My first reef tank! 65g.

j.speaks · Oct 6, 2024

Eric R. said:
Saw your thread about corals not growing, but figured I'd respond to your build thread since I was reading it for more info.

What do you have in the tank as far as fish? You may not need that skimmer running if your nutrients are already so low, and you don't have many fish in the tank. You could try taking it offline while you work on getting your nitrate and phosphate levels up. You can also go from 2x a month water changes to 1x a month until your N and P get higher as well, since you shouldn't be having much that's using the alk/Ca/Mg and you don't have high nutrients that need export.

Your calcium seemed low in your post, but it's possible that some of your numbers are off because of testing issues (never 100% a test value to be accurate, but if you test consistently in the same way at the same times, trends are helpful to pay attention to). What method are you using and how often are you calibrating your refractometer? And are you topping off with RO by hand or with an ATO?

Kenya tree is a very hardy coral. You shouldn't have any problems with it. You could have a box with a heater, a cheap light, and saltwater in it and it should do fine. GSP can be more temperamental. Duncans are usually pretty hardy.

Also, if you're not familiar with the Boston Reefing Society, you should check them out/join their forum/attend an event or meeting. I'd imagine you could get a lot of help/advice from someone locally, and probably even a hookup on some inexpensive and fast growing corals.

Boston Reefers Society

Web site of the Boston Reefers Society

bostonreefers.org

Thank you for this super informative reply!!

I’m sure you’ve seen by now how neglected my build thread is. Crazy how fast time went by lol.

For fish, I have two clowns, two blue-green chromis, one coral beauty, one fire fish, one engineer goby, a cleaner shrimp, three hermits and two emerald crabs. Funny you should mention the skimmer as I just replied to the posts on my other thread asking if I should turn down/off my skimmer. Curious as to what you think with my current stock list.

For testing I use API kits (I know their hated on this site but my lfs sold them to me early on so I just went with it) I am definitely going to start testing more, maybe once or twice a week for most things, and even more so for nitrate/phos. I calibrate my refractometer every two weeks with RO water. Funnily enough, my ATO broke literally two days ago, so a new one is on the way!

I have no clue why the Kenya tree died. It was flopped over (which I read was normal) so I waited for it to come back up. It had before, but this time it never did. I kept trying to prop it back up by hand but after I think three weeks the thing was shriveled up and dead!!

Thanks for the info on Boston reefing society, I’ll definitely look into that as I’d like some more connections in terms of getting help!

Eric R. · Oct 6, 2024

j.speaks said:
Thank you for this super informative reply!!

I’m sure you’ve seen by now how neglected my build thread is. Crazy how fast time went by lol.

For fish, I have two clowns, two blue-green chromis, one coral beauty, one fire fish, one engineer goby, a cleaner shrimp, three hermits and two emerald crabs. Funny you should mention the skimmer as I just replied to the posts on my other thread asking if I should turn down/off my skimmer. Curious as to what you think with my current stock list.

For testing I use API kits (I know their hated on this site but my lfs sold them to me early on so I just went with it) I am definitely going to start testing more, maybe once or twice a week for most things, and even more so for nitrate/phos. I calibrate my refractometer every two weeks with RO water. Funnily enough, my ATO broke literally two days ago, so a new one is on the way!

I have no clue why the Kenya tree died. It was flopped over (which I read was normal) so I waited for it to come back up. It had before, but this time it never did. I kept trying to prop it back up by hand but after I think three weeks the thing was shriveled up and dead!!

Thanks for the info on Boston reefing society, I’ll definitely look into that as I’d like some more connections in terms of getting help!

I would suggest picking up either a Tropic Marin High Precision Hydrometer (these are awesome, but break easily), or a 35ppt calibration standard to calibrate or double check your refractometer, instead of using RO water. Depending on the quality of the refractometer, calibrating with RO may put you off from accurately reading SG near sea water levels. Many inexpensive refractometers are made for measuring brine solutions that have a different SG than sea water, and their calibration curves are different. It's a good idea to have a calibration standard that's close to the value you are trying to measure.

You have more fish than I thought based on your last build update! Considering that, may be best to just trying turning down your skimmer for a while instead of completely off. I would start feeding more, and depending on if you're still struggling to get nutrients up, possibly skip your next water change. Slow changes are good, try to avoid yo-yoing your parameters by drastically raising or lowering things too quickly. And unless it's an emergency, try not to mess with too many things at once. Patience and paying attention are the keys to success (along with maybe some critical thinking).

You don't have many herbivores, do you have any issues with hair algae? Also, if you're worried about higher N or P driving algae growth, don't worry about it. Despite what many people say on forums, low N and P doesn't actually starve out algae, and high N and P doesn't lead to uncontrollable plagues of it. Best way to deal with algae is having sufficient herbivores and manual removal as needed. This is a great video to watch for info about what to do and not to do when dealing with algae: [generally watch as many MACNA talks as you can on Youtube, it's a great source of information from experienced reefers].

If it's not low nutrients, could be that you need more light. Do you run mostly blue lights all of the time? You could try running white lights for part of your light cycle, that would help increase the amount of PAR without you having to buy a new light right off the bat.

j.speaks · Oct 6, 2024

Eric R. said:
I would suggest picking up either a Tropic Marin High Precision Hydrometer (these are awesome, but break easily), or a 35ppt calibration standard to calibrate or double check your refractometer, instead of using RO water. Depending on the quality of the refractometer, calibrating with RO may put you off from accurately reading SG near sea water levels. Many inexpensive refractometers are made for measuring brine solutions that have a different SG than sea water, and their calibration curves are different. It's a good idea to have a calibration standard that's close to the value you are trying to measure.

You have more fish than I thought based on your last build update! Considering that, may be best to just trying turning down your skimmer for a while instead of completely off. I would start feeding more, and depending on if you're still struggling to get nutrients up, possibly skip your next water change. Slow changes are good, try to avoid yo-yoing your parameters by drastically raising or lowering things too quickly. And unless it's an emergency, try not to mess with too many things at once. Patience and paying attention are the keys to success (along with maybe some critical thinking).

You don't have many herbivores, do you have any issues with hair algae? Also, if you're worried about higher N or P driving algae growth, don't worry about it. Despite what many people say on forums, low N and P doesn't actually starve out algae, and high N and P doesn't lead to uncontrollable plagues of it. Best way to deal with algae is having sufficient herbivores and manual removal as needed. This is a great video to watch for info about what to do and not to do when dealing with algae: [generally watch as many MACNA talks as you can on Youtube, it's a great source of information from experienced reefers].

If it's not low nutrients, could be that you need more light. Do you run mostly blue lights all of the time? You could try running white lights for part of your light cycle, that would help increase the amount of PAR without you having to buy a new light right off the bat.

Ill totally check out that hydrometer, and re calibrate mine tomorrow just to double check.

I have been feeding my tank one decent sized meal per day, and upon further research this doesn't seem to be enough, so I'm gonna switch to two per day of my usual size. does this seem like a good change? should I increase more gradually? I'll definitely turn down my skimmer a little bit tomorrow though.

On my next trip to the fish store I'm gonna get some more hermit crabs, and maybe some snails too. oddly, I haven't seen a single piece of hair algae from the very start of the tank! (My freshwater is a nightmare) What I have seems to be some kind of green fuzzy algae. its much thinner than I thought before I checked with whites. There is a picture on my other thread.

As for the lights, I do run a mixture. I think its the default preset for softies that came with the app, but it definitely is mostly blues. I'll check out the settings tomorrow and see what can be altered.

I find it so hard to find good reefing YouTube channels, so thanks!!