Hey, i'm a mess

[euphrate]

Hey
I dunno if it's the right place to introduce but so : i am Adi from Paris (in France, the dirty place where allegidly lives Emily).
I wanted to set up back a tank in my tiny flat so i voted for one of those 12L Bowl with a DSB (plenum+2 different sands), ignoring all the nice advices that were gave to me, that it's complicated to keep good parameters in such a tiny space! Should have been less pretentious : it is very hard and i'm killing everyone in it which leads me to despair and sadness.

Material :
- AI Prime 16 HD (on ~30%)
- OASE 100 biomaster thermo (temp is : 25°C) : purigen + fresh carbon in it (changed every months)
- SLW-3 on minimum and wave mode

CUC :
- dwarf ceriths
- unknown v small snails
- 2 nassarius (thos guys i love them, they're still alive)
- 1 dying trochus (he fall on his back and can't get up..)
👻 In the grave and currently haunting me : 1 trochus, 1 blue hermit, 1 sexy shrimp, 1 astrea 👻

Corals & others :
- 1 piece of green lobophytum called Gigolo, it seems to hunt at night but i don't know if they are feeling ok.

- 2 plants : red mangroves
- Caulerpa racemosa

- Codium (soon)

Fishes :
No, never. Not after killing all of those inverts 🤦‍♂️

👨‍🏫 Parameters, so i'm a bit duh, i ordered everything except the useful ones. (they are coming)
Mg ~ 1300, Ph : 7.8 on morning, kh normal too

After this brankrupt, some questions came to me.
1/ Are nassarius starving? Is it possible that my shrimp died of starvation after eatin all aiptasias?
2/ I added rinced thinner sand before my shrimp died, is it possible that it provocated a new cycle by killing bacterias already living on the sand?
3 days after i noticed an algae bloom on the glasses.
3/ I did several water changes as i'm not able to find the shrimp's boy.. is there anything i can do?
4/ I'm thinking to quickly turn to a "bigger" tank like 8 gallons, so it would e less complicated to maintain parameters.. i hope.
I thought that without fishes it would be easier to keep it simple.

Here some terrible pictures i made :

[Cavallo73]

Hi Adi. I’m not an expert - lots more people with way more experience than me on here who may be able to help more.

 

How long has your tank been set up? It’s really difficult to know what could be going wrong without knowing the levels of ammonia / nitrates / nitrite. I’m guessing these are the test kits that are coming. I wouldn’t mess around too much until you know what those levels are. Water changes won’t do any harm in the meantime, as long as salinity and temperature are the same in the water you’re changing. 
 

Can I also ask how high your light is above your tank? The settings - especially the white - might be a bit high for a tank of the size you have. 

[euphrate]

12 minutes ago, Cavallo73 said:

Hi Adi. I’m not an expert - lots more people with way more experience than me on here who may be able to help more.

 

How long has your tank been set up? It’s really difficult to know what could be going wrong without knowing the levels of ammonia / nitrates / nitrite. I’m guessing these are the test kits that are coming. I wouldn’t mess around too much until you know what those levels are. Water changes won’t do any harm in the meantime, as long as salinity and temperature are the same in the water you’re changing. 
 

Can I also ask how high your light is above your tank? The settings - especially the white - might be a bit high for a tank of the size you have. 

Don't worry, i'm taking any advice, even from other beginners haha i actually hesitated w posting in this section!

- The tank i have is for almost 3 months. I did the whole circle waiting before introducing the CUC 🙂
- One thing i saw : the devil hand coral seem way more happy once light goes down a bit and totally retracted during the " peek " of white light. So i downed it to 30% (from 39%), i've put my settings in pictures 🙂
And yes i'm waiting for those tests.. may have them on tuesday..

I wonder why the v small snails who came with the live rocks don't struggle to survive while the big ones seem to suffer more.

[Cavallo73]

When you set it up and cycled it, did you test for ammonia / nitrate / nitrite? I don’t think there’s any rules on how long a cycle can take, so testing is important in telling you when the tank is ready. It might be that it hadn’t finished cycling, or that it wasn’t able to cycle properly if there wasn’t a source of ammonia there. I’d probably also test the phosphate levels, as that can affect the amount of algae you have in the tank. Do you know what your salinity is?
 

I’m guessing you acclimated the CUC when you added them to the tank? It looks like you’ve got some algae in there, so the snails and crab should have something to eat. Had you been feeding anything else to the inverts, especially the shrimp? I think your nassarius snails are probably fine, as they tend to come up out of the sand when they are looking for food. If you’re worried about them, you could feed a tiny bit of frozen music or pellet to them.

 

It could just be bad luck with the inverts that have died. Once you’ve got your other tests, post the levels on here and hopefully others will chip in to help. I’d also lower that white down further on your light. Probably around 10% is plenty. I’d also bring the red down to 2%, but that’s just my opinion!

 

Can you tell me what you have in your filter - it is just purigen and carbon, or do you have sponges / filter floss or anything else? 

 

So sorry this has turned out to be such a stressful start to your tank. Hang in there - I’m sure you’ll get it sorted. It just might take a bit of time.