NekoTwilight
02/22/2016, 04:13 PM
Hey everyone!
New to the saltwater/reefing hobby (well, and fishkeeping really). About 3 months ago I bought a Nuvo 10 with the intent of making a nice reef tank. About a week ago I lost all of my fish to ich (overstocking and poor water quality I think were 90% of that).
It sucks to lose lives to negligence/ignorance so I want to make sure I'm doing everything right now. The tank is still up and running. I'm checking water quality weekly (parameters below) and putting some food in the tank everyday to maintain the input/output of organics. I plan to keep the tank fishless for another 5 weeks at which time I will introduce a fish. I hope to keep two eventually but if that's too many I'll keep it at one. Would love opinions on this.
The tank had 4 fish in it based on advice I had gotten at a pet store. I wish I had done research on this, because I now assume the young tank couldn't cope with the heavy organics load and the resulting water quality made the fish more susceptible to the ich. I transferred them to a hospital tank and treated with copper but was unfortunately too late.
How often should I change water? I'm currently doing 20% every week. When should I test? I'm testing the water every day before the water change.
Big question right now is that I have some red slime algae that's creeping up onto the rocks and sand. I have a hammer coral that it's getting close to. I'm currently stirring up the sand everyday to keep it from forming. Is this the right call? I can't really vacuum it up because it makes a mat on the sand. Should I just not touch it and let it run its course?
ammonia: 0
nitrate: 5
mg: 1320-1340
alk: 9.9
calcium: 385
I have an AI Prime light, ghost skimmer and vortech mp10. Current inhabitants are an emerald crab, nassarius snail and Mexican turbo snail (who is slowly doing some work on the significant algae buildup - I didn't have much of a cleanup crew).
Thank you for any help!
New to the saltwater/reefing hobby (well, and fishkeeping really). About 3 months ago I bought a Nuvo 10 with the intent of making a nice reef tank. About a week ago I lost all of my fish to ich (overstocking and poor water quality I think were 90% of that).
It sucks to lose lives to negligence/ignorance so I want to make sure I'm doing everything right now. The tank is still up and running. I'm checking water quality weekly (parameters below) and putting some food in the tank everyday to maintain the input/output of organics. I plan to keep the tank fishless for another 5 weeks at which time I will introduce a fish. I hope to keep two eventually but if that's too many I'll keep it at one. Would love opinions on this.
The tank had 4 fish in it based on advice I had gotten at a pet store. I wish I had done research on this, because I now assume the young tank couldn't cope with the heavy organics load and the resulting water quality made the fish more susceptible to the ich. I transferred them to a hospital tank and treated with copper but was unfortunately too late.
How often should I change water? I'm currently doing 20% every week. When should I test? I'm testing the water every day before the water change.
Big question right now is that I have some red slime algae that's creeping up onto the rocks and sand. I have a hammer coral that it's getting close to. I'm currently stirring up the sand everyday to keep it from forming. Is this the right call? I can't really vacuum it up because it makes a mat on the sand. Should I just not touch it and let it run its course?
ammonia: 0
nitrate: 5
mg: 1320-1340
alk: 9.9
calcium: 385
I have an AI Prime light, ghost skimmer and vortech mp10. Current inhabitants are an emerald crab, nassarius snail and Mexican turbo snail (who is slowly doing some work on the significant algae buildup - I didn't have much of a cleanup crew).
Thank you for any help!