1. get a refractometer and figure how to use it. [Not rocket science, but there's a 0 in that 1.025 that is very important...]
2. get tests for alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, and alkalinity buffer as well as your test strips for ammonia/nitrate. Get a little notebook, and start logging your tests.
3. turn on all your equipment and get the temperature as close to 80 round the clock as you can with everything running, including your lights.
4. read the stickies in New to the Hobby. Then start reading stickies in Fish Disease. Use Google to get more information when you don't understand something. If you still don't understand it, then come to RC and post the question. If your lfs is telling you one thing and the stickies are telling you something else---put your money on the stickies. That advice has been gone over by more people. It may not be the ONLY way, but your personal chances of hitting a better method by taking a shortcut are about those of your getting hit by a meteorite. If there were shorter ways that work, we'd be on that like chickens on bugs.
5. Get your ro/di set up. And get 2 ATOs. [Automatic topoff dual float switches.] Get a spare tank for your quarantine that will hold one fish of the species you intend to keep. This one can be thin glass. You need a pvc elbow for a hidey-hole. An air pump and a very cheap filter you can stuff with floss. And make some anti-jump screens out of Gutter-guard or plastic needlepoint canvas---something to be sure your fish don't go carpet-surfing: startled marine fish jump like Olympians, and in our tanks, a jump can end very badly. Watch it, too, when getting them out of bags: plug your sink drain, eh?
6. Get an ATO running. This is tricksy, and you're bound to make a few mistakes. Make them now, before you have fish and corals.
7. Start researching the fish you want to have. Learn how big they grow, where they live and what they eat. Learn what they're compatible with ---and not. Go to Foster-Smith Live Aquaria: they have a compatibility chart. PS: 'reefsafe' means it doesn't eat corals; it doesn't mean it won't eat its tankmates or crunchy invertebrates.
8. Read up on managing Algae. My blog (blue number under my avatar) has some advice about dealing with this, and it doesn't involve exotic critters to eat it. It's about phosphate export. Critters poo stuff back in. GFO reactors and skimmers get it out.
9. once you're seeing green algae growing and have your cycle done, install cleanup crew. You don't need the qt tank for them...just put them on across---if your salinity matches their water. [I dunk mine in a little dish of tank water and toss that, to be sure I get all the fish store water off them before I put them in.] Their REAL job is not to eat all the algae: that's hopeless. Their real job is to poo into that sandbed and break it in gently, helping bacteria to go on multiplying until it can handle *gasp* a fish.
10. once your CUC [cleanup crew] is noshing algae, you can get a fish. It goes into that qt tank for 4 weeks. Use the other ATO on it, and test that water continually for ammonia and steady salinity. Change the filter floss daily, DON'T let it cycle, or try to cycle,---run it like an oldfashioned tank.
Now let me say something I hope you won't misunderstand: it's this. "You stand a better chance of having your fish survive by doing NO acclimation and just dropping him straight into your tank without checking the salinity---BETTER CHANCE, I say, than dropping fish after fish into your tank without quarantine." Why? Because most fish can survive a little salinity change FAR better than they can survive a bout with ich when they're in a weakened state. Yet people are fanatic to the max about 'acclimation', ---with gadgets and drip rigs and all this fuss and no little mythology--- and yet neglect to quarantine a fish that's been caught in the wild and exposed to parasites in confinement and then shipped and starved---I mean, if I said 'This child has been exposed to the measles---" would you say, oh, fine, let's invite him to our birthday party next week? No. You'd expect he MIGHT come down with measles in a few days.
Figure that your new fish has been exposed to some LETHAL parasites that live on fish or IN a sandbed. Don't put him straight into your tank! It's that tank you're protecting, as well as your fish. Understand that. Understand, too, that many of the pricier dealers do their own quarantine and try to sell clean fish---but THEIR little slip-up will become YOUR problem if they missed something. I don't know how many times I've had to console someone who after a year of luck, finally got The Deadly Fish that took out his whole tank. All I can say is---quarantine. It's kinder to a new fish: he doesn't have fish nipping at him, lights blinding him, no hole he dares claim, and food he's too stressed to eat. Just keep the surroundings dim and quiet, check him daily with a bright light, then turn it off and let him rest, sleep, and eat. This is the health spa. Ok?
Ich that breaks out in your tank infests your sandbed and rock and sends you back to square one, 12 awful no-fish weeks to wait until your tank is safe for fish again.
So, no,---Don't EVER drop a fish straight in without checking salinity, understand; but what gets my goat is that most people are fanatic about doing their acclimation procedure---yet they drop an unquarantined fish straight into their tank because 'the first one is all right, yeah?" Huh????? If that fish is infested with invisible parasites, it's NOT all right. Got it?
Good. Both check your salinity---AND quarantine your fish.
SO you put that first fish into that qt tank, coddle it and play with it for 4 weeks, and if it should break out in spots, #4 up there will have prepared you to know you have a problem. NEVER treat a fish in your display with the rock and sand. Treat ONLY in the qt tank. I'm sorry that it's not illegal to sell snake oil 'cures' that are supposed to be 'reef safe.' If any of these worked, we'd turn handsprings. As it is, they don't work, and while you're waiting for them to work, the disease is getting worse and will probably kill your fish. If it were human meds, it'd be taken off the market by the FDA. It's for 'just fish,' so there's no regulation.
Just don't buy it, don't use it, don't believe it. Go to the Fish Disease forum, diagnose it correctly!!!! ---because on a sick fish, the first treatment needs to be the right one, because every treatment weakens the fish a bit. You haven't got that much leeway for guesswork.
So now we've done all this while setting up, your fish is ready for the world you've made: check your salinity in your tank and your qt, and slip him right on in. He'll hardly notice the change if you've done things right, except that some current's brought him to a nice little spot with a lot of hideyholes.
2. get tests for alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, and alkalinity buffer as well as your test strips for ammonia/nitrate. Get a little notebook, and start logging your tests.
3. turn on all your equipment and get the temperature as close to 80 round the clock as you can with everything running, including your lights.
4. read the stickies in New to the Hobby. Then start reading stickies in Fish Disease. Use Google to get more information when you don't understand something. If you still don't understand it, then come to RC and post the question. If your lfs is telling you one thing and the stickies are telling you something else---put your money on the stickies. That advice has been gone over by more people. It may not be the ONLY way, but your personal chances of hitting a better method by taking a shortcut are about those of your getting hit by a meteorite. If there were shorter ways that work, we'd be on that like chickens on bugs.
5. Get your ro/di set up. And get 2 ATOs. [Automatic topoff dual float switches.] Get a spare tank for your quarantine that will hold one fish of the species you intend to keep. This one can be thin glass. You need a pvc elbow for a hidey-hole. An air pump and a very cheap filter you can stuff with floss. And make some anti-jump screens out of Gutter-guard or plastic needlepoint canvas---something to be sure your fish don't go carpet-surfing: startled marine fish jump like Olympians, and in our tanks, a jump can end very badly. Watch it, too, when getting them out of bags: plug your sink drain, eh?
6. Get an ATO running. This is tricksy, and you're bound to make a few mistakes. Make them now, before you have fish and corals.
7. Start researching the fish you want to have. Learn how big they grow, where they live and what they eat. Learn what they're compatible with ---and not. Go to Foster-Smith Live Aquaria: they have a compatibility chart. PS: 'reefsafe' means it doesn't eat corals; it doesn't mean it won't eat its tankmates or crunchy invertebrates.
8. Read up on managing Algae. My blog (blue number under my avatar) has some advice about dealing with this, and it doesn't involve exotic critters to eat it. It's about phosphate export. Critters poo stuff back in. GFO reactors and skimmers get it out.
9. once you're seeing green algae growing and have your cycle done, install cleanup crew. You don't need the qt tank for them...just put them on across---if your salinity matches their water. [I dunk mine in a little dish of tank water and toss that, to be sure I get all the fish store water off them before I put them in.] Their REAL job is not to eat all the algae: that's hopeless. Their real job is to poo into that sandbed and break it in gently, helping bacteria to go on multiplying until it can handle *gasp* a fish.
10. once your CUC [cleanup crew] is noshing algae, you can get a fish. It goes into that qt tank for 4 weeks. Use the other ATO on it, and test that water continually for ammonia and steady salinity. Change the filter floss daily, DON'T let it cycle, or try to cycle,---run it like an oldfashioned tank.
Now let me say something I hope you won't misunderstand: it's this. "You stand a better chance of having your fish survive by doing NO acclimation and just dropping him straight into your tank without checking the salinity---BETTER CHANCE, I say, than dropping fish after fish into your tank without quarantine." Why? Because most fish can survive a little salinity change FAR better than they can survive a bout with ich when they're in a weakened state. Yet people are fanatic to the max about 'acclimation', ---with gadgets and drip rigs and all this fuss and no little mythology--- and yet neglect to quarantine a fish that's been caught in the wild and exposed to parasites in confinement and then shipped and starved---I mean, if I said 'This child has been exposed to the measles---" would you say, oh, fine, let's invite him to our birthday party next week? No. You'd expect he MIGHT come down with measles in a few days.
Figure that your new fish has been exposed to some LETHAL parasites that live on fish or IN a sandbed. Don't put him straight into your tank! It's that tank you're protecting, as well as your fish. Understand that. Understand, too, that many of the pricier dealers do their own quarantine and try to sell clean fish---but THEIR little slip-up will become YOUR problem if they missed something. I don't know how many times I've had to console someone who after a year of luck, finally got The Deadly Fish that took out his whole tank. All I can say is---quarantine. It's kinder to a new fish: he doesn't have fish nipping at him, lights blinding him, no hole he dares claim, and food he's too stressed to eat. Just keep the surroundings dim and quiet, check him daily with a bright light, then turn it off and let him rest, sleep, and eat. This is the health spa. Ok?
Ich that breaks out in your tank infests your sandbed and rock and sends you back to square one, 12 awful no-fish weeks to wait until your tank is safe for fish again.
So, no,---Don't EVER drop a fish straight in without checking salinity, understand; but what gets my goat is that most people are fanatic about doing their acclimation procedure---yet they drop an unquarantined fish straight into their tank because 'the first one is all right, yeah?" Huh????? If that fish is infested with invisible parasites, it's NOT all right. Got it?
Good. Both check your salinity---AND quarantine your fish.
SO you put that first fish into that qt tank, coddle it and play with it for 4 weeks, and if it should break out in spots, #4 up there will have prepared you to know you have a problem. NEVER treat a fish in your display with the rock and sand. Treat ONLY in the qt tank. I'm sorry that it's not illegal to sell snake oil 'cures' that are supposed to be 'reef safe.' If any of these worked, we'd turn handsprings. As it is, they don't work, and while you're waiting for them to work, the disease is getting worse and will probably kill your fish. If it were human meds, it'd be taken off the market by the FDA. It's for 'just fish,' so there's no regulation.
Just don't buy it, don't use it, don't believe it. Go to the Fish Disease forum, diagnose it correctly!!!! ---because on a sick fish, the first treatment needs to be the right one, because every treatment weakens the fish a bit. You haven't got that much leeway for guesswork.
So now we've done all this while setting up, your fish is ready for the world you've made: check your salinity in your tank and your qt, and slip him right on in. He'll hardly notice the change if you've done things right, except that some current's brought him to a nice little spot with a lot of hideyholes.
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