Cuc additions

[wilecyote007]

Just a question on clean up crews. I have a 75 gal with live rock, live sand/crushed coral mix. No sump. No protein skimmer. Only 1 clown fish and 3 turbo snails going on 5 days. I have a bio filter hang on.
1. How many cleaners can i add at one time?
2. Do i add fish with them?
3. What cuc mix is effective for my situation?
Thank you for answers....even personal success stories for guidance. Been on this forum for 2 weeks and everyone isaccepting and non judgmental.
Also i plan on adding a couple soft corals later this year

 

[reeferfoxx]

Just a question on clean up crews. I have a 75 gal with live rock, live sand/crushed coral mix. No sump. No protein skimmer. Only 1 clown fish and 3 turbo snails going on 5 days. I have a bio filter hang on.
1. How many cleaners can i add at one time?
2. Do i add fish with them?
3. What cuc mix is effective for my situation?
Thank you for answers....even personal success stories for guidance. Been on this forum for 2 weeks and everyone isaccepting and non judgmental.
Also i plan on adding a couple soft corals later this year

First you should see a diatom bloom. Will look like brown dusting over the sand and glass. Once that starts you should look in to astrea or tronchus snails and cerith snails. For that size tank, I would start with 1 snail per 3 gallons each. Or 25 of each astrea(or trochus) and 25 cerith snails. It seems like a lot but really it's not. Assuming you have 50-75 lbs of live rock, you can remove the bio wheel filter as it wouldn't do much for biological filtration.

 

[wilecyote007]

I only started with 20 lbs live rock. I am ordering some dryrock to cure. I didnt realize how much live rock went for. I can do the math on rock to cuc ratio with what you have told me. I never thought about taking the bio wheel off. It will be ok even without a skimmer?

 

[reeferfoxx]

I only started with 20 lbs live rock. I am ordering some dryrock to cure. I didnt realize how much live rock went for. I can do the math on rock to cuc ratio with what you have told me. I never thought about taking the bio wheel off. It will be ok even without a skimmer?

Bacteria in a reef tank lives on the surface of rock, sand and probably the glass or equipment too. The Bio wheel should be ok for now, but you prematurely added a fish. Stick with what you have for now, work on getting more rock. For beginners I would suggest live rock as it already comes with the organisms needed to sustain a reef successfully. Dry rock can be cured and cycled but you still need to feed the correct organisms. An easier way would be to do a dry rock to live rock ratio such as 70% dry and 30% live. That will cut costs down and help seed the dry rock. Otherwise you need to look into adding copepods, amphipods, zooplankton, and phytoplankton. There will be large amounts of phosphates leaching from the dry rock as well. You will need to understand how that impacts a new tank and the different cycles that will happen. For example, my dry rock tank has hit the 1 year mark and it didn't finish it's cycles to about the 10th-11th month.

First cycle - bacteria
2nd cycle - diatoms
3rd cycle - cyanobacteria
4th cycle - hair algae(<--this is what you want here) Though it's unsightly, this assures the reefer that nutrients from the rock are being absorbed. Your clean up crew will love you for this too.

It is a long process and patience really is a virtue in this hobby.