90 Gallon Up & Running - Have Introduced Some Livestock - What Next?

[bunchofsalt]

I inherited a tank from a relative - this is my first saltwater venture. I was able to use his liverock, replaced the sand with new. The tank has been up and running for about six weeks - it has cycled and all parameters were looking good, salt is 1.023, Nitrites and Ammonia both near 0.0 levels. My nitrate is reading at 20ppm which seems higher than I'd like as I'd like to eventually add some corals.

So a couple days ago (Saturday) I decided to go ahead and add a small clean up crew (6 Turbo snails, 10 Nerite snails that are quite small, 2 Scarlett hermits and one Emerald crab. We also put a small amount of fish in - two clownfish and a yellow watchman goby that is paired up with a tiger pistol shrimp. I'm done adding for now, want to see if any flair ups with ammonia or the likes?

I would eventually like to get some coral, from what I'm reading I should wait for six months to a year and I'm assuming my nitrates have to come well below the currenty 20ppm range....? The LFS was telling me to obviously wait some time, but before adding any coral if I wanted to add an anemone for the clownfish then I should do that prior to the coral since the anemone could move around before finding a spot and could sting any coral in it's way. He said wait another 1-2 months before adding the anemone though. Does that sound right?

Everything seemingly doing fine - the two clowns are really all we see during the day. The goby we see come to the entrance of his cave when we feed. The shrimp I was thinking I would never see other than you could tell he was moving sand under the rocks - but then this morning I went to look at 4AM when leaving for work and the pistol shrimp was swimming around the top of the aquarium and then went down and moved some sand around in another corner of the tank - wasn't expecting that. My wife said by the time she came downstairs at 6AM the shrimp was nowhere to be found again, presumeably back in the bunker with the goby I assume!

Any direction, help, thoughts are all welcome...I am trying not to overload anything. And until my father-in-law comes back up to visit I don't have everyhting even running...he had a calcium reactor, etc that I haven't messed with....will wait for help from him on some of that....

 

[bunchofsalt]

Two additional questions - I'm curious what the first pic here is...hard to see...but there is a growth of some sort on the rock...is this good, bad, dangerous...? Need to come out? It's been there a couple weeks...hasn't really got any bigger....

The second, was brought to us wrapped on in newspaper with the liverock - is this a piece of some coral? If so will it take off again or dead?

 

[scoobysnack77]

Id slow down a bit. i know the feeling of being excited and adding things too quickly. your nitrates are waaay to high to be adding delicate corals and even fish and inverts do not favor nutrients that high. id wait til your bio load handles those nitrates a bit better. are you running a refugium? and I've heard some serious horror stories of adding anemone's to a tank if your keeping SPS and even some lps. they move around and are unpredictable. the two my buddy had ate thousands of dollars worth of fish and destroyed their fare share of corals as well. i have a sps dominated tank and I'm glad i steered clear of them in the beginning. but some people have success with them in a well stocked reef.

 

[Dalmatia]

So what is near 0? Ammonia and nitrites? Doesn't sound like you inherited a living tank but dry stuff that came with it?

 

[bunchofsalt]

That's correct - when he took tank down he wrapped all the liverock in wet newspaper - and brought the tank empty. I put the liverock in along with sand and made my water (RODI) mixed with salt six weeks ago. The first week or two the liverock had some die off which I was told to expect. After that to help the cycling I floated a dead shrimp for a two days and ever since then I had been putting fish food in daily to help with the process as well (flakes and small pellets). Beginning two weeks ago I started doing 10% water changes and have done that twice now.

I wasn't planning on adding anything else anytime in the next few weeks....I'm just trying to figure out what I should do from here besides work on getting the nitrate level down below 20 PPM and what would be recommended to aid in creating as much growth as possible on the live rock? There is a good bit of it now turning purple, and a strange growth (that I have a photo for on my 2nd post above) - hoping that's not a nuisance plant growing?

 

[bunchofsalt]

I'm not running a refugium at this point...I do have a protein skimmer that is being run underneath next to the sump. I'm not running the calcium reactor (I know nothing about it, and figured i'd wait on father-in-laws next visit to figure that out...but i'd assume that's not really necessary until you have coral anyway correct? (which would likely be 4-10 more months off if I'm waiting that 6-12 month period.

 

[bunchofsalt]

This is setup below - (when I first put it together )

 

[SeahorseKeeper]

Before adding anything thing else, I would ensure that the ammonia and nitrites are consistently zero. From there, I would work on adding fish and cleanup crew members. I would wait to add an anemone or corals until you know the parameters are stable and consistent. As far as the Ca reactor, I would hold off on that until there is the need for it. This will come when the Ca is being consumed by the corals.

Looks like an awesome setup to inherit!!

 

[bunchofsalt]

Two additional questions - I'm curious what the first pic here is...hard to see...but there is a growth of some sort on the rock...is this good, bad, dangerous...? Need to come out? It's been there a couple weeks...hasn't really got any bigger....

The second, was brought to us wrapped on in newspaper with the liverock - is this a piece of some coral? If so will it take off again or dead?

Thanks for the info - and yes...just going to keep monitoring ammonia and nitrites for the next couple months. I am a little concerned reading some other threads here, is the above picture Aiptasia? It hasn't really grown anymore....been this way a few weeks....

 

[Rpujol85]

Can't really tell what the first pic is, but it's not aiptasia.

The second pic is pipe organ coral skeleton. It's dead. I've never seen any pics of what it looks like alive. From what I have seen it used to be pretty popular back when to add some color to tanks, prior to corals being kept with any real success.

Not to scoff in the face of tradition or be a maverick, but 20ppm is really not all that high. You should be fine to add hardier corals (softies, certain LPS, etc). As long as that is a 4 bulb fixture (could really tell from the pics).

Awesome inherited setup BTW.

 

[bunchofsalt]

Can't really tell what the first pic is, but it's not aiptasia.

The second pic is pipe organ coral skeleton. It's dead. I've never seen any pics of what it looks like alive. From what I have seen it used to be pretty popular back when to add some color to tanks, prior to corals being kept with any real success.

Not to scoff in the face of tradition or be a maverick, but 20ppm is really not all that high. You should be fine to add hardier corals (softies, certain LPS, etc). As long as that is a 4 bulb fixture (could really tell from the pics).

Awesome inherited setup BTW.

Super - thanks. Glad to hear it's at least not aiptasia. Probably just some weed, but if not dangerous i'll just let it be. Also sounds like the pipe organ coral skeleton might as well come out - doesn't sound like it's going to rejuvenate or anything like that.

And thanks - the worst part was getting the setup from Gainesville FL to Atlanta GA - wayyy to heavy.

 

[revhtree]

Looking good and welcome to R2R!

 

[revsgirl]

Awesome! Looking forward to seeing how this comes along.

 

[scoobysnack77]

I'm not running a refugium at this point...I do have a protein skimmer that is being run underneath next to the sump. I'm not running the calcium reactor (I know nothing about it, and figured i'd wait on father-in-laws next visit to figure that out...but i'd assume that's not really necessary until you have coral anyway correct? (which would likely be 4-10 more months off if I'm waiting that 6-12 month period.

well id throw some chaeto in your fuge to eat up a bit of that nitrate and if that doesn't bring it down id throw a sack of seachems de-nitrate stones in your sump to help build up your bacteria levels. those stones work wonders. they brought my nitrates from 16 to undetectable in 2 months. and as for a calcium reactor, they can be dangerous if you don't know how to use it. i just dose a 2part for alk and calcium and i also dose a bit of kalkwasser too which my corals LOVE.