Little Tokyo tank

Turkey baster blasting was much fun. :) Unfortunately a crab scurried across as I was blasting, despite all my efforts to clean the rocks of all crabs before putting them in the tank. >.< It'll probably take me months to catch this thing.

There's this psychedelic green colored mold(?) growing on my rocks, but I assume that it's fairly normal since my water is testing fine at the moment. Unfortunately, the light I bought is defective and I have to get it switched out this week, so my rocks have been in the dark. Other than these small worries, I'm having a great time with this tank. Best purchase ever.
 
Rocks will be fine in the dark. besides, you have natural light infiltration to take care of them in the mean time. For the crab, take a pet bottle and cut the first 2 inches off of the top and shove it in the bottle. Punch a hole and tie on a string to yank it out of the tank. Bait it with a shrimp and you will have it out in no time. Its the best trap I ever used. What are your water readings now?
 
Ammonia is under 1.0, though I can't tell exactly what shade this light green strip is . . somewhere between .2 and .4

Nitrites are a bit above .5

Nitrates are still nearly 0. I know that I'm not done cycling until this starts rising, so I'm trying to be patient.

PH is rather low... near 7.8, though the test says that this is ok. I do have some marine buffer. Do I need to add this?

Salinity is at about 1.023. I will raise this slowly as I go.

I will try the crab trap this weekend. Things seem to be growing on the rock. A few things that look like feather dusters. Of course, for all I know they could be aiptasia. :) I noticed one of them retracting into its tube suddenly and then popping back out. Fun stuff.

Some weird orange looking stuff has joined the green stuff.... I blew off some of the cobwebby stuff when I was blowing the coral bits off the sand again.
 
I wouldn't add any buffers. You tank is very new and will have fluctuations for a while. As far as the dropper test, Hard to tell which is accurate as long as its under 1. You are going to see all kinds of stuff start growing soon like diatoms and it will make your tank all brown looking on the rocks and teh sand. It is perfectly normal and will go away on its own so don't worry. Just be patient and wait for nature to take its course.
 
argh . . . I wake up this morning and find the corpse of a mangled hermit crab on the bottom of my tank, his shell nowhere to be seen. Should I be blaming the hitchhiking crab for this? Or do I have a different problem?
 
As FD said, Very hard to tell...Could be the ammonia, could be a crab, could be another hermit fighting for the shell. Could even be what FD had in his tank...Octopus. Some hermits will die off and I would say this is a normal thing. Just today I say one of my hermits attacking a smaller one. I do recommend that if you get hermits, get the smallest ones you can. I don't like any hermits that are bigger than a nickel or go yen.
 
Turns out it was another hermit. I saved another from becoming prey to his own brethren, but I knocked over the live rocks in the process. I took this as a good chance to rearrange the rocks in a pattern that I liked better though. But I haven't seen 2 of the 4 remaining hermits since. Oh well . .. I think I am sticking to docile snails in the future.

My new light has arrived, but it came with no instruction manuals on how to hang it up. I called the distributor and they're currently in the process of drawing me a diagram. I will post pictures once it is up.
 
The second light wouldn't even light.... (Imagine my utter frustration.) Turns out Minato-ku Tokyo has too many buildings and too little power for all of them. So I had to rent a car to return both lights and get one that could operate on lower voltage.

I picked up a blue LED moonlight while I was at it. I'm having them send me a second one though since it one has only enough light to shine on half the tank. I will put up pictures once both moonlights are up.

I added snails to help clean up the rock and sand, so I quarantined the hermits to the sump for now. (I didn't need them making dinner out of my snails yet...) Oddly enough, I found 5 hermits.... I had 5 to begin with and this doesn't explain the dead hermit body that I found the other day. Unless they molt....

My water readings have been stable since coming down from the spike (ammonia is under .5 consistently). I still have a piece of wool in the wool box that I have been changing out. I know I should probably get rid of it (due to potential nitrate issues), but the water still looks dirty to me and I have two packs of the wool that I got for free. Once I run out of wool, I will stop this practice. I also changed some water this weekend.

I also bought two small "debasuzume," which are related to cobalt damsels, but much, much more tame. I know not everyone likes the idea of "starter fish," but I read up heavily on it and thought I would get two small ones and try it out. I acclimated the fish and added some StopAmmonia after adding them. I do have an ample supply of natural seawater on hand in case of disaster though and test the water at least once a day. So far so good.
 
I'm guessing now that it was just a molted shell . . . otherwise, it doesn't explain the count. (Unless I had a hidden stowaway) At the time I was like, "GYAH!!!! Hermit parts!" And since most of their bodies are fairly soft, I just never thought about it.
 
Most likely a molt. make sure you do small water changes since you have fish in there now.. once a week will help them out a lot. I don't recommend any fish until the cycle has finished but since you have them, do what you can so they don't stress out. How is your skimmer doing?
 
I pretty much guessed what I was in for when I was given the starfish, which I was told are more sensitive than the damsels are. Thus, I have been changing the water every 2-3 days, just about 5 liters at a time, though I am thinking of upping that just in case. Ammonia is currently at less than .25, but nitrates are pretty high according to one of the two tests I ran today so I finally took out the wool and changed some water.

Skimmer is doing great. I throw out the gunk every two days. My cooler doesn't go on very often (I live in a dark apartment), so I don't get much evaporation.
 
Lucky you with the cooler not staying on. My cooler funs 24/7 and I finally lost one of my corals due to the heat. It was a finger coral. I am kinda bummed about it but I knew it would happen eventually.
 
How high does your temperature get?

I think my tank climbed to 27 degrees once yesterday, but only very briefly. It generally sits around 25-26 degrees, which is what I have been told is normal reef temp in Okinawa, but I wonder if I should set the cooler down a notch so that I won't have any more 27 degree spikes.
 
Well, the main tank hit 89 a few days ago but I have since put a fan on the sump to keep the temp sitting at 83 -84 which is good considering the heat outside the house. The clam tank sits at 87 but doesn't seem to be a problem at all for them. They all look really good and full of color. I wouldn't worry about the temp spike you had. I would worry if the temp goes up to 30C though.
 
Sangogo, Do you have a spot ready and lights for cheato yet? I have some that I am ready to send to you.
 
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