Beginner Questions

[rpritch]

Hello all!

I've been a part of the hobby for about a year now, but I finally decided to take the leap into the saltwater realm .

I bought a 14g biocube and just recently set it up. It currently holds 20lbs of live sand, 12 lbs of live rock, 1 fire fish, 8 red-legged hermits, 2 peppermint shrimp, 5 nassarius snails, GSP coral, and a few mushrooms.

I have two questions:

What would be the best inverts to handle the algae on the glass. The nassarius have done well sifting through the sand, but the glass is getting bad.

Second, because I have the tank in my dorm, I don't feel like mixing water on a weekly basis. Instead, I've been using the bottled seawater...it's more expensive, but I work at a LFS so I get a discount. My question is what should I do about the pH? It's always lower than what's recommended. Also, does the actually seawater have the necessary trace elements for basic corals (I'm going to stick mostly to soft corals and maybe a flowerpot)?

Thanks!

[NirvanaFan]

I like ceriths and astrea for glass cleaning.

What is the pH of your tank? I wouldn't worry too much about it, provided everything looks good. The jugs of seawater should be fine. If I was in your situation, I would be using them too.

I would skip the flowerpot coral though. They have a poor track record in home aquariums.

welcome to RC!

[rpritch]

The pH out of the bottle is about 7.7-7.9. Thanks for the suggestions.

Any ideas as as to a coral that would be easy to care for and provide some flow and movement to the tank?

[NirvanaFan]

Torch and frogspawn are always nice, and add some movement. Pulsing xenia usually does well (sometimes too well).

What is the pH of your tank? If the pH of the tank is 8.0 or more, I wouldn't worry.

[rpritch]

The pH reads around 7.9. The hardness his high though. Is there anyway to bump this up? I wasn't so concerned because everything seems healthy.

[Reeferz412]

I had a pH problem for a while, keep up with the water changes and add chemipure. My pH never moves now.

[rpritch]

I'm using chemi-pure elite and purigen. Is that OK?

[Fizz71]

Don't go too nuts on snails for the glass...I've never had a tank that didn't require manual algea removal from the glass...and I had a tank going with THOUSANDS of astrenia starfish as well as cerith, astreas, turbos snails and a lawnmower blennie. I wound up with streaks of clean glass and lip marks...still had scrape. Get yourself a good magnet scraper.

+1 on leaving the flowerpot...let it die at the store.

Shrooms are a nice cheap colorful starter coral as well. Low light, low flow, low maintenance.