General Questions

Sprout579 · 11-23-2005, 12:56 PM

Ok so I have had my reef up and running for about a month and a half now. All my levels have been at just about 0 ever since I started it, and my PH is at 8.3. I have a 40g Oceanic stretch hex tank with 130w PC, 10g sump/fuge w/red calerpa, AquaC Remora Skimmer, and 9w UV steralizer. I have a few questions about the progress of the tank.
1. Is all the algae in my fuge ok? It seems like the green hairlike algae will strangle out the calerpa and it looks ugly, is this ok?
2. Is it ok to run the steralizer during the light cycle or should I run it during the night cyle?
3. I am ready for some more coral, I have 2 Mushroom Ricordea polyps, some yellow star polyps, and 1reg. mush polyp (bonus came on the rock my stars are on) what would be ok to put in the tank without a metal halide. And also will the star polyps and the mushrooms start growing througout my tank or is what I buy usually what I get? I like the corals that glow like the hammer coral wich is on my to get list (branching). Will brain corals survive, what else will survive with this lighting and age of tank?? I also like the sun polyps.
4. Is it necessary to do 10% water changes if all of my levels are good?
5. And the brown algae on the sand bed isent being completely cleaned up, should I add more snails or something else to keep my sand its pretty off white color?
I appreciate any help, and I appreciate all the help I have gotten on TRT, you guys are great, without this forum I truley believe my setup would not have turned out so well, As soon as I get them I will put up some pics, (needs some more corals before I start showing it off).

reefBoyDc · 11-23-2005, 01:16 PM

Hey Sprout, here are some answers:

1. Remove as much of the hair algae as you can. Throw a couple turbo snails in there to eat the rest.

3. I think your lighting is a bit on the low side for LPS (hammer, brains). It should be fine for soft corals. The softies will eventually spread. It can take some time. You can split them yourself and they will regrow into new ones though, to speed things up.

4> Water changes do more than take out bad stuff... they add good stuff too. So yes, water changes are necessary for long term success.

5. Brown algae is a sign that things are not all good. Adding snails is only a bandaid solution. Best is to find out what that algae is feeding on, and remove it. It could be many things, but probably phosphates.

A month and a half is not really long enough to be adding corals. You might want to wait a little longer before getting more and try to clear up the algae problem first.

HTH!

gwen_o_lyn · 11-23-2005, 01:20 PM

Question 3: I would wait a little longer before you add anymore corals- maybe another month. As far as lighting goes- you have the bare minimums for softies and some LPS. I have a variation of all the corals you mentioned, and they do fine under my PC's and I have about the same watts per gal as you.

Question 4: Yes, you must keep doing the water changes to replace the nutrients that are used up by the system. For example, your salt contains calcium, and your corals are using the calcium to build skeltons, as well as many other creatures. Your salt has Iodine, which helps hermit crabs molt, etc, etc, and to replace those used up nutrients, water changes help with that.

Question 5: Snails are good to clean the tank up- you can get at least one per gal of water. I have a HUGE cleanup crew in my tank and love it.

Hope that helps, it took awhile to write this since I'm at work so I'm sure about 10 people have already responded and said the same thing by now!!

Sprout579 · 11-23-2005, 01:27 PM

Well it looks like my Turkey Day will be a tank cleaning day. Sounds like fun to me. I guess I will let the tank go for a bit longer before I add any more corals. The brown algae grew when I first started my tank and when I put the cleaning crew in they cleaned most of it but some still remains. Also I bought a rock of coral from a store and everything I have gotten from this store I now realize is tainted with bad stuff. The rock has a real long worm that comes out of it, maybe even more than one, the one is all white and the other is black and white banded with a lot of little hairs (?) on it, I tried grabbing it with tweazers but its too fast, any suggestions?

Brent Cone · 11-23-2005, 01:30 PM

I would give it more time before i add anything more to your system, let it mature, it will be better in the long run.
That's my 10 cents,
Brent.

reefBoyDc · 11-23-2005, 01:31 PM

Bristle worm... good scavengers. just dont touch them!

Geoff · 11-23-2005, 03:59 PM

it sounds like your skimmer is not tuned properly. you want to be getting a tea coloured liquid in the skimmer collection cup.

it sounds like you are having a bit of a nutrient export problem. removing all unwanted algae on a regular basis will help a lot. it is a new tank, so some algae blooms are to be expected, but it is a good idea to get a handle on it now.

G~

tdwyatt · 11-23-2005, 04:11 PM

Echoing what Geoff said, removal of nuisance algae allows for the export of the nutrients that these algae have trapped in their cells (their biomass), so it is to your advantage to remove them (to export these same nutrients), and it makes the tank (or refugium) look nice.

The stuff that turns the substrate brown is usually a diatom, and can usually be removed by gentle siphoning just above the snd bed (try not to remove the snd in such a new tank). Just curious, what are you using to make your ASW (Artificial Seawater), and what type of water are you using for your top offs for evaporative replacement?

Sprout579 · 11-23-2005, 06:40 PM

I am using R/O water to top off and a mix between sea water and R/O mix to get the salinity down. I purchase the water from a local aquarium and the salt water salinity is a bit high from the ocean but I have never used anything but ocean water and R/O in my reef