From The Beginning.....

[@ombomb]

Have to agree with Ski about the cleaner.

I have one and it's a constant battle trying to target feed anything as you need to spend 80% of the time chasing the srimp away, I made the mistake of trying to keep as sun coral with one, didn't work out

 

[Crazy fishes]

Just a quick update. Today got a better quality test kit for nitrate and phosphate; Salifert. My nitrate is of the order of 2.5ppm and my phosphate is about 0.01ppm. The rest of the parameters have stabilised dramatically in the last week since changing my salt to seachem reef salt and adding the extra 2kg of live rock with the macro.I got some Chromoplex today as well and target fed the corals. I am really annoyed at myself for wasting the money on additives if only I had bought decent salt from the beginning, oh well as Big C says failure is the best teacher.
The xenia that came with the rock is doing really well; every day it extends as far as it can and is swaying nicely in the current. My zoa fragged itself today; a chunk fell off the main colony and is starting out independently apparently. I found a tiny tube worm attached to the side of the amazing rock which again is very active for a tube worm. A few of those little jellyfish that recently got identified in the forum have also been spotted on the glass. The GSP is really getting started now most of the coral has emerged and really enjoys sitting right in front of the hydor koralia nano. The mushroom is opening up as well. I think the moral of the story at the moment is that the tank is beginning to find that equilibrium. I know that it is still early days and things can change so fast.

When would others begin to add some more coral; I now have a plan of the corals I want. I think a variety of Zoa, those fire and ice Zoa look stunning as does the dragon eye, and maybe a frogspawn. I know the frogspawn is an LPS requires low/medium flow and medium lighting. You should also give it a couple of inches all round because of the sweeper tentacles. Is there anything I have missed that need to know?? How do you judge when is right to add LPS corals?

Touch wood things will not change nows. Onwards and upwards eh??

Regards.

 

[BigC]

Can we have some pics then....
Regards
BigC

 

[littleme1969]

Early on, you should be testing things frequently, perhaps twice a week. As the months go on, you'll get familiar with your system, its needs, and its health and you can start testing weekly or bi-weekly. You'll be able to recognize when your corals look "a little off" and then a quick battery of tests to figure out what's wrong, correct the problem, and they'll look fine the next day. About two years into my marine side of fishkeeping, I test once a month unless my corals give me reason to do so. Took me about a year to get comfortable with the system, but now it's much easier to predict it's needs. Experience is a great teacher, and eventually you'll get some too

I'm still very much a newbie with the marine side of things and am always picking up new stuff from reading other peoples posts/journals. As for corals being a good indication of what is going on, I will totally agree with that. hard corals and zoas especilly. I just had a bit of an incident myself with my brain coral showing shrinkage and some of my zoas not opening up. I quick water test showed the nitrates had crept for 5 to 15 in 2 weeks. I put this down to 2 things, overfeeding as i was trying to fatten up my clown goby and Id just done a major crop back of my macro algae. To cut a long story short 20% water change and new carbon/filter bag in the filter and 24hrs later everything has picked up and looks back to normal. I only know what to look for after reading posts on here and comments from the marine *guru's* on this forum that give out perfect advise
So please take the time to read through journals etc as the stuff you will pick up will stand you in good sted for when you have future problems. I know for a fact I would have never even considered setting up a marine if I had not found all this help and info here

 

[Crazy fishes]

Ok here are some pictures. Remembering that this is 5 and half weeks since cycling; I will wait a least another month or so before adding any other species of coral. Still waiting for some hermit shells to arrive, hopefully tomorrow. I am really surprised there is a huge amount of change going on in the tank. My Zoa is going crazy; chunks are detaching themselves from the main colony and seeding in other areas of the tank. I found a single polyp free floating around the tank the other day and now just found it again in crevice between rocks where it has fixed to the rocks and duplicated!!! I am REALLY interested in the future of starting a tank with live rock maybe adding a minimal clean up crew and just observing what happens. I have found feather dusters and something like a feather duster found at the levels where sponges are found. They were a feature on the series "the blue planet" it was the extra disc. I will post the name later. But wow it is so dynamic........


Regards