mnsean
Community Member
About 6mo ago I started 62gal lagoon style tank. Had long time experience with fresh water, but this is my first reef tank. Here are some few things I learned.
1. Patience - Unlike fresh water, nitrogen cycle means nothing. You have to go through entire ugly phase. I added clown fish and some zoah after cycle. Everything looked good for about a month so added some hammers and leathers. Green hair algae, got it under control fast with CUC and beneficial bacteria’s. Thought I was good. Came along Dino. Killed everything except leather, one Zoah, two clown fish. Then came cyno, tried chemiclean… wrong move, killed all my inverts, completely spiked all nitrate and phosphate… probably killed cycled bacteria. Had to cycle all over.
1.a one cool trick I learned is even before you get fish tank, get a bucket, some live rocks, wave maker and thermometer. Add all in new salt water, add food or raw fish or maybe even a single clown fish. Then let it grow beneficial bacteria while you’re shopping for your fish tank and waiting for it to come. It will shorten your cycle time.
1.b many beneficial bacteria need ammonia and waste from fish. The ammonia that fish breaths out is preferred food source for the beneficial bacteria. It’s balance game.
2. Read entire label. Many beneficial bacteria are supposed to be added into separate container of tank water before adding to the tank. Adding just capful directly doesn’t work as nearly as well as following direction. Also many are aerobic. Adding it with siphon or some kind, forcing air bubbles with the bacteria solution works much much better. Like within day notice better.
2.a beneficial bacteria that you get in a bottle are all different. I like to mix it up a little. Microbacter7 one day, clean another day, prime another day etc.
3. Be careful of certain products, look up side effects or cons to each product before adding. I.e vibrant - starts cyno after, chemiclean - will CLEAN for tank, possibly killing all good stuff along with it. It actually an antibiotic… so use with extreme caution. Etc
4. Be careful of certain food. I noticed Goni’s love reefroid but it will spike your nutrient level, PO4 Nitrate, etc never feed reefriod to Euphyllia‘a. Killed both of my torch, and Duncan.
5. Double check your source of water. My LFS gave me RO water when I asked for salt. As soon as I noticed everything is being weird, thank goodness I had salinity checker and small bucket of emergency salt.
6. CUC urchin and turbo snails are power scrubbers. Don’t be afraid to add urchin. Smaller the cuc the better. I had good luck with tuxedo urchin
6.a add copepods and make sure they have food to eat. Make sure to add it at night when lights off and flow is more stable. I tested it. And yes, there is a big difference.
7. Beware of sand goby, expect sand everywhere. All over corals.
7.a if you overfeed your 10, she will not work. It will just wait for you to feed her.
8. Learn how to set up “sump” properly. Esp AIO. Water is supposed to drop every chamber. So in AIO the water volume in the back chamber is much lower than you think and if you have duel inflow out flow like mine, it’s pain to adjust it. Esp with protein skimmer. Will always get one with sump below from now on.
9. Ca check. For Hanna that .1ml you’re supposed to add after zero is UN- reacted tank water. NOT reagent. lol was reading Ca wrong for a month wondering why Ca was off. Ca wasn’t off, I was checking it wrong.
10. Get photometer as soon as possible. Two if you can afford it. 15min NO4, 7min Mg, 3 min Ca etc… all takes time. Faster and easier if you have two. Skip all other checker, just get photometer, costs about $30more but saves money and time in Long run.
10.a the sample curette you get from Hana photometer leaks. Ones you buy doesn’t leak, buy additional.
11. Be very very careful adding additional lights. You have to lower the light much much more than you think, don’t trust your parameter trust your corals.
12. trust your corals trust your corals trust your corals versus part meter. Coral I get from LFS par 150-200. Same coral at my tank 80par, anything above she hates it. And yes that’s acclimating properly and letting it sit in lower light part of tank and slowly moving it towards higher light etc. When I added additional light, I lowered the light intensity based on par meter, wrong move. Had to lower 30% more.
13. Get single frag rack. I love how I can individually slowly move frags towards correct light and flow
14. Flow - more equipment, lower power is way batter then less equipment with higher power flow.
15. Try different glue. I know super glue are pretty much the same but I like the individual packs those small ones. The big ones are much harder to use and you end up wasting most of it.
16. Different coral dips kill different things. I like coral rx then revive then restore. I dip all corals allowed in that order before adding to tank. So far no known parasite issues.
17. Buy squeeze bottle fill it up with RO water and use that to rinse off tapwater. Saves you wasting ro water.
18. Try different online stores. Personally I like tidalgarden, vivid etc. Some I’ll never buy their coral again.
19. This Hobby can be very expensive. Things are gonna happen and you will spend more money, budget accordingly.
20. Taking good photo is whole another hobby it self. Don’t get that small flipper glass thing that attaches to your phone. Instead get that big one that you can attach to tank it self. Pretty useful with lights and magnifying glass to check your tank at night and easier to take pictures with.
1. Patience - Unlike fresh water, nitrogen cycle means nothing. You have to go through entire ugly phase. I added clown fish and some zoah after cycle. Everything looked good for about a month so added some hammers and leathers. Green hair algae, got it under control fast with CUC and beneficial bacteria’s. Thought I was good. Came along Dino. Killed everything except leather, one Zoah, two clown fish. Then came cyno, tried chemiclean… wrong move, killed all my inverts, completely spiked all nitrate and phosphate… probably killed cycled bacteria. Had to cycle all over.
1.a one cool trick I learned is even before you get fish tank, get a bucket, some live rocks, wave maker and thermometer. Add all in new salt water, add food or raw fish or maybe even a single clown fish. Then let it grow beneficial bacteria while you’re shopping for your fish tank and waiting for it to come. It will shorten your cycle time.
1.b many beneficial bacteria need ammonia and waste from fish. The ammonia that fish breaths out is preferred food source for the beneficial bacteria. It’s balance game.
2. Read entire label. Many beneficial bacteria are supposed to be added into separate container of tank water before adding to the tank. Adding just capful directly doesn’t work as nearly as well as following direction. Also many are aerobic. Adding it with siphon or some kind, forcing air bubbles with the bacteria solution works much much better. Like within day notice better.
2.a beneficial bacteria that you get in a bottle are all different. I like to mix it up a little. Microbacter7 one day, clean another day, prime another day etc.
3. Be careful of certain products, look up side effects or cons to each product before adding. I.e vibrant - starts cyno after, chemiclean - will CLEAN for tank, possibly killing all good stuff along with it. It actually an antibiotic… so use with extreme caution. Etc
4. Be careful of certain food. I noticed Goni’s love reefroid but it will spike your nutrient level, PO4 Nitrate, etc never feed reefriod to Euphyllia‘a. Killed both of my torch, and Duncan.
5. Double check your source of water. My LFS gave me RO water when I asked for salt. As soon as I noticed everything is being weird, thank goodness I had salinity checker and small bucket of emergency salt.
6. CUC urchin and turbo snails are power scrubbers. Don’t be afraid to add urchin. Smaller the cuc the better. I had good luck with tuxedo urchin
6.a add copepods and make sure they have food to eat. Make sure to add it at night when lights off and flow is more stable. I tested it. And yes, there is a big difference.
7. Beware of sand goby, expect sand everywhere. All over corals.
7.a if you overfeed your 10, she will not work. It will just wait for you to feed her.
8. Learn how to set up “sump” properly. Esp AIO. Water is supposed to drop every chamber. So in AIO the water volume in the back chamber is much lower than you think and if you have duel inflow out flow like mine, it’s pain to adjust it. Esp with protein skimmer. Will always get one with sump below from now on.
9. Ca check. For Hanna that .1ml you’re supposed to add after zero is UN- reacted tank water. NOT reagent. lol was reading Ca wrong for a month wondering why Ca was off. Ca wasn’t off, I was checking it wrong.
10. Get photometer as soon as possible. Two if you can afford it. 15min NO4, 7min Mg, 3 min Ca etc… all takes time. Faster and easier if you have two. Skip all other checker, just get photometer, costs about $30more but saves money and time in Long run.
10.a the sample curette you get from Hana photometer leaks. Ones you buy doesn’t leak, buy additional.
11. Be very very careful adding additional lights. You have to lower the light much much more than you think, don’t trust your parameter trust your corals.
12. trust your corals trust your corals trust your corals versus part meter. Coral I get from LFS par 150-200. Same coral at my tank 80par, anything above she hates it. And yes that’s acclimating properly and letting it sit in lower light part of tank and slowly moving it towards higher light etc. When I added additional light, I lowered the light intensity based on par meter, wrong move. Had to lower 30% more.
13. Get single frag rack. I love how I can individually slowly move frags towards correct light and flow
14. Flow - more equipment, lower power is way batter then less equipment with higher power flow.
15. Try different glue. I know super glue are pretty much the same but I like the individual packs those small ones. The big ones are much harder to use and you end up wasting most of it.
16. Different coral dips kill different things. I like coral rx then revive then restore. I dip all corals allowed in that order before adding to tank. So far no known parasite issues.
17. Buy squeeze bottle fill it up with RO water and use that to rinse off tapwater. Saves you wasting ro water.
18. Try different online stores. Personally I like tidalgarden, vivid etc. Some I’ll never buy their coral again.
19. This Hobby can be very expensive. Things are gonna happen and you will spend more money, budget accordingly.
20. Taking good photo is whole another hobby it self. Don’t get that small flipper glass thing that attaches to your phone. Instead get that big one that you can attach to tank it self. Pretty useful with lights and magnifying glass to check your tank at night and easier to take pictures with.
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