lbmash,
Good luck to you bud, and welcome to saltwaterland. I do like them.. Specially if they remain alive. Again, godd luck, I think you'll need some..
Thanks for your help, i wasnt trying to be a smart ass, i was wondering if you think its too early for those kind of fish? Any advice i can get would be greatly appreciated.
Ok,
I have to apologize, I'm sorry. Lee, my best advice would be grab a book. A good one. Marine reef aquarium handbook, Reef Invertebrates by Anthony Calfo and Bob Fenner. Please take the time, and learn about nitrogen cycle. Just go google and type in " nitrogen cycle in a saltwater aquarium". You can not introduce 20+ fishes the a new set up. I' personally wouldn't recommend add even 1 fish to you tank right at this moment. Please take those fishes out, before they die. I can not go details about nitrogen cycle right now, you have to do this your own.. Then you'll realize why im saying this.. Again, sorry for the nisunderstanding... Your tank looks beautiful, kepp it that way,
DH
well i agree with Mr.H take the poor fellows out. theyarent dead yet. but believe me. ur only lik 12 days into it. so ur parameter will rise alot more in the next couple days..so switch them to a quarantine tank maybe? or take em back for store credit.
thats a nice setup, did you do it urself, the cabinetry? i agree with dh and easy, ur tank needs to establish its cycle first. if you know anyone with a salt tank at the moment that has been setup for a while, see if they would care for them for 3 weeks. i dont think you would lose all of the fish, but some. did you have it set-up profesionaly, or do it urself?
i don't usually come into the salt world, but i do love the look of your tank and was actually wondering how hard it is to do water changes and reach in there, as its custom built into the cabinetry. Or do you just have a service come and do it?
Thanks DH,
I do value your opinion, it seams like you are one of the first people on here to help someone whenthey have a problem. I read books for about 4 months before i built the tank, but the books dont realy take into consideration any variables that mauy happen along the way.
When i built the refugium i used mud, live sand, macro algae and about 20 lbs of live rock from my lfs display tanks. They told me this would jump start the system.
I did google water perameters and that was very helpfull, mine are as follows;
AM temp 80.2 ( after no lights at night )
PM temp 82.2 ( after lights for 14 hours )
Amonia .8 ( been here for about 4 days )
Nitrite .2
Nitrate 0
PH 8.2
Alkalinity 12.6
Can i do anything to help these perameters or should i just let it ride ?
Thanks Angus, i did build it all myself, and it took about 2 weeks start to finish working at night. If i can get everything working correctly, i will be very happy with it.
As far as the fish, i dont realy know anyone with a tank here to fish-sit for me and the other problem is how do you catch the litle bastards without distroying the tank ?
Lee
Thanks for the compliment spongebob,
i am having a 20 gal storage tank made that will fit next to the refugium in the lower cabinet, i think i can pump about 8 gals out of the refugium, turn a couple of valves and pump in the new water from the storage tank. I think if i do this 2 or 3 times a week, i am hopeing it will be ok. Most of my maintenance and tests i can do from the lower cabinets and hopefully just feed the fish from the upper cabinets. The only problem so far that i have is with high temps from the built in cabs, i am going to have to add some sort of ventilation to help cool the water temps.
Thanks Spongebob, Lee
Hi Lee,
Yes they were right, live rock and the mud in your rfg will help to start. But you have a huge tank mate. You'd have to have much more live bacteria to introduce. Are the fellas ok in the tank? The ammonia and nitrite levels you have now are very dangerous.. Not because they're too high, but they can spike up any minute now.. I think your nitrate is 0 because the cycle hasn't been through yet.
You did a beautiful job on your set up. You should be proud if you designed and built this system. Hats off !!
Your alkalinity is kinda' high, it could be a source of Ph problems later on.. Are you using tap water?
