Ultimate Newbie Guide

I would use it. I'm a big believer in adding bacteria for diversity. I would look at it as adding something beneficial and not as a way to really speed up the cycle (take your time on this - it will be so worth it in the long run) although it may do just that.

 

Cool! Thanks. I wanted to add it, but i was told that it is just "snake oil" meaning that it will do nothing. I am going to add it anyway. Still waiting for my test kit, being delivered by UPS should be here within the hour!!!! I will post level in a bit!

Thanks again!

 

Please add more to the first post regarding lighting. Here's some questions burning a hole in my brain:
What is PAR?
How does one determine what they need in terms of PAR? Or lighting over-all?
What 'temperature' or degrees Kelvin lighting is needed? What do the various temps do?
Do we need to worry about particular wavelengths of light, like 420 nanometers? What nanometers do we need?
What in the heck is "lunar" or "moon" light? Is it required at night or can a tank be left in darkness during night hours?
How does one determine what "low", "moderate", etc. lighting is for their tank? Is it determined by placement of the organisim in the tank (e.g. near the surface or down at the bottom?), placement of the light, lumens, wattage, ??? Such ambiguity is killing me!

 

Explain water flow.
What is "low", "moderate", "high", etc? How is it measured?
Should there be a current (a continuous common flow of water) or turbulence?

 

Gonna attempt to answer most of this here:
PAR stands for photosynthetically active radiation; basically how much of that light is strong enough for photosynthesis.

One can determine PAR with a PAR meter, local clubs often have one, acceptable range is usually 150-450, depending on the coral. Obviously things like mushroom like the lower end and acropora like the higher end.

As for degrees kelvin, as long. As the light is strong enough, any temperature from 6500K-20000K is widely acceptable. The lower the number, the more yellow the light appears, the higher number, the bluer it appears. Yellower light generally gives better growth with loss of color from corals, bluer light is the opposite. I usually like 14K, good balance of color and growth.

Nanometers is generally only important with LEDs as if you use T5 or MH, you get full spectrum lighting. Photosynthesis peaks at certain nanometers, typically in the red range and then again in the blue range (420nm is blue) a couple nanometers important to coral are 422nm and 675nm. 465nm seems to be popular too. White light has all colors mixed.

Lunar/moon mode is just a fancy thing to have. Not necessary at all. I imagine it might help with coral spawning if you can control the lunar modes like with an AI controller.

Generally low light is the bottom of the tank, medium is the middle and high is the top. If you can get a PAR reading of spots in your tank, you can adjust your light accordingly to create low, medium, and high light spots.

As for flow, I consider low flow to be enough to gently or almost not at all move polyps. High flow i would describe as anything that looks "fast"

If you really want to get technical, you can time how long it takes something to cover 12" in your tank; then find all the research papers on which corals like which foot per second ratio.

I always like random (turbulence) but continuous isn't necessarily bad, just random is more natural.

 

Hope I covered it all.

 

Sure sounds like you did, that is one hell of an answer!!

 

Great answer! Just wanted to add a little.

PAR basically measures how much light can penetrate the water. 150 is low Par (low light) and won't penetrate the water very far, whereas 450 (Intense light) can penetrate a lot more water. So if your PAR just below the surface is 450, in a deep tank, your PAR under the same light could be 150 at the bottom depending on the depth and other attributes of your water.

 

Thanks for that, I never really thought of it like that.

 

Excellent, thank you, thank you, thank you! Va Reef, getting experienced info in layman's terms is very helpful for those of us starting out. I'm in many other forums for computer and vehicle stuff and apply the same technique. So you have, and are, doing a great service for those of us new to the hobby.

I stumbled upon this page and found it very informative, let's hope they don't move it/rename it:
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