Help me!

Notsolostfish · Jan 27, 2014

Well hello there reefers first let me introduce my nano 20 gallon tank

that's my marine tank

I don't have a sump no place for it and that's my equipment inside the tank a nano boyu skimmer Boyu WG308

and im using a china 100 wat heater it's working good for now no problems with it

and that's my wave maker waver 2000

But the thing is it's not giving me the flow that i want in my tank can i switch to this powerhead? instead or no? or it will be so strong? i believe that i need more flow and this powerhead is for 10 gallon or smaller tank i don't know i wish you guys will help

and this is the internal filter i am using on the left it has a sponge in it and it gives flow from the top should i throw it and upgrade for a better one?

and for my lighting i use this Advance-Reef - Dymax Rex-2 Lighting it comes with 2 bulbs

and the pet store i bought it from he changed the bulbs for me to PL-55WAT SPECTRUM I don't really know if it's good for corals soft ones or anything my aquarium height is 41 cm so i need your opinion on this if i can have some soft corals i will so happy :xd:

but the thing is i miss my old white sand suddenly my sand started to get brown and red :squigglemouth: i really don't know how to remove it or if it will go on it own

DcoarM · Jan 27, 2014

Softies are the easiest to keep. I think u would be fine with that. The red amd brown algea is from lack of flow. I would recommend looking into a hydor pump. I was using some cheaper pumps and had the same algea problem as u. Broke down and bought some hydors ans havent seen any algea.

Notsolostfish · Jan 27, 2014

To be honest with u in lebanon we are limites with pet stores like we don't find everything we want :/ so wish me luck on that but i found that pump in a pet store High Seas Single Powerheads OCT-CV-3000 - Reef Octopus PowerHeads that will be good or not?

DcoarM · Jan 27, 2014

Yea that should do fine. All u need is flow not brand

Notsolostfish · Jan 27, 2014

So do u consider taking the old one? and put that one i showed u?

DcoarM · Jan 27, 2014

Yea... if it doesn't fix the problem u can put both in there

Notsolostfish · Jan 27, 2014

but don't u think 700 gph is a lot?

DcoarM · Jan 27, 2014

No... it should be fine. Put it this way I have a 55g and I have two 1150gph pumps on it and its great

maroun.c · Jan 27, 2014

I would have gone with a Hang on the back skimmer which would have kept things looking neat. I would take out the internal filter as it will add nitrates to your water.
How old is the tank? and how long did you cycle it before you added fish? The cyano you're seeing on the sand could be part of the cycle or just because of lack of flow or higher levels of nutrients in the water.
how abot yor rocks? I'm guessing you got it live? did you cure it? live rock can have some die off in it during shipping and can leach nutrients for some time. Water changes using RODI water at 0 TDS would help
Smaller tanks are a blessing and a curse...
A blessing cause their easy to run with minimal water changes and a good skimmer and a curse as it's really difficult to maintain parameters and the smallest change can throw things out of level.
As for the lights they aren't the brightest lights you can get but at that height you can still getaway with softies and even LPS. Would just make sure you have a couple of good quality T5 lights in there.
Hope this helps

Notsolostfish · Jan 27, 2014

maroun ur totally right about this my flow isnt that great i need to improvise but u know lebanon man it's very limited with stuff i mean i can't find whatever i want and about the cycle it finished from 1 month ago and all my parameters are good

maroun.c · Jan 27, 2014

I don't really think Lebanon is limited on hardware/livestock anymore. You should have seen how things were few years back.
regardless you can still achieve good results with what you got. The key thing I would start with is making sure your skimmer is well tuned and producing good skimmate. Not sure of this skimmer as I haven't tried it yet and with a minimal fish load might be a bit difficult to assess if the skimmer is performing good or bad. Guess only time will tell.
A small wide flow power head can give you some nice flow inside the tank, you might struggle a bit to position and orient it to achieve good overall flow and not blowing your sand around. Once that is done I would daily syphon out or manually remove the cyano for a couple of weeks before making more changes on the system. Might be just par t of the cycle which you can't really be sure it finished 1 year ago. My system new setup has been cycling since 2 years for example as each change I make results in a new shift of the nutrient in/out balance and causes a mini cycle...