Crossing to the money draining dark side...

[cuticom]

These are australian prices, cleaner shrimp are rare as hens teeth around here, so of course the price is crazy.

I would only get one sort of clown, those were just the types of clowns I liked the look of, as I said these were just the fishes I liked the look of LOL.

The assorted starfish were greyish brown with yellowish spots/mottled patches all over em, quite large as well, no idea what they were they just looked nice, will take a reef book with me next time I go and try and ID em.

Oky dokes will cross the linkia starfish and the scooter dragonet of my list, after reading about the scooter I don't think I have the access to pod cultures etc if something goes wrong in my tank and the pods get depleted, I'll leave those for the experts.

How much lighting would a hammer need? the tank has a 150w MH a 20w bright white flouresent and a 20w blue actinic flourescent, would that be enough if I placed the hammer higher up on the rocks? Sorry I will do research as well, just wanted to know what you think.

My problem is ever since I was little I have adored the decorator urchins (short spined urchin) and would really really love to have one in the tank, but from what I've read their pretty good at destroying things as well. I love puffers as well and the valentini puffer is adorable but that would mean I'd have virtually no inverts and no other fish (don't want fin nipping), so I think I'll either go with a community of small fishes, maybe 3 or 4 or with the single puffer, I'm really not sure LOL.

 

[cuticom]

Blah new problem, the protein skimmer isn't working properly, the foam is getting nowhere near the collection cup, and its sending microbubbles through the display tank which looks ugly as.

 

[Grins]

I understand the quandry over the urchins. I adore them as well and maybe if I one day have a build up of coraline I'll attempt a tuxedo. For now though I deny myself the urchins, puffers, lion fish, and many other marine species I adore for a variety of reasons.

The hammer needs medium-high light and low - medium water flow. The lights you have should be fine.

 

[cuticom]

Yah there such cool creatures, so theres no way to feed them other then growing coralline?

LOl I'd love a lionfish to, but being a kid my parents still have a say in what I get and they know perfectly well most lionfish are poisonous (we go out to the reefs often) so I've no chance there for even a dwarf species.

Well stats for today are s.g 1.022, have added a bit more salt to raise it and temperature 24 degrees celsius (yay I worked out how to change the silly heater LOl), so far ammonia, nitrite and nitrate are all 0, I still need to find something to cycle the tank with, I'm fairly sure the liverock is still live, but better to be safe them sorry as it's a few years old so already cured so I'm, not going to get an ammonia spike from it. I have shrimp pellets which stink to high heaven, but they probably wouldn't release enough ammonia would they? I can't actually get straight ammonia here in Aus, so need to find something else, and I can't get exactly go and buy a single prawn from the supermarket LOL, none of my family eat seafood so theres nothing like that around.

 

[Grins]

I prefer to buy pure ammonia from the cleaning aisle at the grocery store and add it until it gets to 4-5ppm.

 

[cuticom]

As I said pure ammonia isn't available it is heavily regulated in Australia, and the only way to buy it is in powdered form, it costs a LOT and I'm pretty sure you need a license as well, so it's not an option, I cycled my first freshwater tank with flake food, then just cloned the media for the rest of the tanks.

So this is the tank so far, the next purchase when I manage to save up some more money will be a couple of kgs of uncured liverock, then I'll let it all settle and cycle, probably with fish food and in a few months start adding inverts if I choose to have them.

Oops forgot to add underneath the LR on the left is a 2000l/ph powerhead to get the water moving through the LR preventing dead spots thats not too strong is it? it works out to about 20 x turn over when you factor in the pump in the sump as well as the powerhead.... The powerheads got an intake great on it and used to be in a goldfish tank, and it never managed to suck them in so think it should be fine for marine fish...

 

[Grins]

My apologies, I didn't see that before. In that case I'd use a bit of fresh seafood and let it basically rot until the ammonia levels reach the level I gave earlier.

 

[cuticom]

Is fish okay to use? I can just scab some of my Gran then, as have to admit would find it rather awkward buying 1-2 shrimp from a deli LOL.

 

[Grins]

Shrimp is what is most commonly used but you could try the fish yes.

 

[cuticom]

Oky dokes.

Hmm how odd, I just retested everything, as I wanted to see what effect the LR had and the results were
SG- 1.024
Temperature- 26 degrees celsius (halide lights properly heated the surface area up, and that's where I took the sample from)
Ammonia-0
Nitrite-0
Nitrate- 5-10 (huh?)
pH-8.1

Nitrates got me confused, where would I be getting nitrates from? there wasn't any there yesterday.