Advice for new reef keeper

[SilentGuy]

Hello! I am new to salt water and am switching from keeping RCS colonies. I have a 20 Gallon with a HOB Refugium Prot. Skimmer Combo. Tank is coming on a month old, I have 12 coral frags, mainly soft corals, 20 Lbs of live rock (10 of witch was already seeded from a LFS), 5 blue food hermit crabs, 2 nassarius snails, two and trochus snails. For fish I have a tail spot blenny and one clown fish and plan to keep it to just the two. Are they any issues that my more fellow reef keepers see on the horizon?

 

[BonnieB]

Seems you’re off to a good start! What’s your lighting and schedule? If you’re keeping it to softies/LPS this should be a good arrangement! SPS will need higher light and flow.

 

[SilentGuy]

Seems you’re off to a good start! What’s your lighting and schedule? If you’re keeping it to softies/LPS this should be a good arrangement! SPS will need higher light and flow.

About 10 hours with a AI Prime 16

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Looks good. I would just point that powerheads upwards to get more surface agitation, this helps oxygenate the water more.

 

[BonnieB]

Seems you’re off to a good start! What’s your lighting and schedule? If you’re keeping it to softies/LPS this should be a good arrangement! SPS will need higher light and flow.

About 10 hours with a AI Prime 16

During your “high intensity” part of the day is when you’ll be able to tell if you have enough light because the corals will be reaching up (stretching quite a bit) to the light if they need more (many retract at night so don’t think there’s automatically something wrong if you see that!). I’d watch and see what they show you, I.e., are they settled or reaching, are the polyps or tentacles extending most of the lighting period and during the times of high lighting, are they getting indirect flow and moving, what I would call naturally, or are they barely moving or being blown like in a hurricane. These are initial things to look at and slow, minor adjustments can be made to make them happy. Other than that, I think you will know when there’s truly something wrong and you can just post to our ReefSquad and FishMedics and they will guide you on what to look for and recommend what you should do! I think you’re doing great!

 

[SilentGuy]

Seems you’re off to a good start! What’s your lighting and schedule? If you’re keeping it to softies/LPS this should be a good arrangement! SPS will need higher light and flow.

About 10 hours with a AI Prime 16

During your “high intensity” part of the day is when you’ll be able to tell if you have enough light because the corals will be reaching up (stretching quite a bit) to the light if they need more (many retract at night so don’t think there’s automatically something wrong if you see that!). I’d watch and see what they show you, I.e., are they settled or reaching, are the polyps or tentacles extending most of the lighting period and during the times of high lighting, are they getting indirect flow and moving, what I would call naturally, or are they barely moving or being blown like in a hurricane. These are initial things to look at and slow, minor adjustments can be made to make them happy. Other than that, I think you will know when there’s truly something wrong and you can just post to our ReefSquad and FishMedics and they will guide you on what to look for and recommend what you should do! I think you’re doing great!

Thank you for the advice about the “hurricane” flow. I realized my firework clove polyps were being blown sideward

 

[SilentGuy]

Looks good. I would just point that powerheads upwards to get more surface agitation, this helps oxygenate the water more.

I’ll do that! Thank you