What do I do next?

[alanbates12]

Hello all, I'm 4 months into the hobby and seem to be learning the hard way. Guess I"d like some ideas of what to do next to my 180 gallon tank. To make a long story short I had help setting my tank up from the LFS. After setting it up and watching it cycle I put some fish in... Everything went well. Lots of live rock from an established tank about 140/150lb. Tank starter kit from Indo Pacific Sea Farm... I have new lights, T5 HO. lots of hermits and snails among other things from IPSF... Currently I"ve got two sand sifting gobies, 1 Yellow Tang, 1 Tenetti, Two clowns, one damsels and a PBT. I have a few small corals but just about every coral I"ve tried to put in had kicked the bucket... Since, in the last week, I"ve put in an RODI system, New sump with a fuge and my water looks better. My current parameters are , PH-8.4, Temp- 78, Ammonia 0.0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 20, Phosphate 0.5, MG 1500, KH/Alk 11.5/4.11, Ca 480. These parameters have been like this for the past 2 months. My KH/Alk has been coming down to what the book says is normal. I'm hoping my new sump with a fuge will help lower my nitrates and phosphates. I'm also thinking about getting a ca/gfo reactor from BRS to aid in this. My light cycle right now is my white lights are only own for 3 hours. They were only own for 1 hour because I had a green algae problem. I got them on three hours now. My blue lights are own for 8 hours. So I'm looking to get some more fish and corals. I know I cant do it all at once but want some ideas of how to better improve my water then add some corals and fish. Thanks and any impute would be great.

[Reefman29]

The water should improve with water changes from your rodi machine. Maybe make a larger water change once a week or smaller ones through out the week.
What kind of t5s? The coral is going to need a longer daylight period too, so you will want to bring that up.

[celamb89]

I would work on getting does nitrates and phosphates down like u said... I dose vodka and have a reactor with ROWAPhos which keep my params at 0...
The chaeto in the sump should help u in that area, just wait for the results and try to cut down on the feeding to reduce the waste, this will keep the params down...
Once the tank is stable and more mature (6-8 months) I would start with some easy/cultured corals and start from there...


Good luck! :)

[alanbates12]

This is the light I've got,http://www.aquaticlife.com/t5ho_six_lamp/index.html. So do I do like a 20% water change every week? Or is it better to do 10% twice a week?

[celamb89]

I would do large weekly water changes (30%) for 3 weeks... I did this once when I was first fighting my nitrates and it worked great.

[alanbates12]

Ok I'll try that.