sampster5000
New member
Hi guys. I knew everything was going too good in my tank. Something HAD to be wrong. My tank has been up for a month. It is a 46 gallon bowfront. I am using 30lbs live rock, 40lbs live sand, and an eheim 2213 for filtration. I cured the rock for 3 days before placing in the tank. I then let the tank run, filter + live rock, for 3 more weeks. After this I added my clean up crew when the ammonia reached 0ppm. All are doing good and so far no deaths on inverts.
I have 10 hermit crabs, 5 nassarius snails, 3 turbo snails, 1 emerald crab, 1 purple lobster. Not going to lie, I impulse bought the lobster and emerald due to seeing very low prices on them. My SW friends told me that I did nothing wrong since the crab and lobster are so "hardy" but I still felt like I rushed them.
5 days later I got the hook up from a friend and added in some coral. 1 green mushroom, 1 unknown redish/brown polyp, another unknown purple polyp, and 1 green trumpet. I currently have 1x T5NO 10,000K and 1x T5NO Actinic. I am ordering a 4xT5HO + Lunar Light fixture in 2 weeks. The coral seem to be doing great... to me. I know nothing on how to tell if they are doing good or not. I am simply judging by the fact that they are opening and closing and seem to eat the brine shrimp I blow on them. I am not worried about the corals right now as they seem to be fine and my friends say I dont need to worry about them.
Okay now here is where I get very confused. I decided to buy some damsels to see how they do so I can see where I am at with water parameters etc. I added 5 assorted damsels yesterday in this 1 month old tank. My favorite was a domino damsel. I acclimated the fish by floating them in the open bag and slowly pouring in tank water over a 15 minute period. After this I netted them all out and put them in the tank. The 4 damsels did fine and were swimming around right away but the domino damsel headed straight for the sand bed and died within 5 minutes. I thought maybe he got messed up by the other damsels in the bag? I was very confused as this is supposed to be the hardiest fish in the world. Even if my parameters were out of wack, what would kill a fish that fast?
Today I brought home a domino damsel. This time I acclimated him in a container very slowly for 15 minutes. After this I put him in the tank. He swam around for about 30 seconds then nose dived to the sand bed and died even faster than the last. Pretty confused at this point. My 4 damsels are breating very heavily but are actively swimming. My temperature went up to 80F out of nowhere so I unplugged my heaters. It must've been at this temperature for the whole day. I have 4 powerheads running so I have not assumed lack of oxygenation but it is possible.
So I did a water change of 10% assuming that my nitrates were high. At this point I had only done 1 water change of 10% since the tank has been running. Is this my problem? Here are my current parameters:
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 5-10ppm
pH - 8.2
Temp - 77
I had a friend test my alkalinity and calcium as I dont own my own test kits for these (very expensive). He said that they were both out the roof. I tested it a week into my cycle and then after a month. Same story. He said I wont need to worry about these levels at all.
Thanks for any help. I am a fresh noob to saltwater. Please give any advice or positive feedback. Feel free to tell me what I need to do. Please refrain from telling me what I did wrong if there is no way for me to take it back. IE: "You shouldnt have bought the trumpet coral". Thank you, but try and help me out from this point on. I cant change the past
I am going to set up a hang on back refugium after I get my new light fixture which will help a lot.
I have 10 hermit crabs, 5 nassarius snails, 3 turbo snails, 1 emerald crab, 1 purple lobster. Not going to lie, I impulse bought the lobster and emerald due to seeing very low prices on them. My SW friends told me that I did nothing wrong since the crab and lobster are so "hardy" but I still felt like I rushed them.
5 days later I got the hook up from a friend and added in some coral. 1 green mushroom, 1 unknown redish/brown polyp, another unknown purple polyp, and 1 green trumpet. I currently have 1x T5NO 10,000K and 1x T5NO Actinic. I am ordering a 4xT5HO + Lunar Light fixture in 2 weeks. The coral seem to be doing great... to me. I know nothing on how to tell if they are doing good or not. I am simply judging by the fact that they are opening and closing and seem to eat the brine shrimp I blow on them. I am not worried about the corals right now as they seem to be fine and my friends say I dont need to worry about them.
Okay now here is where I get very confused. I decided to buy some damsels to see how they do so I can see where I am at with water parameters etc. I added 5 assorted damsels yesterday in this 1 month old tank. My favorite was a domino damsel. I acclimated the fish by floating them in the open bag and slowly pouring in tank water over a 15 minute period. After this I netted them all out and put them in the tank. The 4 damsels did fine and were swimming around right away but the domino damsel headed straight for the sand bed and died within 5 minutes. I thought maybe he got messed up by the other damsels in the bag? I was very confused as this is supposed to be the hardiest fish in the world. Even if my parameters were out of wack, what would kill a fish that fast?
Today I brought home a domino damsel. This time I acclimated him in a container very slowly for 15 minutes. After this I put him in the tank. He swam around for about 30 seconds then nose dived to the sand bed and died even faster than the last. Pretty confused at this point. My 4 damsels are breating very heavily but are actively swimming. My temperature went up to 80F out of nowhere so I unplugged my heaters. It must've been at this temperature for the whole day. I have 4 powerheads running so I have not assumed lack of oxygenation but it is possible.
So I did a water change of 10% assuming that my nitrates were high. At this point I had only done 1 water change of 10% since the tank has been running. Is this my problem? Here are my current parameters:
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 5-10ppm
pH - 8.2
Temp - 77
I had a friend test my alkalinity and calcium as I dont own my own test kits for these (very expensive). He said that they were both out the roof. I tested it a week into my cycle and then after a month. Same story. He said I wont need to worry about these levels at all.
Thanks for any help. I am a fresh noob to saltwater. Please give any advice or positive feedback. Feel free to tell me what I need to do. Please refrain from telling me what I did wrong if there is no way for me to take it back. IE: "You shouldnt have bought the trumpet coral". Thank you, but try and help me out from this point on. I cant change the past
I am going to set up a hang on back refugium after I get my new light fixture which will help a lot.