My first saltwater tank - Aqueon Frameless Cube Aquarium, 3 Gallon

Just an update! All is still going well. The algae issue seems to have died down a lot! I've also had a single banded trochus snail for about 2 weeks now and it does a great job of eating the algae. The corals are looking great. Event the Kenya tree is showing signs of recovery, although small at this time. The new montipora coral is growing so great signs! Water paramters are very stable. I was watching some YouTube video about starting a new saltwater tank, and I suppose this also applies to freshwater too depending on circumstances. After the cycle there's an ugly algae phase. That's what just happend in my tank. So I prob should have waited until that had happened before adding anything to the tank perhaps. I've heard people say it can take a while for this all to complete in a new saltwater tank so the time it took for this one wasn't too long.






Oh, and I did follow the lighting as suggested. I slowly moved it up in amount over a few days. This is what it is at now.

Well, continuing on. So I did have a partial half glass top on the tank but discovered you shouldn't have a top on a salt water tank for gas exchange. It has been removed. Not much of the previous coral I had has survived. I've gotten the parameters stable, maybe even due to removing the top. I'm trying a new coral now. Toadstool Leather Coral. It has been very happy since I've gotten it yesterday.

This is what it looks like when resting (typically at night when there's no light). There's a small amount of sunlight right now as the sun rises so the tenticles are starting to come out now. It's right by my computer monitors so if my monitor is showing something with white or enough light the tenticles will come out then as well.

I've never thought about going into saltwater before. Did you find it easy to learn and adapt from freshwater?

Knowing the nitrogen cycle is the main thing that crosses over from fresh to salt I think.

But there is a lot more that must be done for saltwater (reefs espcially) that you wouldn't need do for freshwater. The main difference is water. I have to use RO/DI filtered water in the reef aquaruim and mix it with salt making sure the levels of salt are correct.

There's a lot of different supplements to dose depending on the type of corals you keep, and some standard ones you would dose regardless of types of coral. And keeping the water parameters correct can be a bit challenging, especially if you are you doing it manually without any dosing systems. The smaller tank doesn't help with easliy keeping the water parameters so I have to test and dose quite frequently. And, as the corals grow and you add more corals there will be more of a demand on supplements so you'll have to change dosing eventually.
But I went with a smaller tank because I wanted to go slow and learn about what's needed and not spend a whole lot on bigger tank with more water at first. Maybe one day I'll get a larger one going as well.

One big tip is ever since I've started using Kalkwasser dosing the water parameters stay more in check.

I've lost several corals but I think some of that was due to the algae bloom I had after the cycle had completed, I just didn't wait long enough for it to mature enough. But, some of them also probably helped get the tank up to speed faster as well, even though they didn't make it. Some of it also comes down to water flow and lighting being correct.

I would like to eventually get a larger tank and perhaps even a sump to properly have all the monitoring and auto-dosing systems in place to automate a lot of the work.

ok it sounds like it's too hard for me, they are otherwise so beautiful those saltwaters. I have to settle for dreaming

Switched out my previous ATO system today. This one is better b/c the sensor in the tank has no light and there's a button I can press to pause it, instead of having to unplug the whole thing.

Fzone Auto Top Off for Saltwater Aquarium & Fresh Aquarium

The system feeds to a pump in a container on the floor that has RO water in it.

Installed new pH and Temp monitor today. ( Amazon ). The box on the product says it has online monitoring but it doesn't. This is a fairly cheap monitor so I may upgrade to something better eventually.
Also moved water level sensor to back of tank. Seems like better place away from water flow ouput.


Temp probe in back behind the filter.




Some new pics of the toadstool coral from different sides of the tank.





Top down so you can see all of the devices going into the back



Overhead view

New Zoanthid colony frag added today.

Lovely toadstool. I recently put one in my mainly LPS tank and even though they are softys and not viewed as kindly they look great in my opinion.

Zoas I have a big soft spot for. Can I recomend Utter chaos zoas. They are quite cheap, grow easily a bit bigger than others and just stand out in the tank

I've had some issues with the zoas enlongating and not opening up that much. At first I thought it was light so I adjusted but that only produced a small reaction and reduction in stretching. I recently tried spot feeding them reef roids and that has made a bigger reduction in strectching.

Also, just to note, I've had no luck with the electronic ATO sensors. I've tried two diff kinds. They always top off way too much and tend to reduce the salinity too much. I'm thinking this is more of an issue with smaller tanks, espcially one that like this that is only 3 gallons. So, I've been pausing the ATO and manually unpausing it when I need to top off. Sometimes I top off with Kalkwasser water to increase KH and Calcium or reduced saltwater mix to increase salinity.

Ram419 said:

Switched out my previous ATO system today. This one is better b/c the sensor in the tank has no light and there's a button I can press to pause it, instead of having to unplug the whole thing.

Fzone Auto Top Off for Saltwater Aquarium & Fresh Aquarium

The system feeds to a pump in a container on the floor that has RO water in it.

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The reviews on Amazon for the one you had before were awful- glad you didn't end up with water all over the floor!

MuddyWaters said:

The reviews on Amazon for the one you had before were awful- glad you didn't end up with water all over the floor!

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Yeah, I'm glad too. The last straw was when it topped of to almost the very top of the tank. I don't think any of the electronic ones are worth anything. Sucks b/c I need something larger to facilitate a mechanical one. I do use the electronic ones still to top off but only under supervision. They work well to top off fresh water too, but only for ad-hoc top offs while I'm watchin. Seems to work fine at first and stops at appropriate location on sensor. But if you leave it to run for some reason they top off way past the sensor level.