What to do

[Cast Away]

Looking for suggestions on what to do. I'm new to the saltwater hobby. I have 2 Darwin clowns, 2 Nemo clowns, 2 kupang damsels, a stocky anthias, and a yellow watchman goby with his shrimp in my DT. The tank has been going for 11 days. I did not cycle before I added fish. I used turbo start 900 as my live nitrates bacteria. The brown spots in the photo have just started coming up a couple days ago and getting worse daily.
PH-7.4
Alkalinity- 8.1
Nitrates - 1.3
Ammonia was still bright yellow (API test kit)

I haven't done a water change out yet and I'm looking to add my diamond sleeper goby here in the next day or 2.

Should I clean with a water change or what to put the goby in?

 

[Cast Away]

Looking for suggestions on what to do. I'm new to the saltwater hobby. I have 2 Darwin clowns, 2 Nemo clowns, 2 kupang damsels, a stocky anthias, and a yellow watchman goby with his shrimp in my DT. The tank has been going for 11 days. I did not cycle before I added fish. I used turbo start 900 as my live nitrates bacteria. The brown spots in the photo have just started coming up a couple days ago and getting worse daily.
PH-7.4
Alkalinity- 8.1
Nitrates - 1.3
Ammonia was still bright yellow (API test kit)

I haven't done a water change out yet and I'm looking to add my diamond sleeper goby here in the next day or 2.

Should I clean with a water change or what to put the goby in?

200 gallon prostar v2 rimless

 

[Cast Away]

Also suggestions on how much of a cleanup brew I might need at this time for the tank.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

cycling with fish is not cool, and having 11 fish in your tank 11 day old tank is going at warp speed in this hobby. I don't even add fish to my new tanks until the tank has cycled for 3-4 weeks.

seeing how the nitrates are so low, I imagine the tank is still cycling. What is the ammonia and nitrite level? I would check the parameters and personally would only change the water when the tank is cycled, you probably still have days or weeks to cycle.

Please be patient, these are living animals, let the tank cycle for their benefit.

 

[Cast Away]

I understand what I did now. There's no places near where I live that has any knowledgeable staff to educate. I just recently found and joined this forum a couple days ago. We have pumped the brakes big time. Just making sure I keep things right in the tank now that I have these fish in here.

 

[Uncle99]

I have this tank as well. Very nice.
If no one has died for 11 days, or is struggling, lathargic, or popping the surface, your cycled enough to keep your friends going.

A good water change will reduce any excess load if any, and is always a good idea in new new set ups, so go ahead with that thought.

2 sets of clowns?
Not sure how that’s going to work.

 

[Cast Away]

Everyone is doing great. They are all eating well and there's been fighting that we've seen. We watch them all the time.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I understand what I did now. There's no places near where I live that has any knowledgeable staff to educate. I just recently found and joined this forum a couple days ago. We have pumped the brakes big time. Just making sure I keep things right in the tank now that I have these fish in here.

I apologize to have seemed preachy, its not my intention. Our fish rely on bacteria to keep them healthy, and the bacteria grows very slowly, every time you add new fish you have to give time to the system to catch up to.

The very worst possible thing that can happen is that the fish get stressed from the cycling, and catch disease, then your system is infected and must be kept fishless for 2 months for the disease to die out.

Anyway, this forum is the best place to learn, good luck, cheers

 

[Cast Away]

Everyone is doing great. They are all eating well and there's been fighting that we've seen. We watch them all the time.

No fighting. Lol

 

[Cast Away]

I apologize to have seemed preachy, its not my intention. Our fish rely on bacteria to keep them healthy, and the bacteria grows very slowly, every time you add new fish you have to give time to the system to catch up to.

The very worst possible thing that can happen is that the fish get stressed from the cycling, and catch disease, then your system is infected and must be kept fishless for 2 months for the disease to die out.

Anyway, this forum is the best place to learn, good luck, cheers

No worries.

 

[brandon429]

Cast away

You're getting told old cycling science

Your fish weren't harmed, the bottled bacteria protected them you could see the entire time. Lots of fish handlers and shippers skip the cycle using that same bacteria

Your risk never was in the cycle

It's mixing all those fish without disease preps and no degree of cycling would help. Expect disease issues in six months

Remove the new growths yourself, via siphoning don't input animals hoping they will, that's adding to your disease import risk. This is new cycling science, it's about disease preps, not unwarranted cycle fears using bacteria already known and shown here to skip the cycle.

 

[brandon429]

so the updated science is: you did cycle. you just did it atypically

here's a typical cycle, the stuff old cycling science is built on=

dry rock + add ammonia and bottle bac and test over and over for 30-90 days until you show zero ammonia, zero nitrite, and some degree of nitrate.

that method above assumes your test kits are always correct, anyone can search to see that's not the case for anyone.

new cycling science in your case:

*that rock isn't white, its pigmented. if it came wet from a pet store, true live rock, that alone was a total skip cycle needing no bottle bac. but if it was dry, painted rock, you added millions of cells of active bacteria and the fish + fish food all at once. they outputted trace ammonia levels which fed the bacteria in suspension, and in 2-5 days they plated onto surfaces and no testing is required because you paid bigtime for that brand of bottle bac. somebody already worked out the timing in thousands of instant start tanks before this one/on the internet for searching.

by mixing all the species together, disease is about 95% likely in a few months and it has nothing to do with how you cycled. see the fish disease forum on how to fix that, when it shows up.

the nuisance algae forum shows how well random guess animals you add remove invasions: not well, or there would be no help threads there. everyone starts with animals, they don't work 99% of the time you can see in searches this isn't me being negative. when you have a growth in the tank that might turn into something bad you saw in study searches, you input a siphon hose and suck it out with a 3 gallon water change, over and over, unless you want a wrecked tank.
you are the clean up crew, not an animal. it's your job to ensure your tank stays uninvaded. turning your lights down much less intensity will help you.

a quick start reef means you stay busy, a long time, until system maturity sets in. the cycle was 0% of your issue.

 

[Rick's Reviews]

Also suggestions on how much of a cleanup brew I might need at this time for the tank.

None lol, nothing, don't .... On a friendly advice

 

[Rick's Reviews]

I'll add:
Nothing for cuc to eat

 

[Cast Away]

I appreciate everyone's input and like I said, there is a ton of misinformation on the internet and the only place I can buy fish from is 60 miles away and they all have different answers for any question that's asked. My fish have been QT'd with cupramine but in the future I will do the more extensive QT with my fish. I'm just trying to get it right.

 

[brandon429]

thats a darn nice start. the problem is, you're going to want to add 20-50 coral frags, some snails, a cool shrimp, some crabs etc and if you add those without fallow, you just paid for QT fish all for nothing, the untreated wet items will vector in disease. see this article as to why:

Biosecurity

A short introduction to aquarium biosecurity

www.reef2reef.com

the reason I said above you'd stock the tank first, for months, without fish, then add fish in the end, is so you can uphold that article above without doing opposite from it. I'm assuming you don't want to run 2x full reef tanks at the same time...cost etc. (one is a receiving fallow tank that runs three months before you move items into the display, any wet item you'll ever add, then its sterilized and started over for the second group of additions, over and over until your tank is stocked if you choose to add fish first)

buying/paying for QT expensive fish then inputting them into a system destined to receive dirty untreated inputs is a huge waste of cash and time, it's the wrong order of ops.

 

[Cast Away]

I think the wife and I have decided to do a fish only tank. Not that it changes anything on the approach to adding fish.