New Reef Setup

[attilaa]

This will be a long post!

54 Gallon Bowfront
24 Aqualight Pro (* One 250 watt 10,000K double-ended HQI metal halide lamp
* Two 65 watt True Actinic 03 Blue square-pin compact fluorescent lamps
* Two 1 watt Lunar Blue-Moon-Glow 470nm LED lamps)
About 80 lb or live rock
Substrate is 1" in depth(aragonate)
PS3 Canister Filter http://www.petstore.com/ps_ViewItem-...ct-OE1315.html
(has a built in skimmer)
2 Maxi jet 1200 and 1 Maxi jet 600 connected to Red Sea Wavemaster Pro

Supplements:

C balance AB(15ml)/day
Sea Elements, Iodine, Strontium

Ammonie 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0-5ppm
Ph 8.2-8.4
Ca 470
Salinity 1024
Temp:79-81F

Livestock:

2 Oscellaris Clowns(paired)
30 Hermit Crabs(blue legs)
3 Snails

Corals:

Frogspawn Coral
Open Brain Coral
Assorted Mushrooms(frags from Australia)
Green Star Polyp Coral
And my recent addition Electric Green Carpet anemone that of course is ignored by the clowns!!!!

I do weekly water changes 10%

I have about 8 months experience in the hobby and this is my second tank. I crashed my first tank after a heat malfunction. I placed a bubble tip anemone in the tank and died by the next morning killing everything else with it. It was either quitting or giving it one more try.

This tank has been running for about 2 months now but I did take water and substrate from my old tank (50%). I started to add corals about 2 weeks ago. Everything seems happy but I think I should chill out a bit. My biggest challenge was actually aquascaping the tank. I took some pics to get some opinions.

Questions;

I was told that its better to have space around the rockwork and to make sure nothing is leaning against the glass, is this correct?

Should I purchase an RO unit?

I placed all powerheads on the back of the aquarium aiming in diff directions. Is 3 sufficient enough?

I placed the frogspawn on top of the highest peak in the aquarium. Bad spot?

The frogspawn and the open brain coral is about 6 inches apart. Could this be a problem?

How long will it take for the mushrooms to spread, should I glue the rock down or should I leave it just on top of a ledge loosely?

Is there anything that I am missing besides the refugium?

I am thinking about adding 2 cleaner shrimp and 1 blood shrimp along with some type of non aggressive wrasse.

I know that most will have diff. opinions since they had diff. experiences but I am open to any input you guys may have you dont have to cover all the questions, any is fine.

Cheers and sorry about the long post.

[Fish'InMN]

Originally posted by attilaa
This will be a long post!
Questions;

I was told that its better to have space around the rockwork and to make sure nothing is leaning against the glass, is this correct?

It is certainly a good idea so you have room to clean all of the glass, but leaning rocks against the back wall is a very common practice.

Should I purchase an RO unit?

If you have the funds available to do so, then absolutely Yes! I will not plug any one company (PM if you'd like my experiences), but there are a number of vendors on this site that will help you pick out the right system. I would also recommend not going cheap on this piece of hardware; after all, water is THE most important aspect of saltwater aquariums!

I placed all powerheads on the back of the aquarium aiming in diff directions. Is 3 sufficient enough?

That is about 24x turnover by my rough calculations, assuming everything is at the advertised flow rate, which is pretty good for a softy/LPS tank.

I placed the frogspawn on top of the highest peak in the aquarium. Bad spot?

The frogspawn and the open brain coral is about 6 inches apart. Could this be a problem?

You will have to see how each coral reacts to it's position. The frogspawn should not have any issue being that close to a brain, and likewise for the brain. The frogspawn may be a little too close to the light though; both our torch and our hammer are on the sandbed of our 40 breeder, under a 250W halide.

How long will it take for the mushrooms to spread, should I glue the rock down or should I leave it just on top of a ledge loosely?

I would put the mushrooms off in the sand on a little rubble pile. We have some mushrooms that are getting invasive and luckily we isolated them like this right away. Now we trade in mushrooms to the LFS once a month, as they grow really fast, but there is no risk of them over-running the tank.

Is there anything that I am missing besides the refugium?

A refugium is a nice addition for exporting macro and otherwise making husbandry easier, but take your time and figure out how to best incorporate it into your setup. Otherwise, you appear to be well on your way.

I am thinking about adding 2 cleaner shrimp and 1 blood shrimp along with some type of non aggressive wrasse.

Shrimp do not add a lot, if anything, to bioload, so you should be fine in that sense. The cleaners will get large and the blood shrimp will probably hide all day long. I would recommend getting more snails, BUT your hermits would probably just see that as a nice snack and you'd be out of snails again. I hate hermits. Just hate them. Wrasses are always colorful additions to any tank, make sure to research a bit beforehand, as there are some species with poor track records in captivity, but generally they are easy/intermediate fish.

I know that most will have diff. opinions since they had diff. experiences but I am open to any input you guys may have you dont have to cover all the questions, any is fine.

Cheers and sorry about the long post.

Keep an eye on that anemone is about all I have left to add. I do not have any personal experience with 'nems, but you certainly know how difficult they can be sometimes!

I would also recommend looking in to a better Ca/Mg/Alk dosing plan, though you don't have a large demand yet, and here I WILL plug TwoPartSolution as an excellent vendor/source.

Cheers,
Marty

PS. Yeah, that was long.

[jer77]

How's the carpet anemone doing? Has it attached yet?

I'd do yourself a favor and start planning for a sump. Just get a u-tube overflow and a 20long tank and glue in some baffles. Then you can get yourself a good in-sump skimmer too.

To answer your questions:
1. Yes the rockwork IMO should not touch the glass to allow access to all sides of the tank for cleaning or whatever necessary

2. Yes get an RO/DI unit asap
3. This is good, but you may want to get something with more spread like a koralia #3 or something similar
4. It may bleach being that high in the tank, just keep an eye on it.
5. I'd be more worried about other corals within their range of sweeper tentacles especially if the flow is blowing across them towards other corals.
6. They take time and good water conditions with adequate light, so just leave them and they should grow slowly.

[attilaa]

Thanks so much for taking your time and answering my questions. I really appreciate it

[attilaa]

As soon as I put the anemone in the tank it attached right away to the front left corner of the tank. Its doing very well for now but my tank raised oscellaris pair are ignoring it. I hope this will change in time. I will not add anything to my tank for at least another month. I read all kinds of sources as to how much to feed the anemone. Some say every day some say once a month. Its all confusing to me but for now I feed him 3 x a week.
I also noticed some red slime algae but its probably do to the use of tap water. I am hoping this will change once I install RO unit.

[Southern Boy]

Do you have a LFS around?You can normaly get ro water for 25-50 cent a gallon?

[jer77]

I'd only feed the anemone every 2 weeks or so. You can feed it more but it will grow quicker and you don't really want that thing taking over your whole tank...yet.

By the way you can have the rocks lean against the glass, but I think it looks better if they don't.