Kkober October 1, 2014 Share October 1, 2014 After a couple years of freshwater I got bored with it, still an active member of CCA . Thought i’d go ahead and try salt - and I caught the fever. I still have two african tanks but I started to buy pieces here and there to start a salt. I have followed WAMAS for about 6 months and just became a member recently. Well long story short - there is my tank and it has been up-running for about 5 months. -20 Gallons. -approx. 30 lbs. live rock -Chinese brand of LED lights that have a rather nice spread from LFS around Frederick (Aquatic Solutions). -Bio-cube hang on skimmer -Maxi-Jet 400 powerhead/circulation pump -(Working on a little aquaclear 50 refugium to maybe add macro algae) - I saw it on here somewhere someone made an old ac70 in to a miniature refugium so I thought, why not? -No sump -7 head trumpet coral -Scooter blenny (named Scooter; clever, I know) -Two ocellaris clowns are coming from Marco within the next week -Plenty of corals coming soon, I just wanted to get everything rolling before I went all out and filled with corals Water parameters: Calc: 460 Phos: < .25 Ph: 8.3 Specific gravity: 1.025 Difficulties: -I think I feed a little heavy which is causing my phosphates and ammonia levels to be a little high. Which is causing my trumpet corals to stress, but I want to keep Scooter happy. -Hair algae spikes every once and a while. I try to keep the lights down to keep it from going out of control. (80% Blue, 20% Others) I was thinking maybe my light is too close to the top of the water @ about 5-6 inches. -Skimmer, I don’t really get that super dark skimmate that everyone refers to and I see in photos. Thanks for all the information everyone provides subliminally through this forum, you guys are awesome and truly have inspired me to take this build serious and I look forward to being more active in WAMAS. The amount of knowledge and experience this group has to offer is spectacular. Thanks in advance for any input or suggestions, I really do like constructive feedback as we all learn from our mistakes and mistakes in this hobby seem to be pretty costly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Origami October 1, 2014 Share October 1, 2014 It's a small enough tank that you can manage your water quality very effectively with decent-sized and regular water changes (provided that the water's not full of nutrients). Make sure that you've not got detritus accumulating on the bottom (behind rocks, etc.) as these are just nutrient reserves. Get a clean up crew - snails, maybe a small serpent star and such to help remove food that settles to the bottom. and this should help the nutrient problem. Unless you have a need to run strong lights right now, you can probably dial them back some to slow the algae growth. Algae, though, wouldn't be growing if you didn't provide it nutrients + water + light. So if you cut back on light to slow the algae growth, you may find nutrients accumulating a bit faster. Again, water changes can help address this. Test your alkalinity, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wildcrazyjoker81 October 1, 2014 Share October 1, 2014 Also out of curiosity are you using an RODI? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kkober October 1, 2014 Author Share October 1, 2014 Yes I am using RODI water and I try to do at least one water change a week and I usually add one solo cup full of freshwater RODI every day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kkober October 2, 2014 Author Share October 2, 2014 It's a small enough tank that you can manage your water quality very effectively with decent-sized and regular water changes (provided that the water's not full of nutrients). Make sure that you've not got detritus accumulating on the bottom (behind rocks, etc.) as these are just nutrient reserves. Get a clean up crew - snails, maybe a small serpent star and such to help remove food that settles to the bottom. and this should help the nutrient problem. Unless you have a need to run strong lights right now, you can probably dial them back some to slow the algae growth. Algae, though, wouldn't be growing if you didn't provide it nutrients + water + light. So if you cut back on light to slow the algae growth, you may find nutrients accumulating a bit faster. Again, water changes can help address this. Test your alkalinity, too. Alkalinty is 9-10 dkh… also can a moderator please close this thread so I can keep paying attention to the other duplicate thread of this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Origami October 2, 2014 Share October 2, 2014 Duplicate discussion here: http://wamas.org/forums/topic/69264-new-to-wamas-new-to-salt-new-new/ Closing this thread now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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