[PhaneSoul]

Please don't cycle a tank with a live fish a single table shrimp will do the same thing AND it's already dead.

Welcome to TRT! Any idea what your maintenance routine will be?

 

[PhaneSoul]

I hadnt planned on cycling with a live fish. As far as maintenence, Likely water change every two weeks, with changing filter media etc when the water is low. This will be my first foray into corals, so I'm going to go very slow on that front.

Take em back for the lfs for them to hold him for the time being, a good lfs would understand. Did you use live sand and live rock? If you did It would be much better as you would only have a mini cycle probably lasting just a few days instead of a longer cycle lasting upwards of a month or more.

What kindve filter media do you have? I see it's a drawer type of deal, seems like a neat lil setup. I would suggest cleaning/changing/rinsing them out once a week. Any longer then that and they will likely become nitrate factories from the trapped detritus being broken down at a fast rate.

For a maintenance routine I highly suggest blowing off your rocks with a turkey Baster or powerhead once a week, let the water clear (about an hourish) then move as much sand out from underneath stuff as you can to make it easily accessible then vacuum the sand. This is where your water change comes into play. Vacuum the sand with a gravel vac into a 5g bucket, do as much or as little as you want but the more you do, the more waste material you can get out. Takes a little practice but you should be able to do your whole sandbed in 5gallons or roughly 10% of your water volume. The more waste material you can keep out the less you will have to worry about inorganic nutrients.

Or you can wait and clean once every two weeks, once a month, bi-monthly, ect.. But then you will have to worry more about inorganic nutrients and thus supplement with carbon, gfo, and all that jazz. All of which will still need reactors cleaned, chemicals replaced, more testing to see if and when the chemicals are getting exhausted, so fourth and so on.

Really up to you on how you wanna do it, but I find the first suggestion easier on myself, my tank and my wallet.

 

[PhaneSoul]

We love pics I use a very big siphon for my sand, I also have aragonite which is pretty big but more on the medium size. The siphon is maybe a foot long for the bigger tube and then has a 1/4 in hose I think, it does well for me, I usually don't get any sand or very little if I do, it really takes practice lol (I've got it down so my 55g takes about 20mins for a waterchange start to finish including cleaning the sand). When thinking about your maintenance you need to think of what your corals need and sps need very low inorganic nutrients and a lot of incoming food.
Sorry I ramble about maintenance, it's kindve my thing lol, wanna know about fish, ask chi I don't know fish but you can pm me if you wanna know about bacteria lmao

 

[PhaneSoul]

Mine fell for the food in the net trick. Be patient, dont try and catch him the first few days. Just put the food in the net and hold the net in the tank for awhile. As he feels it's safe to approach the net he will get more and more comfortable and then BAM, fish in a net

 

[PhaneSoul]

I like it. I also think not having light on the sides will help with algae on the glass and from the pic it seems to help camo your powerhead.

 

[PhaneSoul]

back? where did I go lmao

 

[PhaneSoul]

ehhh, I like to pop in every once in a while and read a page or two at a time, helps me remember each persons own story better if I read one post a day from everyones thread then you have a 250g tank, eric put a sting ray in his 55g and chiwing got her name because she is a campion chicken wing eater from Pennsylvania.

 

[PhaneSoul]

lmao. too north for me, I dislike cold.

whatcha doin about that purple sand borne coralline there

 

[PhaneSoul]

what do you do for maintenance? waiting it out... who told you that? where are the nutrients that they are eating going to go? whats going to happen to the nutrients bound within the cyano when it runs out of food and dies? probably to fuel another algae bloom..

it looks like you have a pretty good flow setup. powehead behind the rocks and another pointing twords the rock and sandbed. I could see underneath the PH on the right side becoming a dead spot tho. I have the same issue but I have an extra nano powerhead so I kindve just hung it into the water and it points straight down to the sandbed so it helps underneath that powerhead from becoming a deadspot.

really what I aim for is as long as the corals enjoy the flow and dead spots are minimized on the sandbed im happy.

 

[PhaneSoul]

cleaning the sand?

 

[PhaneSoul]

good good. it will get better. I am just finally starting to get over my nutrient spike from adding sand to my barebottom tank back at the end of January. coralline is starting to grow again so im on the right track.

 

[PhaneSoul]

You can always put a nonphotosyntetic coral over there. Make sure you do researchfirst, most do require more feedings per day. You could possibly put a sponge there,or a frag of yellow polyps. I have a few heads of those andbi like them even tho they do not glow in the blue lights. But the cool thing is its like they are a shadowy creature swaying in the water at night cuz you can just really see their outline

 

[PhaneSoul]

very nice. did you get your plumbing all situated? is it running in that pic?

 

[PhaneSoul]

yes, it would help. also put a length of 1/4th in diameter tubing in the drain. this helped silence mine a lot when I had lower flow. you could make a durso style or herbie. does your drain have a elbow at the opening?

 

[PhaneSoul]

look up durso style drain, you can try it out but don't glue anything together. I tried one on mine and it works fine but I need to lower the flow, gotta make a trip to home depot for a valve, my flow is just a lil too high for the size of PVC I have to use.

 

[PhaneSoul]

I like the bean animal setup. my mindset is: when drains are involved, more is better