Copepods are your best friends and they’ll do wonders to keep your tank healthy. Unless you have a fish with special dietary needs, which should be off limits for a beginner anyway, you only need to add copepods once. If you feed something like live phyto you’ll increase their population, if you don’t they’ll right-size their population to the available food. I’d recommend adding copepods early and feeding live phyto. Also note: the amount of phyto you need to add to a new tank is dramatically lower than what the dosing instructions say. The dosing instructions are generally for a fully loaded tank with copepods and corals.
Do not put anything in the tank unless you have a reason to. If you have a string of tests that point to the need to dose something, start with a half the recommended amount and measure the results. For example: don’t just start dosing All For Reef because you saw the amazing reviews without testing your consumption rates to make sure you need it.
If you’re dosing something you can’t test for be very careful. If you’re going by visual results alone you can be confounded by a lot of different variables. Worst of all, a number of these products are snake oil.
“Nothing happens fast in a reef tank” applies to both good and bad outcomes. If you see something going south correct it slowly—you’re probably seeing the effects of something you did 2 weeks ago. If you see things happy don’t assume it’s because of the last thing you did. Good habits over time can lead to varied outcomes in this hobby. Don’t beat yourself up if everything isn’t perfect. I’ve seen more major problem threads on this forum from people who spot a problem and look for an overnight fix.
