Hello - New to the forum

[Lady K.]

I'm concerned you never had a NitrITE spike in your tank !
Or a Ammonia spike!
Were is your CYCLE!!!
Oh and an official HELLO and welcome!

Thanks for the welcome... and your right, I was waiting for the Ammonia and Nitrite as well... I have been testing every other day, and there has just been a slight increase in Nitrate... I'm at about 20pmm right now. I'm going to do my first partial (10%) water change tomorrow. So what I'm thinking is that the rock I picked up was fully cured. I did get it out of their tank that had all their corals in it... the guy helped me and he said I could have any of the rock that had no coral on it. Its got some wierd stuff growing on it... Ok not weird weird, just weird as in I don't know what it is. Once I figure out how to put pictures in the post, I will ask to see if anyone else knows.

 

[Lady K.]

The adding of live rock slowly is not your best plan unless the live rock comes from a well known source and well cured!
This adding slowly will give you spikes in your levels each time you add!
You should (ideally) add all your live sand and live rock at the begining!
And you can pile your rock tightly on one side or the bottom or even in the back to make room for the fish!
Here is one guys live rock pile who has done well!http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=180502

That is a cool tank! It appears larger than my 55g. I think that is what I did. I am pretty sure the rock I got was cured already and that is why its going straight to the nitrates. I keep testing though just to make sure!

 

[Lady K.]

RO water is Revers Osmosis. Its a way to purify it basically. Well water is usually hard, which is what you want, but don't want some chemicals and toxins that can come with it. RO Systems remove these toxins. a good RO system will give you levels of zero across the board, meaning that clean water is being added. Tap water will contain high levels of phosphate, silicate, nitrate, which will all lead to an algae breakout.

Agreed that you should add all the rock that you want right away. If you want 15lbs in a 30 gallon tank, thats fine, but i wouldn't rely on that to be a good filter. this just means you'll need to setup the wet dry if you didn't already plan on it. If you did, then forget about that mass of rock and build your wet dry to work for your application.

I'm not sure if that is how our 'water softener' works or not. I do know it doesn't ADD anything to the water. We had to get one because our water was SO hard, and we now have a tankless water heater so the hard water would damage it. Yep we do have a wet/dry with bioballs. I also plan on getting a protein skimmer that will go down in the wet/dry. Researching models now.

 

[sweeTang21]

soft water does very little for a marine tank. I like to try and keep my water as hard as possible, so i don't have to use a lot of buffer chemicals. This just seems easier with less change in water chemistry over time. In situations like this I've seen people have a second line feeding directly to a home RO/DI system that way you get harder water which is purified. Most RO systems will leave a pH of around 7.8, which is not to far to change into safe SW pH levels.

 

[Lady K.]

I'm going to attempt to post a picture...

This is the little puffer we have.