New to hobby/RC

[Graphix]

I started a mini reef about 8 weeks ago, and would first like to say thanks to everybody that adds to this forum. I spend many a night just surfing through old and new posts trying to gain knowledge, and prevent mistakes. I am sure that everyone here has saved me time and money sharing their experience.

I have a 24 gallon nano cube, so it is just a tiny tank, but I think I am on the right path. I started with 30 pounds of live sand, creating a 3-4" sand bed, then added 40# of TBS live rock in 20# increments. The second half of my order came with the clean-up crew, as well as quite a few "hitchhikers". I hyphenate this only because they were bagged seperately, so I don't really consider them to have hitchhiked in.

I was a little nervous to add everything that Richard had included, because I read so much about going slow, and the requirements of certain things, but the tank and inhabitants seemed to fair well. I did however remove the Haitian Anemone, fearing the tank could not provide ample lighting.

After checking the water parameters I added one more 7# piece of cured indo-pacific LR from the local coral shop, just because the shape and color was amazing.

So as it stands the tank includes:
30# of live sand, (1/2 TBS and half LFS bagged)
47# of live rock, (TBS and Indo)
20+ blue legged hermit crabs
12 astrea snails
2 cucs
2 medium sized Emerald Crabs (added last week to control HA)
2 peppermint shrimp (which already gave a free food blast)
1 tiger goby (doing a number on the pods)
3 small GSP frags
1 pulsing zenia frag (doubled in size in 2 weeks)
1 small percula

And the water params:
SG - 1.023
Temp - 78
PH - 8.2
Ammonia - 0ppm
Nitrite - 0ppm
Nitrate - 10ppm

The nitrates had dropped to 0, which is when I added the clown, but slowly started to rise again. I disassembled the filtration, and stripped it down, removing bio-balls, two large sponges, and a bag of ceramic rings. I also have been faithful on water changes every week at 5-6 gallons, syphoning the sponge chambers, and rinsing the sponges in the old SW. The nitrates climbed to 20 ppm, but have since dropped to 10, and hopefully will slowly decrease with weekly sponge rinses/filter syphoning.

I do have a handful of newb questions, so sorry if my first post here is a little long, next time I won't lurk for so long.

1. When retrieving water for testing where in the tank do you get the water, ie. right from the top, more submerged towards the middle, doesn't matter.

2. Does adding Phycopure add to the bioload of the tank? Is this similar to feeding the fish.

I am sure that i have many more questions, but I will be happy with that for now, and once again thanks for all the help, nearly all of my questions were answered well before I asked.

Rob C.

[luke33]

I've always heard to take the water sample from 6" down, but i really don't know if there's any scientific method to this.

[papagimp]

Take water samples at least 6" down, or close too, you just don't want the actual "surface water".

I'm unsure as to Phycopure, never heard of it. I'm assuming it's a filter feeding food, similar to phytoplankton if not the same thing. It will add to the bioload if it's dead phyto/filter feeding food and does not get completely eaten at each feeding. Will cause rises in phosphates and/or nitrates. As long as you are feeding according to the direction you should be okay though.

Also, for whats it's worth, ya may have overdone it a smidge with the clean up crew. Just keep a close eye and make sure all them hermits and crabs are getting enough food. If they appear to be starving, get rid of a few. And 1 cucumber would have been more than plenty. I don't know how these retailers come up with there numbers for clean up crews but they always seem way over what they should be. I've got maybe 20 snails/crabs/hermits/misc other critters in my 55g and I have to make sure they all get fed well enough.