My first reef tank [pic]

[tetra]

Great tank...what is your daily and weekly maintanance?

 

[Alex1]

I like the tank. Lots of cool corals.

Might want to take out the sand star though. He will eat all your sand criters.

Alex

 

[Quillen]

Congrats on everything going smoothly! It looks great, I love maroons

.

 

[troyrb]

Thanks for all your encouraging comments. As for daily maintenance I usually replace a gallon of water every other day. I test the water levels about once every other week. I feed the fish and crabs once a day and add DT's Plankton every other day. Once a week I will ad some Kent calcium and Kent techCB part A & B. About the only problem I have is my Alk. is a little lower then it should be and I always have a hard time keeping it at the right level. I just got the star fish about a month ago. I have heard both good and bad things about sand sifting stars so I desided to chance it since my sand bed is so deep. Right now he is pretty small if he gets too big I will trade him for some other live stock.

 

[Quillen]

I have a smaller tank as well, over the years, I have helped stock a friend's tank who wants larger fish. If I have had them in my tank, she has seen them every month and knows they have had good health. I get to see them go to a good home

. Feel free to post if you have any questions as you go. I love the bubble corals, I have a couple different kids

.

 

[reefhope]

Nice looking tank. I too had a fluval, I started fish only then moved to reef. Do you test for nitrates? I removed my fluval about 3 months ago and it seems to have reduced nitrate levels, although they were not too out of wack with it (10-15ppm, now less than 10ppm). Nice corraline growth on the back glass.

What is your alk, you say it is lower than should be. Also, what test kits do you use...hopefully not RedSea, could give faulty readings. Based on your corraline growth and "look" of corals I'd guess your alk is fine.

 

[troyrb]

I haven't had any problems with the Fluval and nitrate levels yet. But I do clean the fluval once a month so that maybe why I haven't ran into problems. I was uning RedSea test kits when I started then I switched to Hagen test kits which I'm using now. My alk. reading with them is usualy around 2.0 but I don't think it is very acurate. I just orders Tropic Marin text kits to try. I have been hearing a lot of good things about them recently.

 

[troyrb]

This is a picture of my 30g reef tank I started about 10 months ago. After a lot of ups and downs it is finally stable and everything has been thriving in the tank for the last four months. I have a ton of coraline growth and have even noticed my corals growing.

My fish include:
Maroon clown
Yellow Coris
Scissor-Tail Goby
Scooter Blenny

Inverts:
10 astrea snails
4 turbo snails
1 Sand sifting starfish
1 Emerald crab
1 red hermit crab
1 coral banded shrimp
2 large christmas tree worms
1 purple feather duster
1 unknown type clam

Corals:
Green Star polyps
Torch coral
Candy coral
Green frogspown
Grape Bubble coral
Metallic green mushrooms
Red mushrooms
yellow polyps
Green ricordia's
Yellow Goniopora

I'm using a Bak-Pak skimmer, 2 powerheads, 304 fluval for circulation and water treatment only, and custom hood with 110 watts PC bulbs 10k daylight and atinic. I have about 55lbs of fugi LR, and a 3 inch deep live sand bed. Sorry if the picture seem blury. I just got a new digital camera Sony DSC-P1 and i'm still learning how to work it.

[ July 25, 2001: Message edited by: troyrb ]