Coral help!

[melonheadorion]

im no expert but heres some of what i know, and dont take this wrong just typing fast and giving out my $0.02 haha first i would remove all that freshwater tank decor as it has plastics and other materials that the salt water will break down and leech chemicals into the water, second from reading the posts your tank is no where near ready for probably fish and especially coral, the tank might or might not have cycled already which is a big thing, salt water tanks are a giant tank that requires chemistry, those rounded river rocks offer little to no biological help,

to add to this, river rocks can hold minerals that are not good for saltwater. dont know if scientifically it would really matter, but if normal rocks have certain minerals and metals in them, it could seriously harm saltwater fish. or at least, that is what ive heard from LFS before. i have also heard the same of the plastic gimmics leeching chemicals. i would definately get rid of those.

 

[CanuckReefer]

Haha yes, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed! I've gotten a lot of great advice here tho and am heading to the LFS tomorrow with a list of stuff I need thanks to everyone here! Also going to do a big water change tomorrow. Unfortunately my little black baby clown fish was missing this morning. Found his skeleton later on. I'm guessing either the puffer or trigger got to him. Weird tho cause neither one really ever cared about him. My puffer will even sleep right next to my seahorse and has never once tried to eat him. Maybe he died and they just helped themselves.

Good you are heading to LFS with a list of things, they will help best they can I am sure. Let us all know what they decided to recommend as well.

 

[JPM San Diego]

Agree with most of this, but nitrites are not toxic (at all) to saltwater fish like they are to freshwater fish.

Oops, I guess I was showing my age. I started with marine aquariums in 1976 and the conventional wisdom then was nitrite is toxic and of concern. One thing I like about this hobby is the opportunity to continually learn new stuff. (or discard old stuff).
Of course I had to check with google and see if the above statement was correct. I found an excellent review by Randy Holmes-Farley

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-06/rhf/index.php

Very interesting. Nitrite is toxic, but is out competed by the high chloride levels in seawater.
Marine fish are protected whereas freshwater fish are not.
None the less, I agree with a water change as several other parameters were not at the correct levels.

 

[schuby]

For sure, don't do everything that everybody says to do. Think of it as if you were cooking dinner for your family by combining all the ingredients that 20 different online people told you to use, when most of them were talking about different dishes. The result would not be good.

 

[firmefatboy799]

Ok so when you mention the coralline are you talking about the red algae? I just noticed some of that growing in my tank today. The GHA is starting to become a lot and I'm not sure if that's good. It's even starting to grow across the sand.

coraline is red hard purpleish or pink growing stuff the sand and red stuff might be diatoms or more than likely cyano algae, its part of the ugly phase or bioload, regular green happens in the cycle of starting a tank i had it for months and depending on your light schedule the lights could be feeding it too much depending on strength of light and how long, whole bunch of factors, just keep on with your tank and add more liverock and try to monitor blooms of stuff and then eventually everything will level out just takes time and patience and a little youtube/forum info