most light that is useable for photosynthesis, but a higher k rating has less yellow, and more blue, which makes the tank look nice. A good medium is around 14,000 k.

Sorry, i edited my previous post then saw you posted, it now mentions the wattage you'll need.