I just bought a second hand tank.
It had a baby black and white clownfish and a blue spot puffer, a pile of live rock and a scattering of sand.
It is an aquaone minireef 120 (30g).
I put the rock in a box (no water) and transported all the water back in containers. I kept the existing sand in the bottom and added the same amount of new sand (didn't rinse, cloudiness cleared in 30mins).
I plan to grab natural salt water as I live near the sea and there is a jetty nearby that people collect water from.
Skimmer was absolutely filthy. Centre tube I thought was black till I cleaned it.
Got some test kits and found the following.
Temp 25c
KH 7
Salinity 1.045
pH 8.2
Ammonia 0
Nitrate 0
Rock had a bit of gree algae
My LFS has not had stock for 3 months due to covid and when I went in the day after collecting the tank they had stock but it was a frenzy of buyers. I know I shouldn't have but thinking the tank would have already cycled and the frenzy, I bought a Lawnmower blenny, melanurus wrasse, and standard baby clownfish. I also grabbed one of each of trochus, conch and nassarius snails. I also grabbed a red indica starfish.
Starfish got exposed to air on transfer to the tank and then grabbed hold of a rock and slowly dropped off dead over 2 days.
Live rock has been oozing goo and turning white in places.
Ammonia has risen to 0.125 over 4 days, no Nitrate. Skimmer, after a good clean and calibration is starting to work after 2 days but I am running wet and it is quite white foam.
I pulled the 100w heater out and put a 150w one I had from a freshwater tank a few yrs ago. (Last owner said the heater wasn't big enough and It got cold at night (20c)).
I am finding that the tank is evaporating around 2-3L (1g) of water over 24hrs. Topping up with de-cl tap water (as this reads 0 in salinity reading, others say we have very good pure tap water so don't bother with RO...people bottle it and sell it all over the world as "pure Tasmania"). My tap water has a pH of 7 so buttering with Sodium Bicarb from my swimming pool supply to 8.2 before adding.
Bit worried about the salinity so been taking the odd litre of water out of the tank and replacing with de-cl tap. Doing this slowly and got salinity down to 1.04.
As totally new to marine, any tips or tricks from where I am starting?
It had a baby black and white clownfish and a blue spot puffer, a pile of live rock and a scattering of sand.
It is an aquaone minireef 120 (30g).
I put the rock in a box (no water) and transported all the water back in containers. I kept the existing sand in the bottom and added the same amount of new sand (didn't rinse, cloudiness cleared in 30mins).
I plan to grab natural salt water as I live near the sea and there is a jetty nearby that people collect water from.
Skimmer was absolutely filthy. Centre tube I thought was black till I cleaned it.
Got some test kits and found the following.
Temp 25c
KH 7
Salinity 1.045
pH 8.2
Ammonia 0
Nitrate 0
Rock had a bit of gree algae
My LFS has not had stock for 3 months due to covid and when I went in the day after collecting the tank they had stock but it was a frenzy of buyers. I know I shouldn't have but thinking the tank would have already cycled and the frenzy, I bought a Lawnmower blenny, melanurus wrasse, and standard baby clownfish. I also grabbed one of each of trochus, conch and nassarius snails. I also grabbed a red indica starfish.
Starfish got exposed to air on transfer to the tank and then grabbed hold of a rock and slowly dropped off dead over 2 days.
Live rock has been oozing goo and turning white in places.
Ammonia has risen to 0.125 over 4 days, no Nitrate. Skimmer, after a good clean and calibration is starting to work after 2 days but I am running wet and it is quite white foam.
I pulled the 100w heater out and put a 150w one I had from a freshwater tank a few yrs ago. (Last owner said the heater wasn't big enough and It got cold at night (20c)).
I am finding that the tank is evaporating around 2-3L (1g) of water over 24hrs. Topping up with de-cl tap water (as this reads 0 in salinity reading, others say we have very good pure tap water so don't bother with RO...people bottle it and sell it all over the world as "pure Tasmania"). My tap water has a pH of 7 so buttering with Sodium Bicarb from my swimming pool supply to 8.2 before adding.
Bit worried about the salinity so been taking the odd litre of water out of the tank and replacing with de-cl tap. Doing this slowly and got salinity down to 1.04.
As totally new to marine, any tips or tricks from where I am starting?