My first month of reefing

PoorReefer · Apr 5, 2020

So I'm going on my fourth week I believe and here's what I've done:

I. I built my aquascape out of marcos, and some rock that came with the tank, I used muriatic acid and bleach on the used rock before seriously rinsing in rodi water and leaving in the sun for a week and a half.
2. I filled my tank with 0 tds rodi water and added salt to 1.024. I added live sand after
that which made a huge mess in the tank, I will not add sand after water again.
3. I used bio-spira and began dosing ammonia nitrate to way past 2ppm and eventually dialed it back.
4. Nitrates built quick and ammonia was being consumed at a rapid rate as expected, but after a week or so I started to notice nitrates went to 0.
5. everything was at 0 as if it was fresh saltwater, and nothing was growing in the tank at week 2. I was worried that my bacteria was starved dead or something.
6. Thinking there's no way I lost my nitrates I added ammonia, and it was gone the next day.
7. I went to a LFS and talked to a lady who's rap sheet includes 30 years of reef keeping and she said "why not add some snails", I kinda wanted to add something and I figure she could see that, so I bought 3 snails and 3 hermit crabs.
8. After a week of having the snails they are all still alive, even though I see no real algae. I will occasionally see a hermit but they are either alive or dead and not putting out and ammonia. So probably alive.
9. Still reading 0 ammonia, well .25 using api, and 0 nitrite and 0 nitrate I added a little bit of ammonia nitrate to the tank. I read up on the danger adding ammonia nitrate to a tank with snails and hermits and found that they are rather resilient to ammonia, so I kept it at 1ppm.
10. Today I'm seeing 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and 20ppm nitrate. I see a few speckles of what I believe are diatoms, they look almost like rust on my sand and a few small spots on my rock. I also added an algae wafer that I use for my pleco in hopes the snails will find it, but this was days ago and they haven't found it. This may have caused the diatoms.

So at this point I feel like the nitrogen cycle is complete. Do I need to encourage the diatoms to bloom, followed by the cyano I believe then the coraline algae?
Or should I eradicate the diatoms now? I used the Hanna Phosphate reader and it came back .10, I feel like that's not too high but it is enough food for algae.

I have a 10g tank that I'm going to drill for a refugium, but I haven't plumbed anything for it yet. I think I'm going to plumb it from the overflow before it gets to the sock directly into the refuge and run that to the inside chamber of my sump? I assume that will handle the phosphates.
I have not been running my protein skimmer BM curve 5 at all because all it did was bubble over. I was gonna wait till there was something in the water for it to skim at create the needed film to stop the overflow...? hopefully

So... Any advice or input?

Pictures up next

These are the suspected diatoms?

Cory · Apr 5, 2020

I wouldnt worry so much. Looks like its cycyled. Id stop dosing ammonia. The sand bed got rid of the nitrates. Id raise the salinity to 35ppt (1.026) over a few days. Looks like diatoms. Normal and goes away when silicate runs out. If using ro/di water it will go in a week or two.

PatW · Apr 5, 2020

Your tank looks fine. I would not add ammonia. It isn’t good for your critters. You have a few diatoms but that is normal.

As for your skimmer, they often overflow initially. They usually settle down after a few days. But sometimes something gets into the water that excites them. In the latter case, I have some salt water on hand. I empty the cup when it fills, and repeat usually after 10 reps, whatever is in the water is pretty much removed. I add the saltwater to replace what is removed during the process.

I suggest that you get your sump up and running. I don’t know what your lighting is but grazers need something to eat and lighting will yield some algae for them.

You are pretty close to thinking of adding fish after they have been quarantined.

PoorReefer · Apr 5, 2020

Ok, so no more ammonia. I wasn't really comfortable adding it anyway.
I have orbit marine IC pro, and I have been running them to encourage some kind of algae growth over the last few days. I will leave the diatoms to them.
I have a quarantine tank ready to go with ammonia alert, pvc, no substrate or rock, HOB filter and a bottle of bacteria, but i also have a piece of filter floss that will fit the HOB soaking in the sump.
So I'm thinking I should be able to set up QT with filter floss and get a fish the next day, so long as water parameters look good.
1. Did you purchase meds the fish might need before they needed it, or wait till they are sick?
2. Is it a common practice to pre medicate fish during QT in order to make sure of no nasties?
3. And for the quarantine tank, do I use tank water used from the FIRST 20% water change?
my nitrates are reading 20ppm now.
Oh and as far as my salt goes, I corrected that couple of weeks ago and my refractometer says 1.026, my plastic hydrometer says 1.026, but my apex says 33ppt. I calibrated it with apex calibration fluid, I bought extra so I can re calibrate, but I used the readings from the other 2 because it makes sense,2v1. I just used the 33ppt as a baseline to make sure there wasn't any major shifts.

AndyinAtlanta · Apr 5, 2020

I personally would't recommend pre-medicating new fish, and I don't see a reason to buy medication you might not use (it'll eventually go bad regardless). I'd just say start small, maybe one-to-two fish. If you're nervous your tank isn't ready that I wouldn't go out an buy a $5000 exotic fish. Joking aside, just monitor the levels and take it slow.

Cory · Apr 5, 2020

With some macroalgae under excellent lighting, ammonia will not be a concern ime.

Mr_Knightley · Apr 5, 2020

Welcome to Reef2Reef, and to the hobby! Thank you for sharing your story so far, keep us posted on it!
Good luck and God bless you.

PoorReefer · Apr 5, 2020

Ok thanks. I think I'll drill the refugium and plumb it while my fish is in QT. I still don't know what fish I want, I'm more excited about the ecosystem itself haha.

Suohhen · Apr 6, 2020

Welcome to the hobby PoorReefer! It is definitely common for people to premedicate with something like praziquantel, but not everyone chooses to premedicate. I personally only premedicate fish that are prone to disease or have shipped from the other side of the world, including most wrasses.
For water changes I personally always use water from my display tank on my QT, because I do a 100% water change every day for at least the first four days in order to allow the bio filter to establish and also encourages me to do more water changes on the DT, and obviously this is even more important to keep up on a new tank. There are certainly risks involved with doing this so do your own research, but I think the risk involved with such a low percentage of fish being quarantined in this hobby necessitates these types of solutions.
I don't think the word quarantine is very descriptive of the benefits you receive. The main purpose imo is to let you introduce yourself to the fish so they see you as the source of food. This is easier in a QT where they don't have as many places to hide and obviously don't have to compete for food with the other fish. This is plenty of reason to isolate new fish, everything else is gravy. I extend this reasoning to the clean up crew as well. So I encourage you to keep feeding the cuc, a very little bit at a time and remove uneaten food if possible. I know this can be tricky as you pointed out the algae wafer disappeared. What you can do is look for the biggest dead zone, it's the area your most likely to find most of the crabs. If this is under the rocks feel free to move some rocks for now, turn off pumps if you need to and meaty food can be more enticing.
The diatom growth is totally normal, it is just a part of the cycle. You are on top of things! If algae starts to become an issue just turn the lights off for a few days and you'll be back to normal.
Best of wishes to you