Chicago go buy a controller. *** man that's to many. Lol but really my first controller changed my life.
Yes a normal timer will do. Reefguy wear in the world are you located at? West cost guys have access to Catalina water, east coast guys get the 5 gallon jugs/box things from one of 5 different sellers depending on regain.
I'm over in Newport Beach. When you say "Catalina water", do you really mean Catalina water? As in someone takes a boat out there and scoops up water then sells it?
Why Catalina water over Newport Beach or Huntington Beach water (I think I already know the answer to this question and it might have something to do with how you can see 100 feet down in the water in Catalina and the water off our coast will make your skin glow bright green after touching it).
Tap water is a no no. Even when starting the tank. Also go get a one gallon jug of distilled water to keep on hand for the tank. Water will evaporate out of the tank the water goes but the salt stays so as the water evaperates you will need to replace it ( of from the tap lol).
Does Ralph's carry it or other supermarket? Why is tap so bad?
What grain size of sand did you put in the tank? If its real fine you may want to rethink that part of the set up. In a reef there are five key components to being successful. They are as follows: flow, chemistry, nutrition, lighting, and stability.
Ummm the guys over at Strictly Fish showed me a bag that most people get. I guess it's small.....but I just woke up an hour ago and looked at the tank and it looks MUCH clearer than when I posted last night.
Also, my JBJ tank came with a plastic "rake" that the instruction manual told me to put over the intake to skim waste.....I removed that completely last night and things seem to be clearing up in the tank.
Flow is more important then most people think. Corals are sessil creatures that need waste washed fromthem and food brought to them, sseahorses swim with tiny (in comparison to the body) fins so to much flow will wear them out and kill them, waste can only get to the filtration if it is suspended in the water and brought to the filter, many reef fish are stimulated to swim by the currents. I could go on but those examples seem to show why flow is critical.
I can't point the valve anywhere in the tank without it disturbing the bottom sand....it's pretty powerful (or seems so).
Nutrition. Yep everything living eats. Think in these terms for a minute if I ate like it was Thanksgiving every day of my life at every meal, then I would not have 28 years experience with keeping saltwater fish I would have died of obesity or diabetes years ago. Why is that? Doesn't Thanksgiving dinner not have nutrition value? Well of course it dose. All that nutrition is wrapped up in some wonderfully tasting fat carbs and bla bla bla (you get the point). Problem number two about with me and thanksgiving is I eat like I never ate before in my life! Everything I can fit on my plate is going to find a place in my stomach, seconds yes please dear will you pass the gravy? So its apparent we can't eat like that at every meal. So why then do we overfeed our fish at every meal? Feed only what is consumed in a short period of time. Also understand your filter dose not need finish food to live so make sure you don't over feed or allow the food to go down into the filter.
So only feed them once every 2 days? And they will be "ok" with it? My main concern is the quality of life for the fish (I'm a bit of a animal lover freak...) and then of course the joy they bring to me when I watch them.
Lighting. Note this is not at the top of the list. Not because its not as important as the others it just the above things can kill a tank faster then lighting can. Lighting is now and has always been a huge disscution starting heated debates. I remember in the 80s people having no idea why corals should die when they ate so well. MHs changed that but where cost prohibited (and the color options where on or off) so VHO t12s and t8s came along and offered colors and if you had enough of them you could keep coral. Then power compacts showed us all a new light to head towards boasting the best colors and prices. Then came the t5ho all the pros of PCs but none of the draw backs, and way more colors. All along MHs kept getting better to keep up. Then came a company that showed us all what LEDs could do, noone believed them. Up till this point you needed to get X amount of watts per gallon to keep your corals, but LEDs used a one tenth of the watts to get to the same Par and on its ear the hobby flipped again. Truth is the best light for your animals varys on the animal. I keep a mantis shrimp and in my SIG you read keep it away from bright lights. But on the other hand if I wanted SPS I would need high par values. Two very colorful critters two different lights requiments. So its better to know the requirements of the animals you want to house. Things that photosentate will require light to live but the light that gets to the organisms can be directly affected by the first three more then the power coming from a bulb ever could.
Yeah....I got the LED JBJ 24 gallon nano. Just kinda hoping they got the lighting right. Not sure if I can upgrade the lights?
Thanks for the well thought out post....I'm fairly new to saltwater, but not to fish. I used to keep piranhas back in the day (red belly) and freshwater setup here and there.
I'm just looking to have a tank with a few pretty looking coral (the ones with the green circle and the red dot inside) and at this point in time I'm thinking a clownfish or two. Then I want a starfish and a cool looking cleanup crew.....shrimp and a crab or some sort.
I have no problem doing maintenance/etc as I'm home most of the day.
I also remember reading that tank lids aren't good for saltwater tanks....but I have two full-grown Savannah jungle cats and they are extremely smart and can open doors/latches/etc. So I'm already having to design a new locking mechanism for the top of my JBJ nano so the cats can't open it.
If and when I move into a house (apartment now), I would be more confident in getting a 120 gallon tank and really going balls-out with everything.
thanks