First Reef Tank. 32 Gallons. Need Advice.

[adittam]

I don’t know that there is anything wrong with Red Sea tests. Lots of people here like Hanna checkers, but that’s only because they spit out a handy number, you don’t have to interpret anything. That DOESN’T mean they’re more accurate though, just easier. FWIW, my previous career was a chemist (now an ER nurse), so I’m very confident performing water testing. Ironically, I don’t do it often enough, because I’m lazy. Personally I use Salifert tests. Much cheaper than Hanna, and accurate.

 

[Kiboshed]

I don’t know that there is anything wrong with Red Sea tests. Lots of people here like Hanna checkers, but that’s only because they spit out a handy number, you don’t have to interpret anything. That DOESN’T mean they’re more accurate though, just easier. FWIW, my previous career was a chemist (now an ER nurse), so I’m very confident performing water testing. Ironically, I don’t do it often enough, because I’m lazy. Personally I use Salifert tests. Much cheaper than Hanna, and accurate.

I will definitely look into those.

I am a Quality Assurance Tech for the company I work for. I have to do a lot of lab work, but it is normally measuring milligrams of plastic or dust to fit our parameters. Not guessing if colors match lol

 

[cgripp256]

Welcome to the Biocube club

I have some thoughts for you based on my experience.

I’ll preface it as well with the fact I’m a gear junkie and have bought multiple iterations of upgrades myself.

Don’t rush to upgrade everything. The biocube is a great tank out of the box. There are some popular upgrades but they are mostly not necessities. I would a go slow and buy equipment to address a specific issue not just because you read or hear that something is “better” than what you have. Advice I have a hard time following myself
Among many other upgrades, I’ve got the intank media basket and I do feel that’s a worthy 1st upgrade as it directs the water flow onto the filter floss very efficiently and frees up half the middle chamber for whatever you end up doing (refugium or whatever).

As for a skimmer. I have the Coralife v2 skimmer. It works. It’s noisy. And probably not necessary especially not early on with a minimal bioload and CAREFUL feeding.

Reaearch quarantine tanks and that process if you haven’t already. It could save you a lot of heartache but most people don’t bother.

Don’t worry about your pH. It’s fine. a value of 7.8 to 8.3 is the “recommended” range. pH ties in more with coral growth so if it’s in range you’re doing fine.

Ammonia is going to be there at this stage. Even with live rock and sand until the bacterias metabolism balances to the bioload. My cycle took a about a week with 25lbs of live rock and 25 lbs live sand. I also dosed BioSpira to kickstart things as my live rock wasn’t closer to just cured rock and not all that live.

You can check out my build thread as well to see how my journey has gone and feel free to DM me with any questions. I’m new too but am a few months ahead of where you are so may have some useful info.

 

[Kiboshed]

Welcome to the Biocube club

I have some thoughts for you based on my experience.

I’ll preface it as well with the fact I’m a gear junkie and have bought multiple iterations of upgrades myself.

Don’t rush to upgrade everything. The biocube is a great tank out of the box. There are some popular upgrades but they are mostly not necessities. I would a go slow and buy equipment to address a specific issue not just because you read or hear that something is “better” than what you have. Advice I have a hard time following myself
Among many other upgrades, I’ve got the intank media basket and I do feel that’s a worthy 1st upgrade as it directs the water flow onto the filter floss very efficiently and frees up half the middle chamber for whatever you end up doing (refugium or whatever).

As for a skimmer. I have the Coralife v2 skimmer. It works. It’s noisy. And probably not necessary especially not early on with a minimal bioload and CAREFUL feeding.

Reaearch quarantine tanks and that process if you haven’t already. It could save you a lot of heartache but most people don’t bother.

Don’t worry about your pH. It’s fine. a value of 7.8 to 8.3 is the “recommended” range. pH ties in more with coral growth so if it’s in range you’re doing fine.

Ammonia is going to be there at this stage. Even with live rock and sand until the bacterias metabolism balances to the bioload. My cycle took a about a week with 25lbs of live rock and 25 lbs live sand. I also dosed BioSpira to kickstart things as my live rock wasn’t closer to just cured rock and not all that live.

You can check out my build thread as well to see how my journey has gone and feel free to DM me with any questions. I’m new too but am a few months ahead of where you are so may have some useful info.

Wow thank you so much. I'll check it out.

 

[Kiboshed]

I would also like to keep soft begginer corals. Thinking like a Kenya Tree and a mushroom to start out with once things stabilize. Should I raise my PH before I do that? If so how do I go about doing that?

 

[anthonygf]

I would also like to keep soft begginer corals. Thinking like a Kenya Tree and a mushroom to start out with once things stabilize. Should I raise my PH before I do that? If so how do I go about doing that?

Don't worry about raising ph. Let it work out naturally. If you dose something just to raise ph then you may have to keep that up, and then for some reason you don't dose the ph will drop. That is causing instability. They say you ph is fine so let it go for now, keep everything stable and do weekly water changes and you should be good for the next several months.

 

[cgripp256]

Don't worry about raising ph. Let it work out naturally. If you dose something just to raise ph then you may have to keep that up, and then for some reason you don't dose the ph will drop. That is causing instability. They say you ph is fine so let it go for now, keep everything stable and do weekly water changes and you should be good for the next several months.

^This 1000%

 

[Kiboshed]

Aaaannnndddd here come the Daitoms lol doing my research this is a perfectly normal part of the tank cycling process.

Is it normal for them to start growing after only 3 days?

Any safe way to manage it besides just constantly trying to vacuum it up?

 

[adittam]

Honestly no need to manage it at all. They’ll go away on their own as long as you’re using 0 TDS water to mix your saltwater and for topping off the tank.

 

[Kiboshed]

Honestly no need to manage it at all. They’ll go away on their own as long as you’re using 0 TDS water to mix your saltwater and for topping off the tank.

I'm using Nutr-Seawater

 

[adittam]

Nutr-Seawater

Nothing wrong with that whatsoever for water changes, but it’s going to get pricey long-term. Eventually you’ll want to get an RO/DI system for home and mix your own saltwater. HOWEVER, you do not use that to top off the tank due to evaporation. Only the water molecules evaporate, not the salt, so you only replace with RO/DI freshwater, or you’ll be steadily increasing the concentration of your tank water.

 

[adittam]

This is the inexpensive RO/DI system I use. It’s slow (hence the cheap price), but it does the trick for smaller systems.

AQUATICLIFE Aquatic Life RO Buddie Plus DI Four Stage Reverse Osmosis Deionization Unit 50 GPD https://a.co/d/bIT7y9R

 

[Kiboshed]

Just a fun little status update.

Dropped a few tiny marine pellets in near where the bristle worms hang out and they all started crawling out of the sand and rockwork like grabloids to get at them, but also to my surprise so did a tiny blue legged hermit crab. What a pleasant hitchhiker. Can't get a decent pic where he is at.

Also found two tiny red feather duster worms with blood red fronds.

Unfortunately also looks like I have some vermetid snails in there as well. Thought I got all of them, but guess not. Going to leave them be for now since I don't want to disturb my tank right now while everything is settling. Figure as long as I don't overfeed they can't spread.

Getting pretty biodiverse in there just from adding the live rock.

Can also see that the sand is freshly stired up all around the perimeter of one of my rocks by something (hopefully just a bigger snail or something). So I will have to be on the lookout for whatever that might be.

If my water chem is good this Friday I was thinking of adding more cleaner crew (snails, blue leg hermits) to deal with the slowly growing diatoms and algae in the tank.

Thoughts?

 

[adittam]

Just a fun little status update.

Dropped a few tiny marine pellets in near where the bristle worms hang out and they all started crawling out of the sand and rockwork like grabloids to get at them, but also to my surprise so did a tiny blue legged hermit crab. What a pleasant hitchhiker. Can't get a decent pic where he is at.

Also found two tiny red feather duster worms with blood red fronds.

Unfortunately also looks like I have some vermetid snails in there as well. Thought I got all of them, but guess not. Going to leave them be for now since I don't want to disturb my tank right now while everything is settling. Figure as long as I don't overfeed they can't spread.

Getting pretty biodiverse in there just from adding the live rock.

Can also see that the sand is freshly stired up all around the perimeter of one of my rocks by something (hopefully just a bigger snail or something). So I will have to be on the lookout for whatever that might be.

If my water chem is good this Friday I was thinking of adding more cleaner crew (snails, blue leg hermits) to deal with the slowly growing diatoms and algae in the tank.

Thoughts?

This might be your only chance to try to prevent the vermetid's from taking over your rockwork (before you have corals on the rocks and it's even harder to move and get at). Kill every one you see immediately.

 

[Kiboshed]

This might be your only chance to try to prevent the vermetid's from taking over your rockwork (before you have corals on the rocks and it's even harder to move and get at). Kill every one you see immediately.

Are they really that bad? It's just a death sentence for a tank if a few are in there? They will totally cover everything even if I don't over feed?

If that is the case I might as well take out all of my live rock sterilize it and start over.

Either way looks like I will be doing a huge snail purge when I get off work tomorrow morning. I don't understand why people suggest sealing their shells with a dab of super glue cause then you just have a bunch of global of super glue looking really ugly all over your tank. Can just smash them down to the base and kill them right?

 

[adittam]

Are they really that bad? It's just a death sentence for a tank if a few are in there? They will totally cover everything even if I don't over feed?

If that is the case I might as well take out all of my live rock sterilize it and start over.

Either way looks like I will be doing a huge snail purge when I get off work tomorrow morning. I don't understand why people suggest sealing their shells with a dab of super glue cause then you just have a bunch of global of super glue looking really ugly all over your tank. Can just smash them down to the base and kill them right?

I wouldn’t say they are a death knell. More of an annoyance. But they do reproduce at a fast rate, and the more there are, the more exponential the reproductive rate is. Hence the need to eliminate them before there are a billion.

 

[Kiboshed]

I wouldn’t say they are a death knell. More of an annoyance. But they do reproduce at a fast rate, and the more there are, the more exponential the reproductive rate is. Hence the need to eliminate them before there are a billion.

I think I will take out all of my live rock and kill every last one of them I can find. It will give me a chance to bind the rock together with apoxy anyway. It will only set me back the 4 days I have been waiting anyway.

Thought I had got all of them the first time, but I was also in a hurry to not keep my wet live rock exposed to air for too long.

 

[Kiboshed]

Took a lot of work and I don't like my new aquascape as much, but I killed every... last... Vermedit... I could find. Lol There was a lot more than I thought.

Also found a plethora of other living organisms on my live rock. The same 3 pieces of live rock seemed to have the most biodiversity including LOTS of Pods and 2 of some kind of clam (looked like some kind of small mussels, even closed when I took the live rock out so I know they are alive.)

Starting from ground 0, but more confident.

Will do another water check in a couple days.

 

[adittam]

Took a lot of work and I don't like my new aquascape as much, but I killed every... last... Vermedit... I could find. Lol There was a lot more than I thought.

Also found a plethora of other living organisms on my live rock. The same 3 pieces of live rock seemed to have the most biodiversity including LOTS of Pods and 2 of some kind of clam (looked like some kind of small mussels, even closed when I took the live rock out so I know they are alive.)

Starting from ground 0, but more confident.

Will do another water check in a couple days.

Keep an eye out for more vermetids - there might be more spawn that pop up over the next few weeks. I expect that you'll have a little die-off and ammonia spike over the next few days, but it'll settle down soon enough.

 

[Kiboshed]

Keep an eye out for more vermetids - there might be more spawn that pop up over the next few weeks. I expect that you'll have a little die-off and ammonia spike over the next few days, but it'll settle down soon enough.

Thank you. I also expected that. With all of the wet live rock, live sand, and whole bottle of Tims in there I am betting it will process quickly.

From what I just saw there is a pretty thriving group of organisms in there to process and clean stuff up.