upgrade to reef system.

[chodaboy]

here it goes:

 

I got this seacube 7g tank from a friend, stock parts; 13 watt(blue/white) bulb, rio 50 water pump, basic skimmer, a heater, and an air pump, the water spills over from the skimmer falls through a carbon filter pad down through some bio balls and out the pump. He used to have a whole ###### load of critters in it till he stopped carring for it. The thing went to craps and he gave it to me suprisingly one little blue leged hermit crab survived.

 

I overhauled the tank, cleaned it out dumped the water and substarte. I ended up boiling the rock three times to find out it was getting no where, so i read something that said to bleach it, i did this for a week then diluted it for a week till it didn't smell like chlorine like the book said. Mean while I got the tank running for a week with some glacier water (which i've been using ever since) with the right salinity, and put sabastian (the hermit crab) in (my girlfriend named him). The substrate I put in consisted of crushed coral about an 1'', 1'' and a 1/2. Once the rock was done, I added it to the sytem along with a synthetic barnicle.

 

All this was in there for about a 2 and 1/2 weeks with high ammonia levels till I added the Proaquatic-bacteria starter and the cycle completed. Copepodes where dancing, algae was florishing till about the third week when i decided the ammonia was nill and it was time for fish. Impatient i bought them. A domino damsel, neon goby, and a zebra-legged hermit crab.

 

They have been happliy living for little over a week now. The algaes gone down,(I swiped the acrylic with a credit card) but there is still alot of bright green and brown on the rocks though. And now after looking at all these cool sites I've decided I want coral. Reading about it I've deciced that polyps and mushrooms are probably my best bet. What should i do to make this work?

 

1. will i need to put sand in the substrate( take out the current replace)? if so how do i go about doing it now that the tank is running? do i take out my fish for a day and put the sand on top of the crushed coral? how will this affect the fish?

 

2. My freakin' zebra hermit crab i think is chipping away at the rock, could this happen(theres a bunch of really contrasting white spots)? would he hurt the coral? should i take him out? he also is hyper, circles the tank like a track star.

 

3. How is my lighting, water circulation, water quality aka. glacier water from albertsons (i plan on calcium helpers, any other helpers needed?, aslo my nitrates are reading something now .001 or less i plan on making the needed weekly tank water cycles)? will they be healthy in that fact?

 

4. any concern about my rocks? like the corals might not like them because they are not alive? or are they (dun..dun...duuuunnn)? will i have to switch them with real store bought live rocks? will that affect the fish?

 

5. I'd like a fish that will sit and dig a hole under the rock in the crushed coral? can some hardy goby do this or does he need sand?

 

6. What do i do about the algae on the rocks? clean it off, how? I plan on getting a few turbos will they do it for me?

 

7. also my water is crystal clear when i first turn it on it the morning? and when the bulb runs for a while it seems to get a little cloudy? how could this be (is it my skimmer)?

 

8. bio balls what do they do? is there significance needed in a reef tank?

 

9. my copepods are gone i think bolth the damsel and the goby are eating them all, will this hurt the coral?

 

 

sorry for the long letter hopefully some smarties will help.