Few questions from a noob

[Rogersaw]

Hello, I am very new to reefing:wave: at just over two months. I started out on my salt water career with a Jellyfish tank of which I am finally finished cycling that tank and am ready to bring my jellies home. So, I decided to try my hand at reefing so I bought a Biocube 32. I purchased live rock and went through the process of curing and finally got everything in my tank. I found some cool hitch hikers and so far nothing bad (that I know of):worried:. Anyway, I have done some extensive research and found information on a whole host of stuff that I found extremely useful. However, they mostly brushed the areas that I needed in-depth knowledge/answers pertaining to my particular situation. With that being said, my questions are as follows:
1. Feeding: Do I feed everything (fish, crabs, snails and coral) at the same time? If so, what is the best type/mix should I feed them? What is the best method of feeding them?
2. As I said previously, I purchased live rock and am on the 4th day in the process of cycling my tank. Should I run the protein skimmer? Any thoughts about running a refugium during cycling?
3. As I am on the 4th day of the cycle process and am showing 2.0ppm ammonia (I think this is because of the shrimp tail I added). The water is still fairly cloudy. Is there anything I can do to clear it up or should I give it some more time?
4. I know there is a plethora of information out there about adding additives while cycling your tank. Any recommendations on anything I should add now to help avoid any issues in the long run?
5. The people I purchased the rock from recommended one 10% water change everyday in the first three days. Any recommendations if I need to keep doing them and if so how many/often?
6. I bought a RO/DI and I keep reading that people are testing their water quality what do you test it with? I guess I need to know that as well:hmm5:

Any help would be greatly appreciated and I am glad I found you guys. I was reading a few of the previous blogs and have learned a lot. I feel a lot more confident going into this know that there is a support network to help get me through it:beer:.

 

[Maxxumless]

Feeding it going to depend on what you're going to have in your tank. Some have specific care requirements, so I'd begin my research on the animals I want and go from there. The cleanup crew wont really need to be target fed.

I don't bother with a skimmer until I see ammonia at zero and nitrites below 0.25. This means you're probably a week or less out from finished with the cycle and that's about the break in time for a skimmer.

It will clear up on it's own. I use BIO-Spira to speed things up.

Besides the BIO-Spira not really at the beginning. There aren't many bullet proof solutions except for calcium, alk, and mag supplements and even then you may not even need those if you're not going to keep corals that require them in large quantities.

I usually don't do a water change unless it gets really foul. Otherwise I do a 50% water change at the end of the cycle. Was the rock already cured? Does the water smell bad? If it smells bad, do a change IMO.

You test with an TDS meter. Just go to Amazon and do that search.

The absolute best thing for you to do now is to reachers the fish, corals and invertebrates you would like to add to your system. After you learn their requirements you'll have many of your answers.

 

[Michael Hoaster]

I'd suggest waiting on corals as you learn the ropes of keeping fish alive and happy, while your tank matures. Crabs and snails will eat algae and leftover fish food. Some fish are carnivores, some are herbivores. So you'll need food appropriate for each. Research each fish beforehand so you know what food to get them. Ideally you'll know more about the fish you want then the fish store sales clerks. Smallest most timid fish go in first to give them a chance to get established before bigger more boisterous fish are added. Again ideally you'll have a fish list and know the correct order of introduction for each one.

Sure, you can run your skimmer while cycling if you want. It'll give you a chance to get to know it. Not required though. I wouldn't set up a refugium during cycling. You want to keep the lights off while cycling to give the good nitrifying bacteria a head start on the algae-friendly bacteria. This will help you avoid algae problems both sooner and later.

I wouldn't worry about cloudiness at this stage. After cycling you'll likely do a water change that'll take care of that if it hasn't already cleared. Activated charcoal can help later on.

With live rock you don't need to add anything else. Bacteria in a bottle is not needed.

Don't do water changes early in the cycling process. It will only slow down the process. Let Nature do the work for you.

Water from your new RO/DI should be good to go. No need to test it.

Keep up the research. Especially things like "My first salt water aquarium". Good luck and have fun!