Hello All!
After rambling about saltwater tanks and watching a ton of YouTube videos on reef keeping, my wife surprised me with a Fluval 13.5g tank on August 18th. (Early birthday present) So we jumped right into getting some dry rock and Carribsea live sand from the local petco. After getting the tank scaped the way we wanted it we dropped in some imagitarium pre-mixed saltwater to get the cycle rolling.
Hardware I installed in the beginning was a Fluval Sea Skimmer, Fluval CP1 wave maker, Fluval M50 heater, a small digital thermometer, stock pump, stock pump duckbill outlets.
Starting August 19th I started a fish-less cycle using fritz ammonium chloride (powder), and started with the API Quickstart. I noticed a few days in the API wasn't doing a whole lot in moving the ammonia down, so I went to my LFS and picked up fritz zyme 9 and put the amount recommended on the back of the bottle into the tank. The ammonia started to creep down and nitrites went sky high within 2 days or so. The tank was producing nitrates but the nitrites were pegged at the top level of the API test kit. I went back to the LFS and picked up a Red Sea test kit, and some fritz turbo start. The Red Sea test kit showed the same numbers as the API kit. I put in the 1oz bottle of turbo start. After doing some looking around this forum, reading @brandon429's stuck cycle thread, I did a 90% water change. Dropped nitrites to 0, ammonia remained at 0, and the nitrates dropped to less than 5ppm. After the 90% water change and parameter check, I started adding my first livestock.
I picked up a green chromis, and 2 hermit crabs to see how they would do in my freshly cycled tank. We added those on August 29th. 10 days after the start of the cycle.
A week after adding the chromis and hermits, we added a Wyoming white clownfish pair, 3 turbo snails to clean off the rocks and glass (algae was getting wild), also added 2 more hermits.
After adding the Clownfish pair, I upgraded my regular fluval filtration sponge to an Intank 2nd chamber media basket. Top of the media basket has 2 pouches of Chemipure blue nano, Middle of the basket has the original fluval biomedia bag and more marine pure biomedia gems. The bottom chamber is full of filter floss.
Since adding the fish and CUC my water parameters have stayed pretty consistent.
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrite
2-5 ppm Nitrate
8 dkH Alk
8.0 pH
1.025 Salinity
Completed roughly a 20% water change last weekend to clean out some of the fish poop in the sand and mixed up some instant ocean reef crystals.
Over this weekend I added the first coral to the tank, GSP on the black back wall of the tank. Hoping to see it grow out and cover the back wall.
Fish are happy, we did have one hermit die on us. The others are pretty active and running around the sand bed and rock.
Heres a few pics from the beginning to now.
After rambling about saltwater tanks and watching a ton of YouTube videos on reef keeping, my wife surprised me with a Fluval 13.5g tank on August 18th. (Early birthday present) So we jumped right into getting some dry rock and Carribsea live sand from the local petco. After getting the tank scaped the way we wanted it we dropped in some imagitarium pre-mixed saltwater to get the cycle rolling.
Hardware I installed in the beginning was a Fluval Sea Skimmer, Fluval CP1 wave maker, Fluval M50 heater, a small digital thermometer, stock pump, stock pump duckbill outlets.
Starting August 19th I started a fish-less cycle using fritz ammonium chloride (powder), and started with the API Quickstart. I noticed a few days in the API wasn't doing a whole lot in moving the ammonia down, so I went to my LFS and picked up fritz zyme 9 and put the amount recommended on the back of the bottle into the tank. The ammonia started to creep down and nitrites went sky high within 2 days or so. The tank was producing nitrates but the nitrites were pegged at the top level of the API test kit. I went back to the LFS and picked up a Red Sea test kit, and some fritz turbo start. The Red Sea test kit showed the same numbers as the API kit. I put in the 1oz bottle of turbo start. After doing some looking around this forum, reading @brandon429's stuck cycle thread, I did a 90% water change. Dropped nitrites to 0, ammonia remained at 0, and the nitrates dropped to less than 5ppm. After the 90% water change and parameter check, I started adding my first livestock.
I picked up a green chromis, and 2 hermit crabs to see how they would do in my freshly cycled tank. We added those on August 29th. 10 days after the start of the cycle.
A week after adding the chromis and hermits, we added a Wyoming white clownfish pair, 3 turbo snails to clean off the rocks and glass (algae was getting wild), also added 2 more hermits.
After adding the Clownfish pair, I upgraded my regular fluval filtration sponge to an Intank 2nd chamber media basket. Top of the media basket has 2 pouches of Chemipure blue nano, Middle of the basket has the original fluval biomedia bag and more marine pure biomedia gems. The bottom chamber is full of filter floss.
Since adding the fish and CUC my water parameters have stayed pretty consistent.
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrite
2-5 ppm Nitrate
8 dkH Alk
8.0 pH
1.025 Salinity
Completed roughly a 20% water change last weekend to clean out some of the fish poop in the sand and mixed up some instant ocean reef crystals.
Over this weekend I added the first coral to the tank, GSP on the black back wall of the tank. Hoping to see it grow out and cover the back wall.
Fish are happy, we did have one hermit die on us. The others are pretty active and running around the sand bed and rock.
Heres a few pics from the beginning to now.