saltwater newbie attempting a 55 gallon reef

[BTB0923]

No supplements at all? where is the calcium in your tank coming from? Do you have a calcium reactor? I'm thinking about getting one of those to keep my calcium levels up instead of continuing to spend money on a constant supply of calcium additives.

Edit: I just looked up the Seachem Salt you said you are using and it seems it contains all the calcium and alkalinity you need. I might look into using this salt mix instead of the Reef Crystals. I'm just not sure if it would be worth the constant water changes it seems like I might need to do to keep the levels up.

 

[Reefscape]

No supplements at all? where is the calcium in your tank coming from? Do you have a calcium reactor? I'm thinking about getting one of those to keep my calcium levels up instead of continuing to spend money on a constant supply of calcium additives.

Edit: I just looked up the Seachem Salt you said you are using and it seems it contains all the calcium and alkalinity you need. I might look into using this salt mix instead of the Reef Crystals. I'm just not sure if it would be worth the constant water changes it seems like I might need to do to keep the levels up.

Instant ocean is fair to middle as a run of the mill salt, always struggled too get calc to a respectable level with it...Made a switch to Reef Crystals....suffered a few bad batches which i think a lot of people did....got recomended Seachem and i've never looked back..

 

[mr.reef24]

The automatic PM you got from me told you...." Duplicate Post "

my bad didn't even notice it I saw it late at night after all day at school and work and studying thanks reefscape

mr.reef24

 

[BTB0923]

Personaly, i dont use any...I just use Seachem Salt, and my levels stay all fine..Calc averages about 410 - 420 with weekely water changes....

It seems like less water changes would be better since it lessens the chance for environmental fluctuations in the tank, and since my nitrates have never read above zero...I don't really see a need for it yet. However, it certainly would be really nice to just do a water change every week and not have to worry about adding supplements to keep all the parameters in check. What percentage of the water in your tank do you change every week?

 

[Reefscape]

It seems like less water changes would be better since it lessens the chance for environmental fluctuations in the tank, and since my nitrates have never read above zero...I don't really see a need for it yet. However, it certainly would be really nice to just do a water change every week and not have to worry about adding supplements to keep all the parameters in check. What percentage of the water in your tank do you change every week?

Average about 10% per week...

 

[jarret]

Wow, just got done reading all the posts in this thread and there is a lot of great questions/answers!!!

Much appreciation and thanks goes out to mr. reef and all the others that have contributed their knowledge.

Setup is coming along quite nicely BTB. I currently have a 70 gallon FW that I am highly debating on switching over to SW. I work at a local pet store where we have 1 180 gallon reef and 2 120 gallon reef tanks setup and there is just nothing in FW that comes close to comparing to SW.

Gonna keep my eye on this thread and look forward to seeing more info and pics!

 

[mr.reef24]

Got him....he's not as big as I thought. To catch him I decided to try a simple approach with just a glass and some bait. I honestly wasn't sure if he was going to be bold enough to climb over the lip of the glass to get at the squid, but he did. Now that I have pics, is it a gorilla crab like we thought? I doubt he is reef safe, but if he is I would like to put him back in the display tank as I'm sure he would be a great addition to the clean up crew.

Ok here is the ID to you crab

Xanthidae crab and since all such free ranging crabs are omnivores they are anything but reef safe, coral safe maybe, although I've had such crabs go after zoanthids once they reach a size where they can easily rip the polyps up. The only crabs that I consider to be reef safe are the coral crabs (Trapezia, Tetralia) and the Paguritta hermit crabs that remain within their burrows at all times, all other types (that I know of) are not reef safe.

if you'd like more information on pests, predators, and good crab's here is a link I reference time to time for help.

http://www.chucksaddiction.com/hitchcrabs.html

mr.reef24

 

[BTB0923]

Thanks Mr. Reef, thats a great link. I spotted another crab in my display tank today I think its the same kind but I didn't get a very good look at it. It seems a little more skittish than the first one so I have a feeling its going to be a little harder to trap. I'm going to wait for him to make another appearance before I decide how to get him out.

I think my chaeto is now past the point of no return. I still don't know why it didn't do well in my fuge. I'm going to wait until my tank is a little more established before I try again. My mangroves seem to be doing fine as I can see a bit of bright green growth at the bottom of the tips.

There are three polyp looking creatures attached to my live rock that I would really like to identify. I think they might be coral but its possible they are just some sort of anemones. Unfortunately they are really hard to get good pics of cuz they are so small and my camera isn't that great. The really cool thing is the inside of them glows bright neon green under the blue moonlights. You can see in the attached pic...one of them is the little bright green spot on the rock. They don't seem to be mobile, they seem to respond to higher calcium levels and flow rates by growing larger (but that might just be wishful thinking on my part), and they close up when disturbed by crabs or snails. I'm going to have to get a better camera to get good pics of this stuff, but for the time being does anybody know how I might be able to identify what they are?

 

[BIGgourami]

looks like button polyps

they COULD be mojanos (deffo aren't aptaisia) but we'd need better/closer pics to be sure

 

[mr.reef24]

They look like zoanthid, congrats. Glad to hear the tank is doing good, and you got yourself a free coral.

mr.reef24