Hey guys, so I've been reading on here quite a bit since setting up my Red Sea Max 250 reef tank almost 3 weeks ago. I've been asking a couple LFS about what I need to be doing and they sort of have conflicting opinions. I've kind of been leaning towards the one that does fish only, rather than the one that is a general pet store + fish/coral. I'm new to the fishkeeping hobby and this is the tank they recommended for 'ease of maintenance' and cost effectiveness.
We (my wife and I) put live rock and live sand in along with pre-mixed saltwater from the LFS on day one, nothing was really happening and our levels were all 0, and I was waiting for the algae blooms that I've read are typical when setting up/cycling a new tank.
Long story short, I have 3 green chromis fish in there (added 1 in the second week and the others a few days ago) and just added a small CUC consisting of a few snails, 10 or so hermit crabs and 3 red crabs.
I'm having quite a bit of green algae going on.. film building up on the glass only a few hours after cleaning with the magfloat. I also have the hair-like algae on most of the rocks.
The LFS suggested not changing the water until we were at the one month mark, but I went ahead and changed 10gal today. I think it went well with matching up the PH and SG.
I had the tank setup for 12hrs of lighting for the past week, which may contribute to the bloom of green, I also was not running the protein skimmer as I had not been running it from the start because I didn't get any foam coming up no matter how I adjusted it (apparently you need live stuff in the tank to get it to do something.. go figure!) I HAVE been running the skimmer for the past week though.
I dialed the lighting back to 10 hrs starting today, and was just wondering if I should give the CUC time to catch up on the algae, if I should buy another CUC to help the mess out, or buy a lawnmower blenny to help take care of the problem.
Here are my levels as of this evening:
PH= 8.2
SG= 1.023
Nitrite=0 (haven't registered a value higher than this since starting)
Ammonia=0 (haven't registered a value higher than this since starting)
Nitrate= 50+
Alk= 3.6meq/L ~ 10.1dKH
I bought a small 20gal tank to setup as a QT tank for fish and wasn't wanting to just throw the chromis fish and CUC in there before QT but the LFS said they would be fine.
Basically I'm asking for some experienced advice as to what my next steps should be, as we would like to start acquiring some coral and fish to start their QT process. I've been reading and it seems a dip is sufficient for coral, whereas the fish should start in the QT for 30-45 days.
Thoughts?
We (my wife and I) put live rock and live sand in along with pre-mixed saltwater from the LFS on day one, nothing was really happening and our levels were all 0, and I was waiting for the algae blooms that I've read are typical when setting up/cycling a new tank.
Long story short, I have 3 green chromis fish in there (added 1 in the second week and the others a few days ago) and just added a small CUC consisting of a few snails, 10 or so hermit crabs and 3 red crabs.
I'm having quite a bit of green algae going on.. film building up on the glass only a few hours after cleaning with the magfloat. I also have the hair-like algae on most of the rocks.
The LFS suggested not changing the water until we were at the one month mark, but I went ahead and changed 10gal today. I think it went well with matching up the PH and SG.
I had the tank setup for 12hrs of lighting for the past week, which may contribute to the bloom of green, I also was not running the protein skimmer as I had not been running it from the start because I didn't get any foam coming up no matter how I adjusted it (apparently you need live stuff in the tank to get it to do something.. go figure!) I HAVE been running the skimmer for the past week though.
I dialed the lighting back to 10 hrs starting today, and was just wondering if I should give the CUC time to catch up on the algae, if I should buy another CUC to help the mess out, or buy a lawnmower blenny to help take care of the problem.
Here are my levels as of this evening:
PH= 8.2
SG= 1.023
Nitrite=0 (haven't registered a value higher than this since starting)
Ammonia=0 (haven't registered a value higher than this since starting)
Nitrate= 50+
Alk= 3.6meq/L ~ 10.1dKH
I bought a small 20gal tank to setup as a QT tank for fish and wasn't wanting to just throw the chromis fish and CUC in there before QT but the LFS said they would be fine.
Basically I'm asking for some experienced advice as to what my next steps should be, as we would like to start acquiring some coral and fish to start their QT process. I've been reading and it seems a dip is sufficient for coral, whereas the fish should start in the QT for 30-45 days.
Thoughts?