New Here, Go Easy On Me !

[cawsey20]

Hi all,

I joined the forum a few year's back when i had FW fish , However work commitment's forced me to give it up.
A few year's on and i am back but have moved to marine, I've done this mainly because im going to be self employed so wanted something to keep me occupied whilst i am not working and also something to grow and mature with the buisness .

I decided to go for a Juwel vision 180, I managed to pick this up second hand with 2 Fluval 205 filter's , External lighting a red sea Prizm , 30KG of live rock and lot's of other thing's for an absolute bargain price !!.
Now , I have been following advice from my local fish shop but obviously opinion's are mixed so will just see how i get on.

I set up the tank sat afternoon after spending nearly 5 hours cleaning it out and making sure it was spotless, Again i followed advice of the local fish shop who said to start the process i would be ok with tap water mixed with the appropriate amount of salt, I did a base line test with my NH4,N02,N03,PH kit's mostly to try and make sence of what i was actually looking at, Im sure i will be asking many many question's about my reading's over the coming week's.

I left the tank to warm up sat night and managed to achive a nice steady 26 degrees by sunday afternoon, I again left the tank today with everything running minus the skimmer .
Once i had got in from work i thought i would be better to get the LR into the tank to start thing's off ,Before doing this i got a reading of everything so i had a baseline to follow, My selinety seem's a little high at 1.030 ??. I filled a bucket with some of the saltwater and cleaned each piece before placing them in the tank.

Im not really sure what to make of everything else if im honest so i will put my result's up and advice on each would be brilliant !.

My PH was 8.0 this had gone up form 7.7 on saterday.
No3 was at 100 on the scale.
No2 was at 0.25
NH4 was at 0.25

Again i would really appreciate any advice that can be given, I do hope im doing everything i should be at this stage and where would be best to go for my next step ??..

Thank you for taking the time to read.

 

[-Nemo-]

Hello there and welcome to the salty side!

May I first suggest making a journal for your tank, or perhaps just request this topic be moved there.

A couple of questions...
Before the live rock was put into the tank, was it kept in saltwater?
Are you planning on doing a reef tank (corals) or just fish?


Your density is a little high, I would reduce it to around 1.025 by adding freshwater to the tank over a period of two days.

Since you have ammonia and nitRITe readings above 0, you are going through the nitrogen cycle which is good!
You should see both of them drop off to 0ppm within the next couple of weeks.
For now, you don't have to worry about your nitRATes, although they are quite high at the moment.
pH is fine.


Really all you have to do right now is wait! Sometimes that's the hardest part!!

Have you looked into any stocking yet?

 

[cawsey20]

Hello ,

Cheer's for the quick reply !! ,

The rock was removed from the tank once it was switched off on saterday, Since then it has been in the tank water in a bucket placed in my bath as it was the warmest place i could fit it.
As for adding freshwater, Will this be RO purchased from my local store ??, And how much at a time?,

Im glad to hear all my reading's are good, I have alot to learn on what it all mean's but im sure it will come with time,
I really need to source some lighting as the two tube's that are in there are frankly useless !, Im guessing a good light source is essential for the cycling process, Is it also vital for me to get a wavemaker/powerhead at this stage ?, Or would you reccomend me using the second filter to create some flow.

Im slightly concerned really as i don't think the tank was thriving before it arrived at mine i beleve the previous owner's had given up on it and had experienced some fish death's, Obviously iv'e cleaned everything to the best of my abbilities, if i take my time and make sure the water is perfect before adding live stock am i going to see any issues because of this ??.

As for stocking, Not really looked into it yet, This is how un-rushed i am to set it up lol, I think it looks nice with the live rock at the moment, However some easy to look after corals would be nice and aslong as i can house some clown's, Strawberry gramma, and i think a flame angel ??...

Cheers

 

[-Nemo-]

If you plan on having corals in the future, I would start using RO water from now on. So yes, take out a couple gallons of saltwater from the tank, refill with pure RO water, wait about 10 minutes and then test the density.

I'm not familiar with juwel tanks, as they are not sold around the ocean here, so lighting wise you probably need a UKer to comment on that. As for cycling, lighting is NOT crucial, however keeping a light on can help with some coralline growth. If the bulbs are old, however, I would replace them as to not promote bad algae growth (like hair algae).

The second filter is going to be just about useless to you, In my opinion, I would just pick up a couple of powerheads for the tank. For corals, you're going to want a flow rate of 1800-2700 lph (litres per hour).

Fish dying in the previous owner's tank will not affect you at all. Any die-off from the live rock is going to occur right now during the cycle, which is perfectly OK.


Strawberry grammas (I know them as purple pseudos) can be nasty aggressive little fish, but clowns and flame angels are great!

 

[wildechild_01]

Ha Ha leave it to Nemo to recommend Clowns...

anyway Welcome to the SW world, i dont have a lot more to add over Nemo since she is where i got most of my information when i set my tank up about a year ago. I will say that i agree on the filter.. live rock will provide all of your filtration with proper flow in the tank
oh yeah... and the flame angel i am definitely a fan of


Enjoy the adventure... and your un-rushed pace is definitely the way to go...

 

[jeasko]

Welcome to salty side!

Most important thing is determining what sort of tank your setting up as this will make a difference on what water to use the N02 N03 & Nh4 would ideally be at 0 before you start adding any fish but being its a new setup the readings are about right, from experience I'd run lights as little as possoble to deter nuisance algae but also run rowaphos in the filter to remove phosphate and silicates from the start, this will eliminate one of the main culprits for algae probs

That said you will get diatoms (kind of brown fuzzy algae) in the cycling process and once you start to see readings come down u should the think about adding CUC