Help starting my 38g FOWLR, losing fish!!

[hokie79]

Ok, I recently started up a 38g FOWLR, and i'm having issues! I started cycling the tank 3 weeks ago with about 20lbs of live rock+another 10lbs or so of old dead reef rock(is this bad?). I added five small green chromis last week, and now I'm down to two!!!

All the water parameters look good, only a small trace of nitrates. The fish only seem to eat the mysis, and only pick at the pellet/flake foods. I was gonna go get a Tomato clown and maybe a Royal Gramma this weekend, but now I'm nervous about buying more fish! Am I just unlucky?

BTW, my equipment list is as follows
Aquaclear 70 Powerfilter(no media, just for flow)
Bak-pak2 protein skimmer
2- Aquaclear 30 powerheads

Is that too much water movement for a 38g?

[blufyre3]

You're going way too fast. A tank should cycle for at least a month and let it stabilize. Add a clean up crew and make sure your cycle is over. What are the rest of your parameters?
phos
ammonia
nitrite
and what is a trace of nitrate?
I'm not trying to criticize only to slow you down. Reefing is about patience.

[hokie79]

ok, just re-tested:

temp= 78
sg= 1.024
ammonia=0
nitrite=0
nitrates= 10 ppm
phos.= 1.0 ppm

Also, i'm starting to see some brown/diatom algae, this is normal right? Oh, and what would be a adequate cleaner crew for a 38g?

[Bmgrocks]

i think thats kinda high for phosphates, run some phosphate remover in ur aquaclear, for 4 days at a time.

[reefshadow]

Hey, hokie! [welcome]

If the tank is reading zero amm and nitrItes via accurate tests, it can be considered cycled. A few small water changes a few days apart with clean source water will help eliminate the phos and nitrate. Have you checked ALK and PH?

Your problem may simply be that it is hard to keep multiple chromis in a smaller tank. Contrary to popular opinion, they are actually quite territorial and will many times cull down to two unless you have a very large tank.

I would leave just the two in there for a couple more weeks before adding your next fish to make sure you aren't having a chemistry issue.

The brown powdery algae is most likely diatoms, they will subside.

For my crew I like only snails, I've had issues with every crab I've tried in the past except acro and porcealin crabs. I like turbo snails especially, astrea, nassarious are good too. If you can get them from a fellow reefer, stomatella, collonista and collumbellids are good as well.

Good luck, and welcome!