This Is My New Tank

[francesanna]

Hi
I am just starting my little tank. It is an AquaStart 500.
Added most of my Live Rock last Sunday,but brought 3 more pieces today which I have also added.

I did water tests on Mon 22nd May and it shows as follows.

PH 8.0
Amm 0.50
NitrIte 5.0
NitrAte 80

I know that these readings are not yet right and that also adding more rock today will change them again.

I will not be adding anything including the Cleaning Crew until the end of June,if my tests show ok.

As you can see by my piccies I have put a lot of LR in my tank,althought the pics don't show it clearly there are lots of swim throughs and overhangs on there,so there are plenty of places to put coral on.

We only intend to add the following to the tank

2 Seahorses
1 Mandarin
1 Pipefish


2 Blood Shrimps
2 Crabs

I have added lots of LR as every little tank we have seen has been full of LR.

I have noticed on one on my pieces 2 little tiny white balls,as in photo can anyone tell mt what it is.
And just now I noticed a fan like thing on top of a piece of rock I got tday,as I lifted the lid to take a closer look,it started to shrink back into the rock,does anyone know what it is?

How long do you think the cycle will take to complete,and will the readings spike first to give me an indication of this.

 

[SkiFletch]

First off, to the salty side. I hope your stay will be enjoyable

You mention pics a lot of the time but it seems as though you forgot to post them . They'd help us get a grasp on your setup for sure.

A couple quick thoughts: How old is the tank and the test kit? 80ppm of nitrates is drastically high for a brand new tank and I frankly find it difficult to believe that you have 80ppm in a fresh tank. Can you have your LFS verify that reading? And are you sure you're using a saltwater kit/card? Your ammonia and nitrite readings are within the normal range for a new tank with LR. You shouldn't see much of a spike anywhere really as the bacteria are allready present in an LR filtered setup.

Also, keeping mandarins in a nano tank will not work unless you can find a way to suppliment their diet with pods. they won't eat prepared foods and without live pods they will starve and die eventually. You can consider operating a refugium for them and culturing them yourself, or find a commercial source for buying pods, but a mandarin in a nano tank no matter how mature just isnt right for the little fish.

 

[Chac]

We only intend to add the following to the tank

2 Seahorses
1 Mandarin
1 Pipefish

IMO this is a disaster just waiting to happen

Seahorse, IMO are not a good beginner fish, they are very sensative & extremelly picky eaters

Manderins & pipefish need to be housed in tanks with a large quantity of MATURE live rock that is crawling with Cocepods, a nano tank just wont do & they will slowly starve to death

Many Experienced reefers stay away from Manderins for years to give there tank time to mature so that it can support a manderin, the pipefish need even more specilised care

I have a pair of Pipes & a Manderin in my setup, all relatively newcomers to my reef but my tank is vry mature with an excess of 60kg of Fijian LiveRock

I also add a bottle of TiggerPods every month

In short none of the fish on your list will survive long in a 55L Nano