New Reefer first tank / coral looking for advise

peffy03 · Jun 25, 2020

Hi there, new reefer as the name suggests.
44 gallon tank 36w 24tall 14deep
started a month ago with 50lbs of live rock and 30lbs live sand
HOB and protein skimmer.
2 AI Prime 16HD about 10" from water
Added my first coral yesterday 4 frags
water parameters yesterday were PH 8.0 ALK9 calc450 mag1480
salinity is 1.026
Zoanthids are on the top right about 210 par seem to be doing well
On the bottom i have hammer corals and star poly and other poly, these are all 150-200 par
they all opened up yesterday and looked great this morning. my sunrise was from 6-8am and went from 60% moonlight to 50uv 60v,ry,B, 15g, 15r, 0ml, 73cw
around an hour ago i noticed the hammers and stars were retracting. I checked the parameters and saw my alk was down around 8 and my ph was around 7.8 i added 10ml or so of alk buffer (fritz rpm).

Trying to understand why they are retracting.. the hammers appear to have responded well to the alk adjustment, the stars are still retracting.

any suggestions?

WIReefer · Jun 25, 2020

Alk around 8 is just fine! And how long has the tank been running for?

peffy03 · Jun 25, 2020

WIReefer said:
Alk around 8 is just fine! And how long has the tank been running for?

Little over a month. The 7.8 ph was bothering me more than the 8 on the alk, i thought it would be helpful to give them both a bump.

Lithoman · Jun 25, 2020

Welcome .. you are about to open your reefing world with tons of knowledge.. Enjoy the ride!

Silverfish · Jun 25, 2020

Welcome to R2R!

WIReefer · Jun 25, 2020

peffy03 said:
Little over a month. The 7.8 ph was bothering me more than the 8 on the alk, i thought it would be helpful to give them both a bump.

Maybe just needs some time little over a month seems kind of a short time to add corals. How many fish in tank? Also this time of year my tank run around 7.8-8.05 for ph I would not chase a ph number. But it looks like your off to a great start!

peffy03 · Jun 25, 2020

WIReefer said:
Maybe just needs some time little over a month seems kind of a short time to add corals. How many fish in tank? Also this time of year my tank run around 7.8-8.05 for ph I would not chase a ph number. But it looks like your off to a great start!

I thought the same, my lfs suggested some softies or lps..
I have 2 clowns, 1 Bennie, 1 assessor, 3 cardinal fish, 1 Kole tang. They are all pretty small
All fish have been in there for a week or more.
nitrites nitrates and ammonia are currently immeasurably low following my cycle finishing

peffy03 · Jun 25, 2020

I’m just worried about this guy.

WIReefer · Jun 25, 2020

peffy03 said:
I thought the same, my lfs suggested some softies or lps..
I have 2 clowns, 1 Bennie, 1 assessor, 3 cardinal fish, 1 Kole tang. They are all pretty small
All fish have been in there for a week or more.
nitrites nitrates and ammonia are currently immeasurably low following my cycle finishing

That’s good that ammonia is zero, in the future I would recommend not adding that many fish at once especially since your tank is new. Keep an eye out for your parameters daily for the next month or so to make sure there are no spikes. Give the coral some time to adjust.

peffy03 · Jun 25, 2020

WIReefer said:
That’s good that ammonia is zero, in the future I would recommend not adding that many fish at once especially since your tank is new. Keep an eye out for your parameters daily for the next month or so to make sure there are no spikes. Give the coral some time to adjust.

Will do. I added them one or two at a time over the last 4 weeks. The clowns were there from the start.

After my initial spike of .500 I never saw it break .003 on my Seneye.

I have 3 blue chromis that just started a 21 day quarantine so it will be a while before anything else gets added.

WIReefer · Jun 25, 2020

peffy03 said:
Will do. I added them one or two at a time over the last 4 weeks. The clowns were there from the start.

After my initial spike of .500 I never saw it break .003 on my Seneye.

I have 3 blue chromis that just started a 21 day quarantine so it will be a while before anything else gets added.

Just be careful with that ammonia and take things slow!

Fishbird · Jun 25, 2020

Welcome! For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t take advice from your LFS anymore. They sold you corals very early in the game and more importantly they sold you far too many fish for your tank to ever have really comfortably, too quickly, and they sold you a tang which is definitely not suited for a 44 gallon tank long term.

I’m also assuming they told you to cycle with clowns in the tank, which is widely regarded as cruel since ammonia can burn the gills of fish suffocating them.

Anyway! I’m glad your clowns survived and I hope your fish continue to do well. I would be prepared to regime one or more of them as they grow and become territorial.

I wonder if part of your coral problem is that your nitrates and phosphate is so low. All corals, but especially softies like your green star polyps, need measurable levels of both.

Fishbird · Jun 25, 2020

Oh yikes. I just saw that you have 3 Chromis in quarantine. I would strongly consider taking them back. At that point you’d have 11 large fish in a very young tank where most people would say 5-7 small fish (not all of your fish are small) would be a good number to work up to over a year. You have to consider their need for territories and their full grown size, not just their current size.

peffy03 · Jun 25, 2020

Fishbird said:
Welcome! For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t take advice from your LFS anymore. They sold you corals very early in the game and more importantly they sold you far too many fish for your tank to ever have really comfortably, too quickly, and they sold you a tang which is definitely not suited for a 44 gallon tank long term.

I’m also assuming they told you to cycle with clowns in the tank, which is widely regarded as cruel since ammonia can burn the gills of fish suffocating them.

Anyway! I’m glad your clowns survived and I hope your fish continue to do well. I would be prepared to regime one or more of them as they grow and become territorial.

I wonder if part of your coral problem is that your nitrates and phosphate is so low. All corals, but especially softies like your green star polyps, need measurable levels of both.

Appreciate the advise.. Im getting conflicting advise from two different lfs and even different suggestions from employees within them.

I did cycle with the clowns, used dr tims one and only which i was told would help protect them. I peaked around .500 on the free nh3 scale which i know is borderline, i was there a few hours and fell back down to zero in around 2 days. my nitrites stayed high longer, dropped about 4 days later.

Interesting comment on the low nitrates... is there a way to boost them some?? Ill test my nitrate levels again tomorrow, but it was undetectably low today.
with phosphates.. i dont have a phosphate test yet, i can pick one up tomorrow.. is there a way to dose phosphate if its too low?

For my water im using Instant ocean reef crystals, i have an RO/DI system at my house so i can do water changes more or less frequently as needed. Ive been changing out 5 gallons or so every week

all of the fish are really small at this point. easily less than 20 inches total (including the chromis). given the track record of chromis and urinemea i doubt ill end up with three..

Long term, im already shopping for a bigger tank. I would expect in the october/november range ill be setting up something in the 100 gallon range. Thats a conversation for another day that i really really want input on.

Im wondering if someone can confirm or correct my lighting choices.. This is something im really not familiar with and ive read its easy to screw up..

my sunrise was from 6-8am and went from 60% moonlight to 50uv 60v,60ry,60B, 15g, 15r, 0ml, 73cw sunset is 6-8