Topics those of us who advise the new-to-hobby forum try to keep up with---but sometimes the misinformation proliferates faster than we can move.
1. cycling with a fish: no. Cruel. If you have to do something proactive, drop 4-5 flakes of fish food in daily until 5 days after you first see an ammonia spike, then see it go away.
2. filters. If you are FISH-ONLY, and have the patience to clean filters often, yes: they're fine; wet-drys can work perfectly well with a fish-only. Fish tolerate a little nitrate (but not ammonia.) You can even run a nearly rockless tank, if you just maniacally keep cleaning those filters. REEFS are fussy about phosphate, nitrate, AND ammonia, and in general, to succeed as a reef, you need live rock and a sump, a skimmer (a so-so one for softies and lps, a really good one for sps), and lights (sps and crocea clams take a really intense light). In this sense, reefs are much less work than fish-onlies, because there's no filter to change.
Personally I recommend even a fish-only keep a small common mushroom or button coral rock (most fish won't eat those) and watch its behavior. If you can keep it happy and widely expanded, your fish are going to do fine. (These species of coral are pretty forgiving.) It's an early warning of water quality problems if these close up.
3. quarantine. 1. Is to protect your tank from getting a parasite loose in the rock and sand. 2. Is NOT cruel to the fish. Cruelty is putting in a new roomie carrying the Black Death. Your fish does NOT want to be plunged from a dark bag into blinding light in a strange landscape full of other fish who don't like him. He would much prefer to catch his breath in a dimly lighted, bare, total visibility place that does not have anything else moving in it. In his fishy mind, he's found a safe place. If food happens by, he's good with it. Not-eating is a problem with new fish. A safe and relaxed fish is going to feed better, recover his health, and---if he should have a parasite, it will usually show up within 2-4 weeks, giving you a chance to cure him and save his life. Yes, you'll always have somebody pop up and say, "I never quarantine and I'm fine!" This only means he's generally bought from 'clean sources' and he's been very, very lucky, sometimes for a year or so. Sooner or later he will get Typhoid Mary in a bag, and he will be very unhappy.
4. hazards: lots of things hitchhike. Worms that don't have tentacles are good. Worms that have bristles are fine. 99.99% of all worms are good. Hairy crabs are bad. Most crabs are bad---and personally, I include any crab except the mini-hermits, the decorators, the boxing crabs, and the little crabs that live their whole life in corals---most all crabs that have claws grow up to eat fish. Most all sponges are good. Even the little spionids and hordes of bristleworms are good: they're cleaning up your overfeeding and your fish poo, and if you didn't have too much food, you wouldn't have too many worms. Clicking in your rock is not good: this is a mantis or pistol. Coral Banded Shrimp eat fish. Cleaner shrimp can pick at fish in too small a tank. Peppermints are useful because they'll eat baby aiptasia, but they will nip a coral polyp or two, experimentally.
5. equipment hazards: never trust a heater: get the best. Check your temperature often, be it just touching the glass of the tank. Heaters go bad, and when they do, they can take out your tank. Pumps: many tanks cannot live more than 8 hours without the pump going. Have a reserve pump, or if that's too pricey, own a meaningful airpump, some airhose, and a diffuser, in case. DO NOT EXPOSE FISH to the bubbles of a diffuser. It can cause problems for the fish. Screen the bubbles off with egg crate if you have to use one. ATO: an autotopoff is a Very Good Idea, and they don't have to cost a mint. Use a ro/di reservoir, small pump and float switch to keep your salinity rock steady. Your critters will be so much happier. DOSING: if you don't have a test for it, don't dose it.
6. blooms: as your tank ages, you will get 'blooms' of various algaes and creatures. These are temporary. Do not get some creature to eat whatever it is, just examine your feeding methods, test your water, and ask. Algae is from an excess of phosphate; worms are from an excess of spare food; cyano is from an excess of wrong-spectrum light, either sunlight reaching your tank, or a bulb reaching the end of its useful life. [marine bulbs don't burn out, they just go bad].
That's what I think of offhand. HTH.
1. cycling with a fish: no. Cruel. If you have to do something proactive, drop 4-5 flakes of fish food in daily until 5 days after you first see an ammonia spike, then see it go away.
2. filters. If you are FISH-ONLY, and have the patience to clean filters often, yes: they're fine; wet-drys can work perfectly well with a fish-only. Fish tolerate a little nitrate (but not ammonia.) You can even run a nearly rockless tank, if you just maniacally keep cleaning those filters. REEFS are fussy about phosphate, nitrate, AND ammonia, and in general, to succeed as a reef, you need live rock and a sump, a skimmer (a so-so one for softies and lps, a really good one for sps), and lights (sps and crocea clams take a really intense light). In this sense, reefs are much less work than fish-onlies, because there's no filter to change.
Personally I recommend even a fish-only keep a small common mushroom or button coral rock (most fish won't eat those) and watch its behavior. If you can keep it happy and widely expanded, your fish are going to do fine. (These species of coral are pretty forgiving.) It's an early warning of water quality problems if these close up.
3. quarantine. 1. Is to protect your tank from getting a parasite loose in the rock and sand. 2. Is NOT cruel to the fish. Cruelty is putting in a new roomie carrying the Black Death. Your fish does NOT want to be plunged from a dark bag into blinding light in a strange landscape full of other fish who don't like him. He would much prefer to catch his breath in a dimly lighted, bare, total visibility place that does not have anything else moving in it. In his fishy mind, he's found a safe place. If food happens by, he's good with it. Not-eating is a problem with new fish. A safe and relaxed fish is going to feed better, recover his health, and---if he should have a parasite, it will usually show up within 2-4 weeks, giving you a chance to cure him and save his life. Yes, you'll always have somebody pop up and say, "I never quarantine and I'm fine!" This only means he's generally bought from 'clean sources' and he's been very, very lucky, sometimes for a year or so. Sooner or later he will get Typhoid Mary in a bag, and he will be very unhappy.
4. hazards: lots of things hitchhike. Worms that don't have tentacles are good. Worms that have bristles are fine. 99.99% of all worms are good. Hairy crabs are bad. Most crabs are bad---and personally, I include any crab except the mini-hermits, the decorators, the boxing crabs, and the little crabs that live their whole life in corals---most all crabs that have claws grow up to eat fish. Most all sponges are good. Even the little spionids and hordes of bristleworms are good: they're cleaning up your overfeeding and your fish poo, and if you didn't have too much food, you wouldn't have too many worms. Clicking in your rock is not good: this is a mantis or pistol. Coral Banded Shrimp eat fish. Cleaner shrimp can pick at fish in too small a tank. Peppermints are useful because they'll eat baby aiptasia, but they will nip a coral polyp or two, experimentally.
5. equipment hazards: never trust a heater: get the best. Check your temperature often, be it just touching the glass of the tank. Heaters go bad, and when they do, they can take out your tank. Pumps: many tanks cannot live more than 8 hours without the pump going. Have a reserve pump, or if that's too pricey, own a meaningful airpump, some airhose, and a diffuser, in case. DO NOT EXPOSE FISH to the bubbles of a diffuser. It can cause problems for the fish. Screen the bubbles off with egg crate if you have to use one. ATO: an autotopoff is a Very Good Idea, and they don't have to cost a mint. Use a ro/di reservoir, small pump and float switch to keep your salinity rock steady. Your critters will be so much happier. DOSING: if you don't have a test for it, don't dose it.
6. blooms: as your tank ages, you will get 'blooms' of various algaes and creatures. These are temporary. Do not get some creature to eat whatever it is, just examine your feeding methods, test your water, and ask. Algae is from an excess of phosphate; worms are from an excess of spare food; cyano is from an excess of wrong-spectrum light, either sunlight reaching your tank, or a bulb reaching the end of its useful life. [marine bulbs don't burn out, they just go bad].
That's what I think of offhand. HTH.
