Another lurker who's finally joined.. :)

AlyciaMarieee · May 28, 2018

Welcome!!!

jennesque · May 28, 2018

Thank you for the sound advice. I've been trying my best to take my time. :) The tank has been up like a total of 4 months. Not too long, but I didn't have any sort of large die off with live rock to deal with, and started it up with Red Sea's Mature Reef kit. I added corals as quickly as I did because of a reef show (the first one in my city) was held. But I've seen already some of the negatives to rushing things.

But so far my corals are growing. Clean up crew are working away.. I have fought the urge to do anything crazy about the algae.. it's part of the waiting game. :) I know I've got to take things slowly. The good thing is, I've been researching for many months already. I'm no expert, by any stretch of the imagination.. but I do like to read up on things before adding them to my tank.

Also, here's a FTS from one angle. Working on a build thread.

Floyd R Turbo said:
Welcome to R2R!

Here's a pic from one of my favorite articles on reefkeeping, applicable to new hobbyists and old as well:

The nitrogen cycle is only the startup of a SW tank cycle. The next 6-12 months is a maturing phase, and it's typically in this time frame where algae outbreaks occur and things can sort of roller-coaster, and if you stock the tank up too quickly, you might see corals randomly dying & fish getting sick, etc...hobbyists can very easily fall into the trap of chasing problems = making more problems => giving up and selling everything off. We don't want that to happen to anyone!

Long-term stability and balance are the keys, and you just can't shortcut the process significantly. That's always the #1 thing to keep in mind!