Looking for sanity check on my stocking approach

[sonoransurvivalist]

Thanks for taking a look and thank you ahead of time for your feedback. Now, here's a quick overview of the tank to get you to where I am today and where I plan to go from here.
-33.5 gallon (Red Sea Max Nano G2 XL) with filter sock, skimmer, active carbon. (going to add in the nanomat at a later date)
-Tank was cycled using Fritz Turbo start 900 over 21 days. I technically re-dosed with algae-barn's nitrocycle 3 times because I wanted to increase the overall performance and population of the cycling bacteria and also this gave me enough time to really dial in my temperature controls, water testing parameters, and saltwater making process (the first batch of saltwater I made was twice the amount of salt... so 5 gallons became 10 gallons).
-Added two clown fish, some copepods, and two corals based on direction given at the LFS (Rock flower anemone and pink zipper zoanthids) 5 days ago.
-Feeding happens 3 times a day using the Avast auto feeder with the reef jerky blend from avast (20 seconds on, a few minutes to rehydrate, circulator kicks on for 2 minutes to add to the tank)

Tank parameters -
79° (hovers between 78.5 - 79.5)
ammonia .2
nitrite .2 (I'm watching both ammonia and nitrite closely)
ph 8.2
alk 8

The clown fish are voracious, the corals appear to be doing good - close up at lights off, open up in the morning. I'm still kind of questioning if the one is in fact a rock anemone or something else, I'm not seeing a mouth or a flower type of body, but it's clearly opening and closing based on the light cycle. Small patches of diatoms have started to appear around the tank yesterday. I cleaned the filter sock and found the majority of the copepods ended up trapped in there. I also ordered a ball of Chaeto, phytoplankton, and more copepods. I plan to add the chaeto to the rear sump where I built a refugium, the copepods will go directly back there with the chaeto.

I understand the ammonia and nitrite spikes are expected as the nitrifying bacteria scale to the now constant supply from the added fish so I'm just keeping an eye on this and making sure it's on a downward trend. I've got a bottle of Bacter7, should this be a daily addition with the heightened ammonia/nitrite levels to supplement the nitrifying bacteria or only when I do a water change? Do I need to wait until ammonia and nitrites zero out to add in CUC?

This is the crew I was recommend by reefcleaners.org:
20 Dwarf Cerith
6 Nassarius vibex
8 Florida Ceriths
7 Astraeas

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

To me this is not an ammonia/nitrite spike, some test kits show trace amounts of ammonia sometime, anything below .25 can be dismissed as a test error. Anyway, .25 is not harmful, it would take much higher level of ammonia to hurt the fish. Nitrite has no bearing on saltwater. The tank is cycled, the fish are doing well, so IMO its time to stop testing ammonia and nitrite.

You cannot increase overall bacteria performance by adding more bottled bacteria, bottled bacteria can never compare to real bacteria, so a fish and coral are better than any bottled product. More corals from different sources adds even more different kind of bacteria and biodiversity. I used MB7 on and off a couple of times, I don't see any affect either way from it, I don't think it does anything. Adding rocks sand corals or anything else from another tank is the best way to go.

Personally thats more snails than I would want in my tanks, I like to start with a handful, and then increase as algae increases. There are many threads on this site of folks that buy these packages then wonder why all their critters are dying, its because there is not enough biofilm and micro algae to support such a large number of algae grazers.

Again, I would just go ahead and get your snails if you want, don't let that test confuse you, your tank is cycled. Good luck

 

[sonoransurvivalist]

To me this is not an ammonia/nitrite spike, some test kits show trace amounts of ammonia sometime, anything below .25 can be dismissed as a test error. Anyway, .25 is not harmful, it would take much higher level of ammonia to hurt the fish. Nitrite has no bearing on saltwater. The tank is cycled, the fish are doing well, so IMO its time to stop testing ammonia and nitrite.

You cannot increase overall bacteria performance by adding more bottled bacteria, bottled bacteria can never compare to real bacteria, so a fish and coral are better than any bottled product. More corals from different sources adds even more different kind of bacteria and biodiversity. I used MB7 on and off a couple of times, I don't see any affect either way from it, I don't think it does anything. Adding rocks sand corals or anything else from another tank is the best way to go.

Personally thats more snails than I would want in my tanks, I like to start with a handful, and then increase as algae increases. There are many threads on this site of folks that buy these packages then wonder why all their critters are dying, its because there is not enough biofilm and micro algae to support such a large number of algae grazers.

Again, I would just go ahead and get your snails if you want, don't let that test confuse you, your tank is cycled. Good luck

I completely agree on not having enough algae/biofilm to support the entire list of CUC and was planning to do maybe a quarter of that to start plus, I want to have 2 or 3 hermits in the tank.

Really appreciate the feedback on the ammonia and nitrite level testing. I'll focus more on nitrate, phosphate, ph, alk then. I actually bought some used marine hanna checkers for these tests, just need to go buy some re-agent for each.

 

[Biokabe]

Personally thats more snails than I would want in my tanks, I like to start with a handful, and then increase as algae increases. There are many threads on this site of folks that buy these packages then wonder why all their critters are dying, its because there is not enough biofilm and micro algae to support such a large number of algae grazers.

I don't think it's too many snails, especially for a 33g tank. Seems about right to me, at least long-term. Might be too many at this moment in time.

I don't know if you've ever bought from Reef Cleaners, but those dwarf ceriths are tiny. Combined, the 20 ceriths in that pack might eat as much algae as two regular cerith snails. Each one is about the size of a pinky toenail, if that. He uses and recommends them more to get into the tight spaces in the tank and rockwork.

I agree with the rest of your post. The tank is cycled, adding more bottled bac isn't really going to be a benefit here.

Long-term, copepods will be everywhere. If you added them to your tank already, they already are everywhere. They're small enough that they will colonize every available surface that provides shelter and food, and you don't really have a lot of pod-eaters so their numbers will quickly rise to match your carrying capacity. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just that you don't need to worry about them as much as you seem to be. Nothing wrong with a refugium, if you ever get any fish that are heavy pod consumers that'll provide a nice space for a reserve population.