General Tank Tips

[FayAReefer]

I bought this tank fairly inexpensively off of Craigslist as my first venture into the hobby. I have had it for about a year now with no major issues, but it could be better. Any tips you can offer would be great.

I traded a guy for some coral that didn't handle the transfer very well - it has not opened since. I think it is an encrusting Monti, but I have never seen it open and the guy who gave it to me wasn't sure (hires someone to manage his tank). If anyone can identify it and offer some other general tank tips based on what they see, that would be great. There is also a pistol shrimp that I would love to get rid of, if anyone has any tips for catching the Pistol Pete.

Sumpless 29 gallon tank
Reef Octopus BH1000 Skimmer
2 - 24" Giesemann T5
Nitrates slightly over 10
Nitrites 0
Ammonia 0
Phosphates between 0-1
Ca 425
Alk 10.8
mag 1350
78-80 Degrees

 

[FayAReefer]

Uhhh - why are my pictures so insanely large? Losing my v-card this post, sorry.

 

[Sk8r]

Go to photobucket dot com and get a free account: it will store your pix and automatically resize them for the web so they display correctly. Your text is also disappearing because it's matching the pix.

I gather that you're having coral troubles. Looks pretty good, really. But if you will match the params in my sig line, that will cure any water balance issues; and if you're growing montipora, you'll want to have your water a little cleaner and have it up as close to bright light as you've got. LED lighting? Metal halide?

You will also have to supplement calcium for the montipora and any other stony coral. This gets to require a daily dose, and puttiing kalk into your topoff water is the best way to handle that job without going insane.