How not to start a reef tank, my first reef tank build

Which light should I upgrade to after coral qt is done?

  • 2x ai prime

    Votes: 5 50.0%
  • Reefbreeders 24 in. Photon v2

    Votes: 2 20.0%
  • Stick with current orbit USA marine

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Viparspectra 165w

    Votes: 1 10.0%
  • 2x hipargero 30w

    Votes: 1 10.0%
  • Other

    Votes: 1 10.0%

  • Total voters
    10
  • Poll closed .
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living_tribunal

living_tribunal

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It's basically beneficial "goodguy" bacteria that establishes itself within the rockwork and sand that acts as biological filtration, kinda helps mature your tank to be able to process the ammonia, nitrogen, phosphate, nitrate, nitrite etc.


Why add more bacteria? I’ve seeded this tank with a full bottle of fritz 9000 and like two cap fulls of biospira...
 

Why-Me

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Why add more bacteria? I’ve seeded this tank with a full bottle of fritz 9000 and like two cap fulls of biospira...
Great question there's a hundred plus pages thread about those products...it doesn't hurt to use multiple products it's just adding more diverse bacteria, and the microbacter clean has specific enzymes (that the others didn't have) for cleaning all the surfaces in the tank.
 
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living_tribunal

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Great question there's a hundred plus pages thread about those products...it doesn't hurt to use multiple products it's just adding more diverse bacteria, and the microbacter clean has specific enzymes (that the others didn't have) for cleaning all the surfaces in the tank.


I’ve read and heard everywhere it’s never a bad thing to add a lot more bacteria so I’ll chrck them out. I do think having a smaller weekly feeding session that’s targeted will be best to keeping things in check. I’ll just slowly scale up the feeding as my bacteria scales with it.
 

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I've met a few talented reefers who swear by microbacter7.

After it was included in the BRS WWC new setup videos, I decided to automate my dosing with it. I'm definitely happy with the results and will continue to use in the future. I didn't realize how much it helped get a new tank on the right track until recently.

I put sps in after 1.5 months and everything is really healthy (not recommended for beginners). It definitely puts the bio filter in overdrive. I seeded it with an established aquarium so that prob helped as well.

I've noticed the phytoplankon helping alongside the microbacter7 - especially with dinos. The only other things I dose are calcium, mag, alk, chaetogro, acro power. Pro Bio S if phosphate looks to be rising. Sodium nitrate to make sure nitrates are detectable.
 
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living_tribunal

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I've met a few talented reefers who swear by microbacter7.

After it was included in the BRS WWC new setup videos, I decided to automate my dosing with it. I'm definitely happy with the results and will continue to use in the future. I didn't realize how much it helped get a new tank on the right track until recently.

I put sps in after 1.5 months and everything is really healthy (not recommended for beginners). It definitely puts the bio filter in overdrive. I seeded it with an established aquarium so that prob helped as well.

I've noticed the phytoplankon helping alongside the microbacter7 - especially with dinos. The only other things I dose are calcium, mag, alk, chaetogro, acro power. Pro Bio S if phosphate looks to be rising. Sodium nitrate to make sure nitrates are detectable.

I’ve got my 2-3 month plan in place for tank feature additions.

The first is of course a skimmer and fuge. For the qt coral frag tank I’m just going to add a skimmer. What I had planned next was to start culturing some pods.

If I’m serious about getting a mandarin I want a few months of sustaining a pod farm before I even consider adding one to the tank.

I should probably try my hand at culturing phytoplankton for the frag tank as well

These will be cultures set up outside of the dt.
 

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@aqua_code
I've been dosing Brightwell CoralAmino acid supplement for 8 days or so now, everything in the tank likes it. I have no sps but my zoas, nepthea, frogspawn, duncans have all responded positively.
It's like viagra, my nepthea was a sad shriveled lil guy now he's standing at attention waiting for action!
Zoas colored up and seem to be growing quicker. Maybe I just watch more closely now?
I'm happy with it.

@living_tribunal
Great plan!
 

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@Why-Me are you feeding the tank with other food? I try to use a combination of different things: PE Mysis, Rods Food, Larrys Food. I think alot of the small bits get picked up by the corals.

Here's my TGC Cherry Bomb, really good PE. Pic is low quality sorry.


1568482801093.png
 

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Anything Brightwell is usually high quality. It sounds like either a flow or lighting issue. It's irregular for nepthea to be retracted and then respond to food. Maybe worth running a polyfilter incase there's copper or anything like that.

Twice in the last 15 years I put a trusted source of substrate and carbon in my tank and they ended up having copper in it.

One of those times it melted my nepthea.
 

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I've got a bacterial bloom in my recently set up tank too.
Cloudy water, glass getting dirty and rocks starting to get a fuzz.
Water change day!
 

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I wouldn't worry about the spots on the sand or anything to that matter. You can add all the bacteria you want, but that won't stop cyano, diatoms, bryopsis, etc from growing. Bryopsis will grow on the rocks, consuming PO4 until there is no more PO4 in the rocks. I usually see this last about 3 months or so. Since I only use dry rock, it has happened every time and goes away every time. Diatoms last a week or 2. Cyano will go away, then come back, then go away, then come back. I just ignore it if it isn't too unsightly. Don't worry about these things because it will cause you to stress and then the tank feels like a chore. As long as things are growing, that is all that matters. You should start worrying when things aren't growing, and I mean things like just plain algae.

For the acan and really all LPS, feed them. I once bought an acan over a year ago that had 4 polyps. I didn't feed it and it receded to about 2. Saw people recommend feeding and tried it. Difficult at first, but eventually it took to feeding and then it exploded in growth. I think it had about 30 polyps by the time my tank crashed which was only about maybe 4-6 months later. I currently feed my blasto and it has many new heads even though every other LPS in my tank looks peeved.
 
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living_tribunal

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I wouldn't worry about the spots on the sand or anything to that matter. You can add all the bacteria you want, but that won't stop cyano, diatoms, bryopsis, etc from growing. Bryopsis will grow on the rocks, consuming PO4 until there is no more PO4 in the rocks. I usually see this last about 3 months or so. Since I only use dry rock, it has happened every time and goes away every time. Diatoms last a week or 2. Cyano will go away, then come back, then go away, then come back. I just ignore it if it isn't too unsightly. Don't worry about these things because it will cause you to stress and then the tank feels like a chore. As long as things are growing, that is all that matters. You should start worrying when things aren't growing, and I mean things like just plain algae.

For the acan and really all LPS, feed them. I once bought an acan over a year ago that had 4 polyps. I didn't feed it and it receded to about 2. Saw people recommend feeding and tried it. Difficult at first, but eventually it took to feeding and then it exploded in growth. I think it had about 30 polyps by the time my tank crashed which was only about maybe 4-6 months later. I currently feed my blasto and it has many new heads even though every other LPS in my tank looks peeved.


I appreciate all of the feedback here, definitely puts me at ease.

I cured my dry rock and am doing a second in display tank cure right now to remove hopefully most all of the phosphates.

The bryopsis in the frag tank is coming from a tank I purchased from the dfw frag swap last week.

I’m not too worried but am going to switch out the plugs on all of the frags today since there is some bubble algae on it as well.

I plan on target feeding once a week now instead of two until my tank can accept the additional nutrients.
 
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