Where to go from here...

[buzzjeep]

Hi all - I'm looking for some advice on where to go from here. Long story short, my tank has been up and running for about three years, but I haven't done much since the initial set-up. There was a move, a marriage, and a lack of required time to devote to the hobby, but I'm ready to get back in.

Here's what I'm starting with: 75 gallon tank with about 100 pounds of live rock, aquaclear hanging filter, protein skimmer, three circulating pumps, two 75 watt (I think) strip fixtures, one blue actinic strip fixture.

Livestock = sailfin, clownfish, purple pseudochromis, lawnmower blenny, a banded goby, two urchins, and a couple of snails. There's also a large colony? of caulerpa, but I don't think it's a bad thing...

It's clear I have an aipstasia problem, some hair algae, and a dirty substrate.

I want this to be a reef tank, and am willing to take baby steps to get there. Although I know my equipment is not ideal, I'd like to not upgrade if I don't have to, but if that's what's really needed so be it. I'm ok with keeping to the corals that don't need super intense light (for now at least).

My first thought is to add a cleaner crew, and this thread has been very helpful: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=748495&highlight=cleaner+packages

Any advice? This picture doesn't really help at all, but here it is anyway...

Thanks for your help!

 

[GoingPostal]

I can't really tell much from the picture but I would recommend doing some testing, getting your water quality up before trying corals, work on the hair algea, doesn't look too bad so maybe some good scrubbing with a tooth brush and water changes will solve that. Look into caulerpa, sometimes it can go sexual and crash tanks but I don't have any experience with it. I'd consider getting rid of the urchins unless you want to glue all frags down, they will move them around and the sailfin (tang?) will grow much too large for that tank and cause water quality issues, not to mention stress on the fish.
Aiptasia, you can try adding peppermint shrimp or injection them with kalk, joe's juice, lemon juice, that will be something to take care of before adding corals too. Find out for sure what kind your lights are, are they regular flourescents or compact flourescents? Either way you will probably have to upgrade lighting to keep much because it's a deeper tank but leave that to after you figure out what kinds of corals you want to keep, softies, lps, sps?

 

[spamreefnew]

add a pepermint shrimp and get into the habbit of doing waterchanges once a week to offset the lack of equipment,,,,get the calcium and alk in check and you will be good to go