question about first 2 weeks.

moo0o

Premium Member
i just set up my tank about 2 weeks ago and i was wondering about my ph, calcium, and alkaline levels. I have the website of what they should be bookmarked but my real question is:

1. should i be trying to get the calcium ph and alkaline levels at their correct parameters?

2. or should i worry about my saltinity level first? its at 1.030 =(

3. OOORRRR should i do all of that at once as in...slowly fix saltinity while slowly fixing calcium and all the other levels.

im getting a test kit for all of that stuff soon so i dont have the numbers right now.
 
[welcome]

1. I'd get calcium and alkalinity at reasonable levels. pH tends to be low while decay is going on, so that's not as critical. Without knowing the numbers, exact advise is not possible.

2. I'd drop the salinity to 1.026-1.027 over the course of a 4-5 days.
 
thanks for the super fast reply, ill try to get the numbers soon, it would be till...maybe tuesday though becuase i just ordered them online.
 
If you don't have any livestock yet you can do a water change with fresh water to bring the PH down to a 1.025. There's really no concern with stressing anything by drastic changes in salinity while cycling.
 
Don't worry too much right now. Your tank has got to cycle regardless, so there is not too much concern until you start adding your bio-load. Keep the salinity around 1.025 give-or-take and monitor you evaporation. This time of year in NC the air is dry and sucks alot of water from my tank.
 
Ammonia is at 1.5
Nirite and Nirate are at 0
pH is at 8
salinity is at 1.028

im slowly lowering that salinity, kinda worried about the ammonia. Nirate and Niriate being at 0 seems kinda odd to me but i dont know. I havent added anything new to the tank besides water. is this normal?
 
Some ammonia is common when live rock is first added to the tank. What's in there now? Have you been measuring ammonia for a while?
 
well i just started getting into the mind set of actually wanting a sucessfull fish tank, so this would be day 2.

In there now is a watcherman goby? and a few live rocks. got the goby for free because a friend didnt want it anymore.

The live rock and sand are from a previous tank, the tank went really bad i decided to completely redo the water. Ive added 40 pounds of new live sand on day one. I would say theres about... 2-3 inches of livesand?

ive been measuring ammonia for 2 days. it was 0.2 and now its .15 i realized i made a mistake of where the decimal point was so sorry about that.

so this is a recap of what ive done so far.

Feb-14
Ammonia .2 ppm
nirite .25 ppm
nitrate .2 ppm
pH 8.0

water change 5 gallons

and Feb-15
ammonia .15
nirite 0
nirate 0
pH 8.0

accidentally changed 15 gallons today. not all at once...5g at 9am and 10g at about 5pm.



oh and...the media in the filter hasnt been cleaned for 2-3 years..should i clean it out slowly, or should i clean it all out now?
Im talking about things similar to bioballs.
 
Since the tank is showing ammonia, I'd leave the filter alone for a while. The fish is in some danger of problems, to say the least.
 
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