Frustrated

[maestro]

Hello sang

Sounds like youve rushed in a little but not too worry, we've all made mistakes in the past.

Do you have test kits? they are essential, without them its all guess work.

My advice would be this

Remove the anemone, you need a tank atleast 1 year old to have one of these and only then will it ahve a chance

You need to improve the circulation, you need to circulate the tank volume 20x per hour atleast, so this would mean buying another powerhead or 2.

Add some more live rock, as much as you can afford, I would try and get 10kilos on your tank, this isnt cheap but pretty essential imo, if you cant afford 10 then just buy whatever you can.

Once youve added more live rock and improved circulation (live rock wont be as effective without) then wait untill ammonia nitrite and nitrate are all down to zero, usually a about 2 weeks.

Then add a single fish and wait a month before you add another monitoring the parameters all the time, in this month you can still add more to your clean up crew, some more snails, crabs etc which should help.

Also I would strongly recomend you buy a book or 2 and read up online, the books dont have to be expensive, I remember buying a book called Your first marine aquarium by John Tullock last year and it only cost £3 on ebay! a very usefull book!

 

[steelhealr]

Hi..don't want to be mean, but, you are making a lot of errors....going too fast.....adding wrong livestock.......I suggest you slow down and do some reading....
try Paletta's book on starting a marine tank and Kurtz's book on the simple guide to the mini reef.

SH

 

[Navarre]

HI and sorry for the late welcome to the marine forum )

All the advice given above is very sound and i urge you to take the advice from the members who have all been in the same position as you and have experiences that they can impart onto you.

As for the advise about the corals giving off huge amounts of waste and thus a skimmer is needed is just plain wrong. Im not saying that you wouldnt be better off with one but corals give out extremly low biowaste when compared to fish. (Look at the number of corals and inverts that can be added to a system when compared to fish).

Lastly.... The banded coral shrimp is a mean beastie.. many people have them in their tanks and all is well but in smaller tanks this shrimp "can" hunt down small fish and other shrimps and kill them. Yes it is a "cleaner" in the loosest terms but if you want a true cleaner then choose the "Cleaner" shrimp or to slightly lesser degree the "Bllos shrimp"

You are on a steep learning curve and sometimes the adjustment from FW to SW is among hte hardest to achieve as you have to throw away much of what you have learnt, many people even now cannot put their trust in liverock alone over a good canister filter or find that they need to do water hanges each week when IME a longer period between water changes works better.

I hope you enjoy your time here with us and please!, never think a question is too stupid etc, we were all like you once and the reason we stick aroundin here is to make the learning curve for newcomers like you all the more easier.

 

[Sang72]

Thanks for all the help guys, I have removed the anemone, got another 3lbs of live rock (I will add more as I can afford it), added a 145 GPH powerhead with auxilliary carbon filter, added a hermit crab and an emerald crab that I was *assured* would get along with each other and my banded shrimp. Now there is a brown algae coating on the substrate and I'm pumping a total of 300GPH (that's 15 times the volume of the tank every hour) I have about 5 lbs of live rock, 20 lbs of live sand, one ornament, and 3 carbon filters. Soooooo................ When can I go get Nemo II and a coral? Tank has been running for 20 days now.

Thanx

 

[maestro]

Imo when you have tested your water and ammonia nitrite and nitrate have all been zero for 2 weeks, youve just added live rock, everytime you add live rock you will get a mini cycle, thats why in an ideal world its best to add it all at once buy obviously you have to be practical and do what you can.

If you can add another powerhead then do so, 15 x an hour is borderline.

 

[steelhealr]

Sang....it's hard to hold back when you see all those corals out there. Give your tank time to mature a little. You have yet to go thru your algae blooms...give your tank a bit of time to settle in....get some coralline.....establish the cleanup crew. Start with basic corals if you can when you feel you are ready to go. SH