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Cultivated Reef

Introduction and 20h plans


Webbedfeet

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Well we went down to the local LFS and got our first two residents. We ended up with a Black saddleback clown and yellow tail blue damsel. They are both currently hiding in separate caves carefully poking their heads out.

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6 hours ago, Webbedfeet said:

Tested water

SG 1.024

PH 7.8

Nitrites 0 

Nitrates 0

 

Should I be worried about the slightly low SG and Ph?

I'd be more worried about the swings in salinity than anything else. Be sure you're checking the salinity of your water before doing any changes and try to match the salinity as much as possible. How often are you topping off the tank?

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On 10/19/2022 at 12:30 AM, Webbedfeet said:

SG is 1.028

 

9 hours ago, Webbedfeet said:

SG 1.024

[....]

 

Should I be worried about the slightly low SG and Ph?

1.024 is fine.  

 

1.028 was very high....possibly high enough to mess with your cycle or other sensitive microbes.

 

Salinity is your cardinal parameter – the one that all others are based on.  

 

Make sure you can get salinity right and anchor it there before you proceed with any livestock plans.  👍

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Yeah, salinity was going up and down durring cycling probably because instead of topping off I added more rocks and substrait. Also I have gotten better at using the hydrometer. So now that I have salinity at a good level that will be my target for future water changes. I am going to pick up more water from my parents house today so I will be set up for a few water changes, the tank is holding about 12 gallons of water, should I do be doing 3 or 4 gallon changes plus top off water?

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Water change amounts will depend on what your tank needs. Other than replenishing stuff that your corals have used up (which should be close to nothing at first), you only really need water changes for nutrient (nitrate/phosphate) export. So if your parameters are all good and you aren't dealing with medications or toxins from something, the water changes can hold off for a bit or you can try doing smaller changes instead.

 

Also, if you get a chance to get one, a cheap refractometer is so much better than a hydrometer for checking salinity. There are definitely more expensive ones that barely ever need recailbrated, but even a cheap one with some calibration solution will work fine as long as you check it regularly. Hydrometers are just not that reliable or accurate unfortunately.

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What threshold for Nitrates should I be looking for in a fish only tank to start? 5ppm? I am probably going to test the water every few days this next week or two as things settle in to make sure their are no spikes. I know on my planted fresh water tank I can go up to about 3 weeks before it needs a water change but I have been doing quick weekly 1/3 changes.

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37 minutes ago, Webbedfeet said:

What threshold for Nitrates should I be looking for in a fish only tank to start? 5ppm? I am probably going to test the water every few days this next week or two as things settle in to make sure their are no spikes. I know on my planted fresh water tank I can go up to about 3 weeks before it needs a water change but I have been doing quick weekly 1/3 changes.

That's a tough one to answer and I'm sure you'd get 20 different answers from everyone here, but I wouldn't worry about chasing 5ppm with just fish. You can easily go 5 or 6 times higher than that without any effect on the health of the fish. You're probably looking at algae issues from high nitrates combined with high phosphates way before the fish are affected by nitrate levels.

 

And I hear you on the FW planted tank! Mine almost never need a w/c and I just top off with RODI and add some plant ferts regularly. Then again, I'm just doing nano fish so even in my 10g CPD fry grow-out tank the plants are still able to keep up with ~30 baby fish and their 3 feedings/day. That's why I'm hoping to incorporate a small display refugium in my next build; I'd rather have to dose nitrates and phosphates than have to worry about large water changes or dialing in media reactors.

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Okay, I will probably aim to keep it under about 10ppm Nitrates for now. We will see how it goes. The fish seem happy and healthy. The Clown is out all the time and the Damsel is getting a lot more brave and hangs out most of the time but will duck into a cave if startled enough.

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6 hours ago, Webbedfeet said:

What threshold for Nitrates should I be looking for in a fish only tank to start? 5ppm? I am probably going to test the water every few days this next week or two as things settle in to make sure their are no spikes.

Fish only??

 

Unless you've changed your plan for corals, etc, I don't recommend looking at the present condition of your tank as "fish only".   That will tend to lead you to treat it like a fish tank IMO.

 

If you're a bit worried that you added too many fish at once and/or too soon, then you might want to add something like a Seachem Ammo Alert to watch for ammonia.

 

Nitrates aren't that important...anything >5 ppm is fine.   You should be testing PO4 every time you test NO3 though....because if PO4 runs down to zero, then THAT is when the nitrates become a problem.

 

 

6 hours ago, Webbedfeet said:

I know on my planted fresh water tank I can go up to about 3 weeks before it needs a water change but I have been doing quick weekly 1/3 changes.

This may not be very relevant to your reef tank.

 

Aren't you adding nutrients during water changes in a planted tank?  Seems like cutting nutrients across the board as water changes do would hinder growth.

 

Are you using a particular method for your planted tank?

 

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I do dose the planted tank weekly with nutrients for the plants. I am also going to start doing water changes on that tank every other week and work my way out to monthly changes, it is only a few months old. I must acquire a PO4 test kit. What's a good one to get me going?

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Whatever your LFS carries is probably good enough.  What they'll use to run the test for you is even better.  🙂

 

But if you need a test kit for at home, then consider a Hanna-type digital tester or Salifert's kit.  Others can work too, but API in particular is a little too low in resolution for your purposes.

 

On the freshwater tank:  Seems like water changes shouldn't really be that necessary on a planted tank....similar to a reef tank.  Are you keeping an oversized fish load along with the plants?   Is it a high- or low-intensity lighting setup?  Any CO2 injection, or similar?

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Tested the water on Wednesday and everything was good, no traces of ammonia, nitrite or even Nitrates yet. I am starting to see light traces of brown algae on the glass closest to the window of course. Is it too early for a turbo snail?

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No real need to wait to get either a scarlet reef hermit, or blue leg hermit crab.  It's effect on the bio-load is minimal.  Just get a few extra shells for it to choose from.

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I picked up my cleaning crew Saturday night. I got one turbo snail, two zombie snails and 5 dwarf blue leg hermits. Aside from the two largest hermits arguing over each others shells everyone is doing well. I am going to go down and get more shells for them as apparently I didn't get any big enough when I picked them up. I also got a Phosphate test kit, all they had was the API kit but it should do for now. Tested the water and did a 3 gallon water change yesterday, SG still at 1.024, ph at 7.8 and no elevated levels of anything else.

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You want Po4 levels to be elevated.  It will barely be detectable on that kit, but as long as there's a little blue and it's not totally clear, it's probably alright.

 

You just want to avoid zero...so having any color is good.  👍

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Just going to chime in to say IMO you do not need to worry about testing phosphate in a brand new tank… it’s new… phosphate builds up over time and you want to keep it from getting too high to prevent nuisance algae. 

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1 hour ago, mcarroll said:

You want Po4 levels to be elevated.  It will barely be detectable on that kit, but as long as there's a little blue and it's not totally clear, it's probably alright.  You just want to avoid zero...so having any color is good.

You're thinking about Salifert's kit (which, like you stated, is usable).

 

But unfortunately, I believe that Webbedfeet got an API phosphate test kit (which is a high range kit that is unable to report levels under 0.25ppm).  So it's of little value for a typical reef tank that usually has levels somewhere between 0.01 and 0.20ppm.

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I was talking about API, but I really don't know about using it the way I was describing....haven't actually used that one personally.

 

I was thinking that if it showed at least a little color, then the sample "should" be in the direction of 0.25 ppm rather than being toward 0.00?

 

Definitely not ideal....even the "better" kits like Salifert aren't very ideal to interpret, but they at least are calibrated to the correct range.  🤷‍♂️ 

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So just to try to illustrate for Webbedfeet; on the saltwater side, API's phosphate kit is virtually indistinguishable between 0.00 and 0.25ppm.

 See the source image

You really only see a color change well above 0.25ppm.

 

3 hours ago, mcarroll said:

but as long as there's a little blue and it's not totally clear, it's probably alright.

IDK, Salifert turns from clear to blue, so I just figured that's what you were talking about. :unsure:

See the source image

While not exact, it does allow someone to basically determine if phosphate is within a recommended range.

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