Trying to Revive a Dormant Reef Tank

[Jan]

Welcome Diane! Pardon me for not welcoming you sooner. I get a little side tracked. How's the tank doing?

[Diane]

 

i did put it in the gallery - let's see if it works this time -- sorry for the newbie stuff

 

http://www.wamas.org/forums/gallery/album/2632371/756-dianes-70g/

 

 

[Diane]

i'm learning slowly -- here's the direct link to the big picture

http://www.wamas.org/forums/gallery/image/8509-setup-week-1/

[Origami]

 

In your gallery, you'll see an item on the left that says "Share Image." Click on the + sign next to it and you'll get a series of links. Copy the "BB Code" text in it's entirety to your post and the image will be inserted as shown above.

[Diane]

Things are going well. Chemistry has been good. I've added 6 snails, 4 hermit crabs and the two fish and one coral from Eve's tank.

 

[Coral Hind]

Congrats on the new livestock!

[Origami]

Looks great!

[Diane]

Update: Tanks going well and everybody seems to be getting along. now have the hippo tang, yellow tang, six line wrasse and a coral banded shrimp, a few little corals and the one big green star polyp colony. interesting watching them, the yellow tang seems to stop in front of the wrasse periodically for a grooming.

 

Question: what's an ideal schedule for the lights? -compact flourescent, i've been keeping them on most of the day, but i had old bulbs in there, i just put new daylight bulbs in and will probably change the actinic's soon. should i cut back how many hours a day they are on?

 

[Coral Hind]

When replacing bulbs it is always a good idea to cut them back by about 2 hours and increase them by like 30min a week so the corals can adjust to the stronger light. Your tank is mostly LPS and softies so I think you would be fine with say 10 hours of total time.

 

How long are you running them for now?

[Diane]

i was turning them on about 8am and off at about 10pm, up to 14 hours i guess. i have timers to put on them now, so i'll set it maybe for maybe 10am to 8pm.

 

i've heard some people stagger turning on the actinic and daylight bulbs, is that worth doing and if so which order and time seems to work?

[dtfleming]

i was turning them on about 8am and off at about 10pm, up to 14 hours i guess. i have timers to put on them now, so i'll set it maybe for maybe 10am to 8pm.

 

i've heard some people stagger turning on the actinic and daylight bulbs, is that worth doing and if so which order and time seems to work?

 

People stagger the actinic and daylight to simulate sunrise/sunset. Have the actinic come on first for an hour then daylight and actinic on. then have daylight go off an hour before the actinic turnoff.

[Diane]

Did i make a mistake adding the coral banded shrimp?

 

Last night i couldn't find the six line wrasse, just the day before he was swimming all around looking happy and healthy darting in and out of the rocks. After looking further, I found the shrimp eating what looked like remains from the wrasse. i'm VERY sad. Is it likely that the shrimp killed it or just cleaned up after it died on its own?