OK well first off I am from Spearfish South Dakota if anyone cares (Black Hills State University), and I recently got started in the marine aquarium thing. I have done a freshwater tank for 2 years and haven't lost a fish in over a year. I so far have cycled the tank using the no fish method of using pure ammonia from the store. Non scented unadultered ammonia. It worked well. By the way, I am using a 10 gallon tank. I started with a few drops a day and it got to the point where it would digest a 20 bottle capful each day. I got some live rock and cured it in a bucket and cleaned it and everything. I just put the finished product in the tank today with new water. I am going to let that go a couple weeks and keep an eye on the water conditions. I use distilled water and instant ocean salt. With it I add trace elements, calcium and iodine. I have a penguin bio-wheel filter, 170 i think. I am having trouble with it spinning really slowly and it pauses. What can I do about that? I also have a sanders piccolo skimmer that is not in the tank now. Should I use it, or is in not necessary? It is really ugly looking in the tank and I don't want to use it if I don't have to. Other equipment I have is a high quality heater that does a good job maintaining a perfect temp and I have a powerhead. How much air should the powerhead shoot out? Little or alot? The substrate is thitlan (sp?) moon sand. I have one really big problem though. The lighting is hard to do. No I have a hood that has 2 screw-in slots for incadescent bulbs. I have the flurescent type in it now that really lights it up. My problem with it is that the other day, it shorted out on me. It seems that the water is getting into the slots where the bulb screws in and shorts it out. It actually smoked and buzzed. I need to get a new one. Is a flourescent one a better way to go? Will that not short on me? What temp of light should I get. I was thinking 10,000k. Will one 18" bulb do? I plan on having 2 clowns, 4 blue hermit crabs (the $1.00 ones), a couple bumble bee snails, a few polyps, a couple mushrooms, and maybe a few soft corals. There is a company that sells like 4 of each in a 1-2" size that they say is perfect for a nano-cube. I don't have a cube, but it is about the same size. When I fileld the tank today, it took 8.5 gallons with all the rock in the tank. I plan to upgrade to a big tank (120 or so) when I get a house in a year or 2. Can I get a tiny blue hippo tank (.75-1") now and move hime to the bigger tank when he gets bigger? Sorry to be so long, but I wanted all the details.
Saltwater NEWB....Many questions
- Thread starter 4.6stanggt
- Start date
It sounds like a very good start.
The biowheel will get gummed with salt creep from time to time. If you have enough live rock (I couldn't find how much you have), then the biowheel will be unnecessary.
I like skimmers. They remove organics before they can feed algae, and help to aerate the water. Haven't used the piccolo, so I don't know if it's worth it or not.
I'd say zero. The fizz will cause salt creep, and may be contributing to your problem with the lights.
There are a couple of potential solutions. First, get a glass lid to keep the splash from hitting the lights. That's probably a good idea no matter what. If you can find screw-in fluorescent bulbs with the right color temperature, then that will work very well. A single normal-output fluorescent lamp will not give you enough intensity, but a PC retrofit from a place like www.ahsupply.com will work well. Those kits have waterprook endcaps to keep water out. As far as color temperature, anything above 6700 K will work, depending on how you want the tank to look.
I'd say no. Strongly. A fast-growing fish that wants excellent water quality will be unhappy in a very small tank. If you wait to get the fish, then you won't have to worry if it takes longer than expected to get the new tank set up.
Well then, maybe I can get by with the hood I have and stop the powerhead from pulling air in. I have it wide open now to get by nitrogen cycle going to it's maximum. How do I get air into the water if the powerhead doesn't do it. I am used to freshwater where you have a bubble curtain or undergravel filter or something like that. I just bought some moon lights for it too. t should look pretty cool. I have 10lbs of live rock in there btw. I went a little on the lower side b/c I plan to add a little more that comes with the mushrooms, polyps, and corals.
The surface turnover will be adequate for aeration. As long as there's lots of circulation, you should be OK. The skimmer would help.
Well, I got a few bugs worked out today. I replaced my hood with a flourescent one with only one 18" tube. I will get that retrofit kit for it when I get some polyps. It has a sealed bottom clear piece that is completely separate from the water. There is no chance that it will ever get wet. I am still waiting on my moon lights though. I also got a seachem ammonia alert thing for it. Water is looking good and the rocks don't stink. I turned the valve closed for the air on the powerhead. There really is no need for any bubbles in the tank for air like a freshwater one? When I did that, my bio-wheel started spinning alot faster. It is normal now. It must have been sucking in air bubbles and slowing down the flow. That is a few things off my list. I don't have a pet store that has marine stuff in a 400 mile radius of me, so I only had the wal-mart isle. They had a 9375k bulb that looks good for now. Do I need to test for calcium with the live rock, or should I just add what the bottle says? Thanks alot for helping. I love this hobby and can hardly wait to get some fish.
A few words of advice from someone with a 10 gal SW:
Get the glass top. I had my "sealed" Satellite hood directly on the tank and the salt spray corroded my built-in moonlight. An alternative is to mount your hood on legs to keep it away from the spray. This also helps in lowering evaporation because the hot lights are away from the water. I have both legs and glass top on my 10 gal. With a small tank the evaporation is large in proportion to the volume of water, and your salinity will vary too much/fast as you re-top. The glass top has really helped to keep this swing down. An added bonus is that it becomes so inconvenient to access the tank that you end up thinking before you reach inside to mess with it...the less you mess with it, the better.
If you have the powerhead move the surface water around to prevent film accumulation you don't need to aerate. Mine is a rotating powerhead with a small nozzle deflector. I have it pointing at the surface, and get current from tank wall bounce. I may have to adjust this, though, because I have some "dead" current areas that accumulate detritus and grow green hair algae.
You really don't need that bio-wheel. The nooks and crannies of your 10lb. of LR is more than enough surface for bacteria. The wheel will clog with salt creep. It is designed for FW use.
Ph swing is big with such a low volume of water. Make sure you supplement carbonate and maintain your alkalinity pretty high to cushion the swing. Careful with the iodine, it feeds green hair algae, which becomes a nuisance. I still am trying to get rid of mine.
Last, but most important: The bumblebee snail is especially good at killing and eating your cool sessile invertebrates. You will start seeing all types of very interesting stuff crawl out of your rock. Bumblebees love to hunt/kill it! They may seem good-looking, but they hide all day long and only come out at night, when you don't see them. Mine (I bought one before I knew any better) hides even in my "moonlight"! Ocasionally it will get careless and allow me to see it, but it can go unseen for weeks. Don't believe what some online sellers say about it being reef-safe. It is most definitely not! Mine ate all my feather dusters, vermatids, etc. Get some astreas, and definitely get some sand-sifters like nassarius (my black nassarius are a lot better than my whites). They work very hard and reproduce fairly easily.
Good luck! Keeping a 10 is challenging, but that is half the fun! I am very busy/happy with mine. My signature contains the short description of my tank. My profile has lots more detail.
Get the glass top. I had my "sealed" Satellite hood directly on the tank and the salt spray corroded my built-in moonlight. An alternative is to mount your hood on legs to keep it away from the spray. This also helps in lowering evaporation because the hot lights are away from the water. I have both legs and glass top on my 10 gal. With a small tank the evaporation is large in proportion to the volume of water, and your salinity will vary too much/fast as you re-top. The glass top has really helped to keep this swing down. An added bonus is that it becomes so inconvenient to access the tank that you end up thinking before you reach inside to mess with it...the less you mess with it, the better.
If you have the powerhead move the surface water around to prevent film accumulation you don't need to aerate. Mine is a rotating powerhead with a small nozzle deflector. I have it pointing at the surface, and get current from tank wall bounce. I may have to adjust this, though, because I have some "dead" current areas that accumulate detritus and grow green hair algae.
You really don't need that bio-wheel. The nooks and crannies of your 10lb. of LR is more than enough surface for bacteria. The wheel will clog with salt creep. It is designed for FW use.
Ph swing is big with such a low volume of water. Make sure you supplement carbonate and maintain your alkalinity pretty high to cushion the swing. Careful with the iodine, it feeds green hair algae, which becomes a nuisance. I still am trying to get rid of mine.
Last, but most important: The bumblebee snail is especially good at killing and eating your cool sessile invertebrates. You will start seeing all types of very interesting stuff crawl out of your rock. Bumblebees love to hunt/kill it! They may seem good-looking, but they hide all day long and only come out at night, when you don't see them. Mine (I bought one before I knew any better) hides even in my "moonlight"! Ocasionally it will get careless and allow me to see it, but it can go unseen for weeks. Don't believe what some online sellers say about it being reef-safe. It is most definitely not! Mine ate all my feather dusters, vermatids, etc. Get some astreas, and definitely get some sand-sifters like nassarius (my black nassarius are a lot better than my whites). They work very hard and reproduce fairly easily.
Good luck! Keeping a 10 is challenging, but that is half the fun! I am very busy/happy with mine. My signature contains the short description of my tank. My profile has lots more detail.
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