125 Gallon Just Filled! Questions

Well, lo and behold, I have a nitrate reading of 10 ppm. 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and 10 ppm nitrates. I am honestly shocked I have a nitrate reading. Today I found a wonderful, and brand new, LFS, owned by a hobbyist, who really seems to know what he's talking about. Does special orders and all. His tanks were BEAUTIFUL, and he also has LEDs that he has been testing side by side with T5s, and they are growing everything, with coralline galore too. All for $325 a pair. Can't beat that price, so maybe LEDs are in my price range.

Feel in love with a Ruby Red Dragonet that he had, so maybe down the line, we may have to go with this one vs. the green mandarin. I also saw my first copepods zooming around on the glass, which is a great sign. Saw a few in the wet/dry in the back of the tank as well. My FW shrimp tank is loaded with "cyclops" copepods-to the point where all you see is copepods zooming in the water, and when I saw one on the glass of the SW tank I got pretty excited.

Picked up 4 Peppermint Shrimp, and 3 Green Chromis as well. The Peppermint Shrimp are going to town on the algae we had, and one even ate some of the mysis shrimp that floated his way. We are going to attempt to remove the yellow tails and possibly the blue chromis relatively soon here. Don't know how well that will go , especially since we just got our live rock set up in a way we like. I think the green chromis are here to stay, when we saw them at his store, we had to grab them. They were stunning. He even had seahorses that were up at the top of their tank begging for more food the second they saw you walk by. Taught us a lot about different corals, which was great as well. Was a lucky find.

Place is called Bosh's Reef for any GR, Michigan folks! Opened in November.

Picked up a new Hydor Koralia 1500GPH pump and its sitting on the left side, with the 600 on the right near the overflow, seems to be a good mixture, and the damsels all love playing around in front of the new pump.

My protein skimmer has also broken in and has been producing some very stinky brown gunky foam!!

We are thinking the goby might be the first inhabitant, he said he can special order in which ever one we are interested in along with the appropriate shrimp. Is this the way to go? Or maybe clowns? We really liked the scooter blennys, and the ruby red is an absolute beauty. Same with the other "true" blennys.


All in all, so happy to see nitrates!!! Already!

 

Sounds like you got lucky finding such a nice local fish store.
If you get a Blenny makes sure it's eating ask what they are feeding. I would wait just awhile longer while the tank becomes more established, your numbers may look good but that is not all that goes into a cycle. I am 16 days in on my cycling tank and I will not be adding fish for awhile. The Red Blenny will be there when the tank is ready.

 

Yeah the blenny will be a long ways away. Not until I see loads of copepods in the tank. Once the back of my tank (wet-dry), is filled with them, will I even consider a dragonet. He had a few scooter blennys, and fed them baby brine shrimp for us, and they were gobbling them up like mad. Same with the green mandarin. The mandarin also ate pellets/flakes for us. I was amazed.

 

I love our male red ruby he's picking at the pods and I've even seen him eat a few pellets. He's still a little shy but is slowly starting to explore the tank now. I'm going to pick up a female pretty soon and hope they become a bonded pair.

 

I love my ruby red.... favorite fish in the tank. Glad to see you are having so much fun and success so far!

 

Well an update

Ordered LED lights from a new fish store by us called Bosh's Reef. Going to be getting two 454 UVL VHO bulbs, and the LEDs fit perfectly in the gap between the two lights. We do have 4 tree corals, that are bushy, bright and seem quite happy, that are sitting on our sandbed atm. Along with a rock of mixed softies we got from another LFS. Going to be there for some time until we get our lights in, and let them acclimate to the new lights. Our coralline growth is quite intense right now. All of our dry rock is covered in the stuff, green, pink, purple, red galore. I did spot some what I believe is red cyano algae (same as fw green cyano?), but it seems like it's dying down. Had diatom out breaks as well, but they are under control now.

We have chaeto in one of our chambers in the wet dry, and picked up mud, live rock rubble, and ordered more macros. The rubble and mud will go in the pump chamber, and the macros in the same chamber as the chaeto. I have some left over egg crate from my FW aquascapes, that we might use to hold up algae in the rest of the pump chamber since it's quite large. We have a 150W Metal Halide grow light with a daylight bulb (used it for tomatoes indoors one year), pointed towards the chaeto, which has grown considerably.

My protein skimmer has broken in, and is filled with nearly black, stinky water, and runs very well! I think it was a great buy, very fine bubbles, and quiet as well. Have total of 3 Hydor Koralia powerheads in the tank now. The two 600s, along with a 1400. The left side has the 1400 going across the tank, with a 600 pointing towards the surface right next to it, and the other is 600 is on the right, towards the bottom of the tank under the overflow.

We have a damsel trap one of the LFS owners let us borrow, and have captured 3/4 of the blue devils that we confused for blue chromis, they were very small lol. We are going to be ordering a goby with a snapping shrimp through Bosh's reef, and those will likely be added in first. We have a skunk cleaner shrimp which is quite the character, and 4 peppermint shrimps. No aptasia . We did spot a bristle worm!

Already seeing quite a bit of copepods in the tank, especially in wet-dry. Been looking for a nice pair of ocellaris clowns as well. I think some of the designer clowns are quite beautiful too. Haven't narrowed down what kind of goby we want, but aside from that, I'm also quite interested in a firefish too.

Going for a relatively peaceful tank. Really hope to eventually get into some LPS and zoas too. The LEDs, the owner at Bosh's Reef has been testing in his display tanks for a few months now, and the growth in the tanks is stunning. We are also quite fond of our first softies too

Anyway, having lots of fun so far. Once the last blue devil is caught, we are going to be moving forward. Keeping the chromis and yellowtails for now. Of course the yellowtails all went into the damsel trap first, go figure.

Will be posting up pictures tomorrow once we get out that last devil, and get the hood back on the tank!

 

bristle worm eeesh! In 2002 I had such an outbreak of those buggers (that I can't stand them today) and the LFS didn't know what they were. He said we had to get them out of the tank ASAP. He also couldn't tell me how we had got them or why they were so bad. I saw a couple in my fuge on this new setup and unfortunately, they had to take the sewer swim. Just can't stand them.

Congrats on everything going well, good luck on the last damsel.

 

I normally see him eating leftover foods at night, doesn't seem to be harming anyone so far. Doesn't seem like a fun activity to remove him lol. Very fast.

We caught him this morning . Yellowtails and chromis are staying, the blue devils went into our LFS's live rock and frag tanks. So they will be very happy there!

 

Sounds like your moving along, congrats. Led lights have been more than proven in this hobby but be weary of home made kits stores try to sell. I had a friend fall victim once and I'm not saying your LFS would do this to you. A couple months is nothing in proving a light can grow coral and sustain them. My friend wasted 280 dollars on a black box full of led lights that were garbage because the LFS said it's there custom design and it's on "all there tanks". Just something to think about because this hobby costs enough. Lol. Again, congratulations on the setup going smoothly.

 

They are still getting supplimented with two 140 Watt VHOs . One will be a 454 Actinic, the other an Actinic White (10000k). Both of which, even as daylight bulbs, have covered 75% of my rock surface with beautiful pink and purple coralline! They are quite nice for the price we got them for, but they won't be the only light source!