Re starting & need help!

OceanDude · Oct 13, 2013

Hi everyone, so I decided that I still want a tank. ( I unfortunately had to take my old one down. ) Anyway, my old tank was kind of my first taste of tank failure. I used tap water, not enough flow, the whole works. All done WRONG. Now I understand that yes, maybe you use tap water in your tanks. Yes, I know it can work. But why not do what does work? So I came up with some questions. Answer whatever you can. Thanks

Question 1) So, I want to make sure my rock doesn't have any algal spores or what not on them. What's the best thing to do to ensure that I kill them? Someone told me to soak in peroxide and then pressure wash with RO water. Any experience or alternative options?

Question 2) Cleaning my equipment. I need to clean Skimmer, powerheads, filter, etc etc. Peroxide and pressure washing again? Help please.

Question 3) Aragonite. Do I need to rinse it? I just really hate the milky water it creates, but it would take a lot of RO water to get it to reasonable water quality to put in my tank.

Question 4) I NEED NEW LIGHTING. This is the question I always get no answers from. I always get 56894056 options, and it's simply because there ARE that many. I'll put it simply, I want lighting that would support soft and lps coral. I'd prefer it to be LED but I just want good answers right now. xD

Question 5) So I have a Koralia 720 or something. I had it in a 10 gallon once and it didn't even seem like enough flow. I think maybe it wasn't working 100%? I also have a Seio 350 or something like that. WOW, definitely not. My friends 250 gph biocube powerhead had more flow. :c But more to the point. What can I do? Get MORE powerheads???????

Question 6) This is a small nano tank. So filtration... before I just had a filter refugium. Although I want other people's opinions.

Question 7) I know I will experience several algal blooms in my first year, but how do I not get discouraged by them? I think that's what sped me up to take the tank down. I was impatient and it wasn't what I wanted. I kept rushing things but rather than speeding it up, I kept slowing down my cycle.

Question 8) Final question for a while. So, I was thinking. For cycling should I do something like... add some substrate from an already established tank and some Dr. Tims? Add like 25% of a Mysis block, then add a few components of a cuc, then some coral, and finally a fish or two?

SeahorseKeeper · Oct 13, 2013

OceanDude said:
Hi everyone, so I decided that I still want a tank. ( I unfortunately had to take my old one down. ) Anyway, my old tank was kind of my first taste of tank failure. I used tap water, not enough flow, the whole works. All done WRONG. Now I understand that yes, maybe you use tap water in your tanks. Yes, I know it can work. But why not do what does work? So I came up with some questions. Answer whatever you can. Thanks

Question 1) So, I want to make sure my rock doesn't have any algal spores or what not on them. What's the best thing to do to ensure that I kill them? Someone told me to soak in peroxide and then pressure wash with RO water. Any experience or alternative options?

You can do that, but if you want to be extra cautious you can cook the rock using muriatic acid. I would search the forum and find a few threads about it for the how to. It is very effective, but many precautions need to be done to ensure safety. You could also soak the rocks in a bleach solution and then use a sodium thiosulfate solution to get the chlorine out.

Question 2) Cleaning my equipment. I need to clean Skimmer, powerheads, filter, etc etc. Peroxide and pressure washing again? Help please.

I would soak them in vinegar. It is very effective and is safe to use them in our systems once you are done. I would soak in vinegar overnight and then rinse them real good with water.

Question 3) Aragonite. Do I need to rinse it? I just really hate the milky water it creates, but it would take a lot of RO water to get it to reasonable water quality to put in my tank.

I rinse mine.

Question 4) I NEED NEW LIGHTING. This is the question I always get no answers from. I always get 56894056 options, and it's simply because there ARE that many. I'll put it simply, I want lighting that would support soft and lps coral. I'd prefer it to be LED but I just want good answers right now. xD

What size tank are you going with? I would go with LED's, specifically Reef Breeders units. I have seen people getting great results with their fixtures.

Question 5) So I have a Koralia 720 or something. I had it in a 10 gallon once and it didn't even seem like enough flow. I think maybe it wasn't working 100%? I also have a Seio 350 or something like that. WOW, definitely not. My friends 250 gph biocube powerhead had more flow. :c But more to the point. What can I do? Get MORE powerheads???????

Need to know tank size to give an accurate answer.

Question 6) This is a small nano tank. So filtration... before I just had a filter refugium. Although I want other people's opinions.

Question 7) I know I will experience several algal blooms in my first year, but how do I not get discouraged by them? I think that's what sped me up to take the tank down. I was impatient and it wasn't what I wanted. I kept rushing things but rather than speeding it up, I kept slowing down my cycle.

Use a fuge and have chaeto in it (or another macroalgae). The macro will consume some of the excess nutrients to help deter problematic algae from growing. Keep good maintenance practices.

Question 8) Final question for a while. So, I was thinking. For cycling should I do something like... add some substrate from an already established tank and some Dr. Tims? Add like 25% of a Mysis block, then add a few components of a cuc, then some coral, and finally a fish or two?