Hello!

Annarae

New member
Hello everyone!

My name is Anna and I'm brand new to this hobby. I work at C&P Pets in Christiansburg, VA as the assistant fishmaster and I have a 29gal. reef tank in the making. I'm very excited about becoming a part of this community and meeting everyone. Right now I have a marineland c-series 220 canister, the seaclone 100 protein skimmer and probably around 35lbs of live rock. I have 4 small fish (strawberry pseudochromis, 2 tank raised percula, and a green chromis), a long tentacle anemone, fire shrimp, and pom pom crab. I'd love any advice or input anyone can give to a beginner about appropriate and relatively easy soft corals. Plus I love to geek out about fish and tanks so it looks like I have found the right group of people :)

Take Care, Anna
 
what kind of light do you have on your tank? if you have enough light, i can give you some easy stuff to start with to get you going. there are plenty of others here that can help get you started.

you may also want to take that canister filter off. unless you keep it cleaned out very good.
 
I have the Coralife Aqualight lunar series 36" fixture which packs one 96 watt actinic and one 96 watt 10k compact fluorescent along with 2 blue moon glow LEDs.


Are there drawbacks to running a canister? I dont mind regular maintenance / cleaning and i test my water pretty frequently...also...does anyone know where i can get R/O water without getting a filter?
 
Some of your competing local fish stores should sell rodi fresh and salt water. I would try giving some of them a call. Your light should be fine for keeping many soft and lps corals if your anemone is doing well.

Welcome to the Reef Central and the club! :)
 
the canister filter will catch a lot of debris that will turn into nitrates . you should leave it off and let your clean-up crew take care of it. i learned that lessen early one when i started. with a bio wheel filter.

my wife and i have some softie and easy to keep lps frags you can have if you want.

as far as ro water i used to get mine from wal-mart its like $.33 a gallon, it used to read less than 5ppm with my tds meter which is pretty goood.
 
walmart? seriously? thats amazing.

I have this new stuff called Chemipure Elite in my filter that is supposed to do alot of things like remove phosphates and balance my water. Chemipure has been out for awhile but the new elite line is supposed to be better. any thoughts?

mike, i would love to get some softie and easy to keep stuff from you, maybe i'll be taking a trip to roanoke one of these days. :) oh and my anemone hides in my live rock all the time and refuses to come out... I'm not sure what that means but it appears to be healthy when i do see it.
 
the cannister filter will be fine as long as you clean it at least once a month. If you take the filter pad out it shouldn't be a problem. I am running the same cannister on my smaller tank.
 
Wow I'm battling nitrates too and just did an 11 gallon water change with distilled water. Tested the water with salt mix and it tested at 0ppm. Now in my tank, its at 20ppm again. I run the regular carbon filter setup that came with the tank and am wondering if this is a nitrate factory?

I'm enthused to see the info in this thread...

Oh and welcome to the forum! Check out Ultimate Aquariums in Troutville when you can! Great bunch of guys there and great prices!
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12879975#post12879975 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Annarae

mike, i would love to get some softie and easy to keep stuff from you, maybe i'll be taking a trip to roanoke one of these days. :) oh and my anemone hides in my live rock all the time and refuses to come out... I'm not sure what that means but it appears to be healthy when i do see it.

anytime just let me know i know how hard it is to get started. i'm always glad to help the newbies... lol

as far as that filter goes if it has any kind of sponge type media in it it will need to be cleaned more than once a month. turning it off when you feed will help. or just keep your carbon in it.
 
You could go straight DI if you don't want to mess with filter set up. It is the cost will go up.
 
Thanks everyone for the warm welcome! I plan on being at the July meet and will be requesting off at the petstore as soon as i know when it is...July 26, n'est pas? also i was thinking about taking and posting some pics of what i've got going on so far (which is sadly not alot, but that will be changing) again if anyone has anything helpful to say to a newbie I'm all ears :)
 
Hi Anna, Welcome to the reef community. The distilled water at Wal-mart is more like 68 cents a gallon now -- but it's still a bargain.

Mike has some good stuff to get you started! make sure you take him up on the offer!
 
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