Hey everyone, just recently go into the hobby. I’ve been wanting to set up a tank for years but due to my current living situation, space is very limited. After cleaning and throwing away anything I wasn’t using in my room, I had enough space for a nano tank. My 2 friends are super into planted fresh water tanks with shrimp and nano fish, so I’ve been watching them set up and build tanks for a few years and wanted to join in. The only thing being that I wanted saltwater fish so I took the plunge and bought a fluval evo sea 13.5 on sale for $143. I watched a ton of YouTube videos in preparation to make sure I set up the tank correctly and began the cycle. I didn’t do everything correctly lol at first I was using lava rock not live rock, i misheard someone in a video saying “ya gotta use lava rock” well they said live, so after a switcheroo, I got live rock in my tank. I used dr Tim’s one and only, live rock, live sand, and Carib sea sea water and was good to let it do its thing. After 13 days my cycle completed and I was testing 0 for amonia and nitrite. So I got 2 clown fish and threw them in Friday morning. They were shook at first of course but have been warming up nicely to their new tank, eating well and they seem happy to me so that’s good. I did water tests yesterday and read out a .25 amonia and .25 nitrite, which had me like what the heck since the night before I added fish they were zero, nitrate was almost 40 ppm, I did a 50% water change and got the nitrate down a lot. I went to my LFS and got a water conditioner like seachem prime and some 8.4 to increase my ph, it was around 7.8. They seem to be happy but I’ll keep my eye on the levels and do water changes as necessary to keep them in good water. So far I’ve been really enjoying watching them swim around exploring and watching them eat is also very enjoyable. I just want my 2 clowns to be happy and healthy before I add anything else to the tank. I do have the idea to add a shrimp and maybe a crab, as well as some general cuc like some snails.