More dumb newbie questions :)

[SubZero]

My tank has been up and running for 5 days with the live rock in it. The rock I bought was from the LFS and only spent about 10 minutes out of the water from the store to the water in my tank. I have been checking the levels every day and they are as follows:

 

PH 8.2

SG 1.024 @ 80F

Ammonia 0 ppm

Nitrate 0 ppm

Nitrite 5 ppm (only tested today)

 

I have yet to see any swing in any of the levels. Is it because they suffered very little die off during the transfer? Or, has it not happened yet?

 

I was looking at adding my clean up crew at the one week mark, should I wait for some significant change to occur before I add the crew or will it be safe to add them as planned?

 

My rock had plenty of life with it. There are about 10 of these feathery looking things (sorry don't know what they are called) on the one piece of rock that appear to come out only when the light is on. I found 3 teeny-tiny snails that hardly move and seem to come out more in the dark. I have only seen the crab that one time (there are a couple of good hiding places under one rock) and the attachments that are on the rock on the right side of my tank have opened up more (see pics below).

 

The last picture in this thread is of these little fan looking things with tubes no larger than the lead of a mechanical pencil. Can someone please fill me in on what they are. I have been looking at several suggested guides posted on the net and have yet to be positive as to their identity. Either I did not notice them when I set my tank up or they have recently opened up.

 

Thanks for the help

 

Mark

[SubZero]

what are these?

[printerdown01]

No worries, your tank isn't a slow starter or anything. It just takes a about a week for something really interesting to happen. I think you would be fine adding a small number of clean-up crew members to the tank anywhere from 1-2 weeks. At about 2 weeks you should have plenty of algae for them to eat ! Snails (namely astrea) are fairly hardy, and should survive the cycle. Just be sure to aclimate them slowly, as your parameters will be WAY off the norm! I'll let someone else do the ID . Don't worry you didn't get anything freekish, both of these guys are fairly common hitchikers

[Rocket_155]

ok the top pic looks like button polyps they are a coral. The second pic they look like apistia (spelling) ,but not sure.