NY_Caveman
likes words, fish and arbitrary statistics
Day 10 - Something's Fishy
-The Method-
*Continue to test ammonia and nitrite. Once both are 0 for two days in a row, add first fish!
-The Madness-
I knew we were getting close to the cycle stabilizing as ammonia had fallen to 0 recently and only nitrites were hanging on, but as of Friday evening had dropped to only 0.5ppm. Both Saturday and Sunday had stable readings of 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite with nitrate at either 10 or 20ppm. It's difficult to tell as the shades on the API card are so close at that range.
Let me start by saying that the combination of clean, cured, but bacteria populated live rock, plus live sand, plus Bio-Spira as absolutely the way to go and I will likely go this route for any future tanks. Using the Real Reef Rock brand Live Rock from a trusted source at my LFS meant that there were no nasty hitchikers at all (only got a Turbo Snail which was put into the LR tank by the LFS), yet I was able to start the tank as if it was already far more mature than it was. I'm not sure the live sand and bio-spira were truly necessary with such great rock, however the sand was essentially the same price from my source as dry sand and the Bio-Spira was only $20. At worst it gave me peace of mind, and at best it actually helped, which is well worth the cost to me. Additionally, while we didn't "cycle" with fish, we absolutely could have given how low the levels stayed. Total ammonia never got higher than 0.5ppm and that was only for a day, before dropping down to 0.25ppm for a couple of days. Additionally, the harmful free ammonia topped out at less than 0.025ppm, the lowest level "alet" on the Seachem ammonia alert monitor, and again, that was only for on day before dropping to basically undetectable levels. Nitrite topped out at 1ppm for a few days, which is simply not a harmful level to marine life. A study actually showed that clownfish can tolerate nitrite levels in the hundreds of ppm. It's deadly to freshwater fish, but just not harmful at the low levels you get during even a traditional cycle in a home aquarium. Straight up, we COULD HAVE thrown a couple clowns in the tank and they would have done just fine as the combination of bacteria sources kept levels so low during the highly expedited cycle. I'm glad we didn't however, as it allowed us to focus more on dialing in the lighting schedule we like, and being able to deal with the normal mid/late cycle diatom bloom without having new fish in the tank to stress.
At this point though, it was time for our first inhabitants. This is my third tank, and first in 10 years. Each of the last two started with an oscellaris clownfish, and I planned on this one being no different. The obvious place to go was A Reef Creation, the LFS that we went to for the tank and live rock as all of the oscellaris and percula clowns they sell are bred in house. The owner, Randy gave my wife and I a tour of their breeding operation, which consisted of about 10 or 15 mated pairs pumping out fry. We even got to see some week old fry in one tank and some month old ones that just recently got their colors. It was actually a bit difficult to find what we really wanted, however, which was a normal old 3 stripe oscallaris or percula, as most of the fish they breed end up producing "designer" babies. If you're in Western New York and want a cool looking designer clown, this is hands down the best place to go, but if you want an old school version, the selection was a bit slimmer. Eventually we did find two perculas that fit the bill. One was a bog standard percula and the other was pretty close, with the only "non-standard" coloration being the back stripe near the tail did not go fully around the fish and instead rounded out and ended on the side. It looks pretty cool! The one with the rounded our back stripe is named Nori, and the normal one is Rory.
In addition to the clowns we picked up a basic clean up crew to start. We went low quantity compared to most as we knew there just wasn't going to be much to eat for awhile. We picked up 5 astrea snails, 2 nassarius, 2 babalonia, 5 scarlet hermits, 2 red mithrax crabs, and a sand sifting conch. We figured that the astreas and the turbo we already had would take care of the glass and rocks, the hermits would help with rocks and sand, the nassarius and babalonia with leftover food, and the conch with the sand in general. We got the mithrax crabs simply because I like them, and they were a good pre-emptive strike against bubble algae down the road.
As of this morning ammonia and nitrite both measure 0, so the tank certainly seems thus far to have been fully cycled to handle the new bioload.
-On the Docket-
I'll continue to monitor ammonia and nitrite levels and provided they remain stable, will pick up a few frags to get started with. We're also working on building a fish wishlist that will help guide our stocking going forward. Once we have the list build we'll figure out a preferred order with the leeway for impulse buys along the way. We'll then start to stock further as we see some of those fish become available at one of our two or 3 preferred local LFSs taking aggression and order of stocking into account.
As of now we're looking at stocking the following over time:
1 Blenny (Starry, Lawnmower, or Tail Spot)
1-2 Reef Safe Wrasses (McCoskers, Carpenter's, some sort of Fairy, etc.)
1-2 Anthias (really like the Square or Fathhead. Wife likes the Borbonius
1 Purple, Exquisite, or Helfrichi Firefish
1 "reef safe-ish" Dwarf Angel. Either Coral Beauty or Flame
1 Kole Tang
+
Maybe an additional Yellow or Purple Tang added at the same time as the Kole.
Perhaps a small 3 or 5 fish group of blue-green Chromis or even better, blue reef chromis.
Congratulations! I am not a huge fan of “misbar” clowns, but that one is very, very cool. I love how it happens in the third stripe at the tail. Nice find!
