new aquarium cycled what to add

ok thats good to know mate,





can you see the rather large build up of algae on the sides of the glass, i've bought a reactor and have just ordered some rowaphos, supposed to be a good media that i'm going to put inside it, have just ordered some more carbon that i can replace the old carbon in the sump with.

hopefully next week should arrive and ill start busting that phosphate, can only help im sure, do you know if you can use more than one form of media at a time to reduce the phosphates?

are there any clean up crewes that will suck the glass to help remove algue or not?

Lawnmower blennies will clean some glass for you as will the spiral toped snails, not the lumpy spiral ones, these are all on the rocks down the point, with in reason, but what you have is one fiftieth of the algae I have on the glass.

I only clean the front of the tank, I leave the other walls with algae and the snails and blennies feed on it and it helps condition the tanks water.

You just need to use a magnetic cleaner to get it off, that should be done a couple of times a week in most any ones tank to keep the glass clean and if it doesn’t come off easy with the cleaner it is coralline, that you need a razer blade to get it of.

You need slight traces of substances like phosphates in the your tank water, the clades of algae within the corals cells will utilize small amounts to the corals benefit, its only when it becomes to much that corals with suffer.

do you mean these ones here??

No not those ones,but they are okay,it's just that they can be a bit noisy when they hit the glass when moving around.

awesome well an non planned expensive day occured today dont tell the missus the reciept has been stored away out of reach

but today i gave in an bought an aqua one protein skimmer as the one i have in there at present wasnt really doing much of a job so now im running this!!!!!



i also bought a refactometer as i thought it was time i actually knew the salinity levels rtather than just guessing it on the plastic hydrometer.

I took a water sample to the shop i went to and found that :: the amonia levels are quite high
:: the nitrite levels are quite high
and the salinity was high also

so tonight ive set the protein skimmer up and its now skimming well, ive added 20l of fresh water and dropped the salinity level to 1.025, going to drop it further to 1.022

ive also added a bag of phosphate media to the sump tank right in the middle of the water flow so hopefully should be seeing those levels dropping soon too

i also added a bottle of aquasonic bio-culture ( live bacteria) so should be seeing those amonia and nitirte levels dropping

the bag of marinara mix obviously did its job pretty well on spiking up the amonia levels haha

hopefully should have some better reading to report this time next week!

cant wait for those levels to level out and the system to be proprly functioning!!
thanks for all the advice liquidg!!!!!!!!!!!!!
also got a scrub and nailed that algue ont he front face of the tank, left it alone ont he sides as im thinking that the first fish i get ,,,, when its right to get it will have to be a blennie so ill leave some algue for that little fellah to get stuck into!

helps heaps to have people t chat to about it all hey!

by the way where do you live, you on the bayside ??

I live at Wellington point.

Mate I would not have the skimmer going until your nitrites are finished!

The ammonia should be there and so should the nitrites, forget the ammonia, that will be converted, that’s what has to become your nitrites.

The ammonia is not a problem with out fish and if there is broken surface tension the ammonia is not so toxic to your corals, and live rock as such in the short term.

The broken surface tension is via any disturbance to your water.

Some is done in a skimmer but the best is via a dry section or secondly the current breaking the surface of your tank water and not pulling bubbles into the water collum.

The bubbles will stress and kill most corals, shrimp,etc over time as the bubbles block their breathing apparatus and the corals excrete their stomachs-mucus-to flush away the bubbles and starve to death over time.

Plus the skimmer will remove some valuable ammonia reducing the bio explosion you need!

I would not have the skimmer on until nitrites are near or on zero!

Nice skimmer though, personally from what I have seen and heard I like the little deltecs, cute, needle wheel and well made, cool stuff.

I haven’t used a skimmer since the early nineties when I would make my own with a homemade venturi, there is room for one on this system I made but now the algae scrubber is in full swing there is no need for a skimmer.

When a say scrubber, the ones I make are something like a refugium,but the way they make refugiums are not perpetually functional, you do not have a substrate in a refugium and have it not producing sulpher,nitrate and phosphates.
Mine are with coralline balls for the roots of algae to attaché and sponges to attach to, I call them rollers on a supported egg crate tray with ten mil gap under for cleaning.

All caulerpa ,turtle weed we find, sponges and anything else algae based goes into no greater depth than 8 inches of water from the top of the rollers to get intense growth under the LED tubes, or it will not work at an extremely functional level just like the way refugiums that are trendy now.

Shallow water, great light strength to the bottom, heavy algae growth, deep-water weak light strength to the bottom, sparse algae growth and more poor quality algae as well.

A refugium was always something like a quarantine spot, a refuge for sick, beaten up, growing and new fish and inverts until they go into the tank.

Any way, it all sounds good callum,keep up the good work.

[quote="clevelandcallum"]
quote]

Hey that rock you have is cool, I might check out this guy at Alexandra hills.
A mate is going reef and thats one more LFS to examine there stuff.
Long way to go for me,if there stuff is reasonably priced it will be worth it for my mate.

12 bucks a kilo mate, and there is heaps and heaps of life forms in it, ive seen lots of slugs and stuff crawling outm, theres soral on some of it and theres also starfish stuck in a hole at the back that i havnt seen come out yet lol

anyone lnow any good places to buy or " get" wether that be a kind of swap deal or collection of blennies as im looking for one for my tank

any species that are good for the marine tank whould be good!

clevelandcallum wrote:12 bucks a kilo mate, and there is heaps and heaps of life forms in it, ive seen lots of slugs and stuff crawling outm, theres soral on some of it and theres also starfish stuck in a hole at the back that i havnt seen come out yet lol

Thanks dude,when my mate scrapes some money together we will check it out.