Here are some pictures
1. The tank with the rocks, no water.
2. The tank with rocks and water and VHO lighting.
3. The tank under 2 1watt corallife LED Moonlights.
I have run into a bit of an algae problem. It seems to be a brown algae and I am assuming that it came from the big incandescent flood light I had running on the tank for a couple of days between the VHO's and T5's. It seems that all the algae is on the front of the rocks and if you look closely it developing bubbles on it...
Since all my levels are to 0!!!! now I am going to get some fish soon and I am probably going to pick up some snails and crabs to try and get this algae under control tomorrow.
The algae is probably a diatom bloom and is part of cycling a new tank. It will go away in a couple of weeks. IMO you do not want to add "some" fish and "some" snails and crabs. This will be too much bio-load for the existing bacteria and will result in an ammonia spike. Since the diatoms are a short term problem I would not stress over adding something to control them. They will go away on their own.
The algae is probably a diatom bloom and is part of cycling a new tank. It will go away in a couple of weeks. IMO you do not want to add "some" fish and "some" snails and crabs. This will be too much bio-load for the existing bacteria and will result in an ammonia spike. Since the diatoms are a short term problem I would not stress over adding something to control them. They will go away on their own.
Yeah that makes a lot of sense... So do u think I shouldn't add anything right now?
I guess when I said "some" it sounds like I am just running out and stocking the tank. My plan was to get 1 clownfish, 1 cleaner shrimp, a couple of snails and a couple of crabs... would you say that I am at the stage to do that now? or should I wait a little longer?
If you have seen your levels go up and come back down to zero you are OK to go ahead and start adding livestock. I am conservative would probably break your initial list into 2 parts. I'd add the fish and a hermit or snail and monitor your levels. If they go up wait until they come back down to add the rest. If they don't move then you could add the others in two or three days. I have found that shrimp are sensitive so I might not add the cleaner shrimp right away.
I always let my tank recover after adding any any new inhabitants. Since I QT everything that goes into my tanks for 2 - 6 weeks the recovery time for my aquarium is built in. BTW, when using a QT tank if you add any new critter to the QT tank the quarantine period starts over.
Alright so I have added some livestock. Unfortunately I didn't get CarmieJo's advice until after I had already bought the livestock and added them. But everything seems to be going well. They all seem to be healthy and my levels have all stayed stable.
I ended up adding:
1. 1-Dottyback
2. 1-Cleaner Shrimp
3. 5-Hermit Crabs
4. 3-Turbo Snails
5. 3-Nassarius Snails
I am not absolutely sure if the Dottyback I have is just a Dottyback or a Royal Dottyback From what I have heard, the difference is that a royal's head starts as purple and fades to yellow by their tail and a non-royal Dottyback start and finishes with the same colours but they have a definite line where it changes from purple to yellow.
My guy has the pronounced line so I am assuming he is a Dottyback.
For the first couple of days the Dottyback was fairly timid but he out most of the time now. The shrimp on the other hand has found a specific area that he hides in almost all of the time. He seems to be coming out a tiny bit more over time which hopefully will continue.
I will try and post some pictures of them some time over the next few days.
The reason I started with the Dottyback instead of the clown is because I have heard they are a little hardier. I realize that he may present a problem when I start adding other fish due to aggressiveness but hopefully this isn't the case. I already have a plan to rearrange some of the rocks if he is being aggressive. Plan being that this would disorient him a little and he would be more worried about finding a new home for himself then bothering the new fish. Then by the time he has found his new home the other fish would be settled.
I haven't been able to update this in a while because I have been really busy with work. I had some problems with cynobacteria during this time and of course I assumed that the problem came from lack of flow. All I could think of was increasing the flow but then I realized I really wasn't doing enough water changes... Now I am doing larger and more frequent water changes and I have decreased the hours of T5 lighting to 7 hours and it has made a big difference. My cyno problem is almost solved!
I also added some more clean up crew over the last few weeks and a sand sifting starfish. They all seem to be doing well and all my levels have stayed at 0 (oh yeah during this whole cyno thing I added phosphates to the list of things I test for and I am going to keep this up to keep a better eye on the tank).
I will add lots of pictures very soon. I know just reading about my tank is kind of boring so I will do that asap to show what is going on.
1. Overview of the tank
2. Dottyback Goby
3. Sideview of tank
4. The two fish in the tank
5. Mushrooms, feather duster, clam and some pinkish coral
6. Cleaner Shrimp
icon under their name to add to their reputation. 