MY TANK..help:)

[PHISHBOWL11]

Okay so i have had my tank up for about 6 weeks. It has 15lbs of uncured rock and 5lbs of cured rock. I have started seing algae so i added snails and recently added a damsel.
What i want to know is what should my levels be at?
And since i cant see all the snails how will i know if one dies?
THANKS!

 

[papagimp]

You are going to get algae, all new tanks do. Wait until your cycle is completed before adding snails/fish/anything else to the tank. Your levels shouldbe close to the following:

Ph 7.8-8.3 (higher end there is better)
Alk 8-11dKH
Calcium 400-450ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 0ppm
Ammonia 0ppm
Phosphate 0ppm

And theres magnesium and strontium which I don't test for and subsequently do not supplement into my tank. do not add chemiclas that you cannot test for.

But you haveing a newer tank, don't expect your levels to be this optimal. That takes a little time and effort. As long as your Nitrite and Ammonia are 0, that's good. Nitrates should be as low as you can keep em, anything over 20ppm and I would worry a bit about your system and maintance. Phosphates should also be kept as low as possibly. They will fuel algae growth and since you'll have some algae from being a new tank, this can make it alot worse.

As for the snail, if one dies and you don't see it, than you won't know. Just remove the dead ones that you find, otherwise I wouldn't worry too much about em. Alot of snails have short life spans anyways and you'll be restocking some every 6 months to 1 year anyways. More so if you have hermits in the tank, little punks always killing my snails!

 

[PHISHBOWL11]

I already added a damsel and snails :/
If a snail dies insent that bad? He will...rot and raise the ammonia level wich will kill my damsel right?
Plus should i add a crab or wait till i get more algea?
thanks

 

[papagimp]

Crab probably won't do much for your algae. They are opportunistic and will eat whatever. if they find enough "whatever" elsewhere they'll ingore the algae. And not all are algae eaters too, some are stricly predators. IMO the ammonia rising and killing the damsel is better than adding more fish and the damsel killing them. Read up on damsels and there aggressive territorial behavoir.

And as for the snail. really would depend on the snail, they can raise levels like that, but if it's just a small astrea, I wouln't really worry much, if your talking about a turbo than yeah, get it out. Once you get enough detritus and algae clean up crew/hermit crabs, and similar livestock in there and the sandbed seeds well with bristleworms, they'll clean out that snail shell quicker than you can find it and remove it. I have a 2.5g grow out tank that I lost about 18 baby fish overnight, never once saw a dead fish body, but did see some very fat bristleworms the next day.

 

[Icefire]

what are your levels?

 

[PHISHBOWL11]

nitrie
nitrate:0
ammonia:0

There medium sized black snails and when you loook close at them you see a little neon green..

I dont plan on keeping the damsel. Just got him to see if i could keep him alive. Hes still swimming

 

[woodycb]

I wouldnt base anything on keeping a damsel alive, those suckers can take alot of abuse and live through it.

 

[Icefire]

look like your cycle is finished

 

[andrewr]

What size tank do you have?

 

[drummereef]

The algae is normal and will go away with proper husbandry. Do you use RO/DI water?

 

[gistsc]

I agree, damsels are very hardy and refuse to die. I had one in my last tank that was not maintained, and he just kept on kicking. Lucky for him he moved to the LFS.

Man that tank was a cesspool!