So a couple of days after I installed the UV sterilizer my ammonia and Nitrite went up, Nitrate much more than Ammonia. I noticed that the water flow went significantly down when I installed the UV. I turned off the sterilizer but kept it connected to my system. The numbers went back sown within 2 days. I will probably turn the UV on again in a couple of months to see what happens. On the bright side I just set up my 10 gallon observation tank and since my clowns and firefish seem happy I am going to pick up another fish tomorrow, can't wait
My first saltwater aquarium
- Thread starter Urka
- Start date
It shouldn't effect the bacteria in your canister but would effect floating bacteria. I would expect if you left it on, the canister population would increase quickly to compensate for the loss of nitrifiers in the water column (which there normally isn't a significant amount anyway). Did you put it on the input or output of your canister?
I put it on the output. Ammonia wasn't really an issue, jumped from .06 to .09. But Nitrite went from 10 to 32. You are probably right and I will turn it back on when the nitrate is closer to 0.
Ammonia and nitrite should fall to immeasurable, nitrate should climb.
I brought a royal gramma from the LFS today, acclimated it to the temperature and then drip acclimated it to my qt water. Once I put it into my qt tank it swam to the corner and has been laying there for the past 45 min. Not sure if I should do something or see if it gets better on it's own? Mixed rodi with salt this morning. 77°F and 1.025 salinity
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I have two PVC pipes in there already. Spoke with store and they think it's stress and she has a good chance to recover. I will keep a close eye on her. Appreciate your response
T Diddy
Happy to be here
Glad to hear it…and that’s completely normal. It will take time to get comfortable with the new surroundings. In time, that little fish will be following you around the tank begging for food
Glad to hear she's doing better. Those are gorgeous fish. When Mrs griss and I went on our honeymoon to Jamaica in 1992 we dove every morning. On one dive, we knelt in the sand at the side of the reef and the entire side of the reef had Grammas hovering over it. There must have been thousands. It was amazing.
We called her Camilla
Thanks again for your suggestion @griss . I ended up adding Fluval ClearMax Phosphate Remover 100-gram nylon bag under the last sponge in my canister filter and after one week I was actually able to measure phosphate in my tank. It's still pretty high at .82 but hopefully it will gradually come down to acceptable levels
Just a quick update, I've had Fiona, Hansel and Gretel for a little over a week now. They seem pretty happy. I feed them frozen food, flakes and pellets, although the pellets are too big for Fiona. I check water parameters every day, ammonia 0.05-0.06; Nitrite between 10 and 20, Nitrate between 10 and 12, and phosphate literally off the charts. I am going to wait for the Nitrite and phosphate to come way down before adding another fish.
sorta funny but my fish are all so used to pellets that when I feed them frozen food they sometimes don't really take to it. I'm always sorta hesitant how much I put in to make sure that if there is excess, the crabs/shrimp can get to it before I over feed. But it's like offering a kid a ribeye steak and he just reaches for the twinkies lol.
My orchid dottyback, and one of my damsels were very antisocial at first. The damsel came along swimmingly (ha) within a few days, but the dottyback took a couple weeks before she'd join the family for food time.
After seeing some algae growth on the sand bed, I decided to get some CUC. Thinking I was being conservative, I brought home yesterday 3 blue legged hermit crabs, 3 red legged hermit crabs, and 3 nassarius snails (one of them ended up being astrea, should have paid more attention at the lfs). The crabs went through the whole sand bed and ate all the algae. I don't se any at all. I am wondering if there is enough food for them. I turned the lights to 100%, they were at 50% before. On the bright side, all the critters survived the acclimation process and are very active.
I would imagine there’s plenty there for them that’s not visible as well.
I have canister filters on several established display tanks. I use them as high flow cryptic refugiums as well as zooplankton generators. I have not taken them apart in several years and am now curious as to what’s in the dark after 2 years. I am considering adding reef rubble and using them to help cycle new systems with zooplankton as well as cryptic sponge filtration.
I agree that a coarser grade gfo makes more since because of the flow characteristic to bypass and flow around fine media, which is a somewhat more passive use of gfo.
Ukra,
kudoes to your startup.
What intensity light are you using? Consider some decorative & utilitarian macro algaes in your aquascaping.
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I plan to add dragon breath algae to the tank eventually, but I don't think the tank is ready yet. It has only been a month since I added fish (two clowns and a fire fish) to the tank.
I haven't seen them on the middle structure in my tank, but they are all over the other two.
