Re: Experience needed
#17
Hi Jason and welcome to fk.
And welcome to marine. First and importantly is that you use RO water and not tap water. You can get them from lfs(local fish shop) 25 litres for around ?3.00. However they are that reliable to be nitrate free if they don't keep their ro unit up to date with maintenance. So it best to invest in your own ro unit which is simply plumb under the kitchen sink. Any way that out of the way.
1-fill the tank with ro water. Put on the heater(if it come with the tank or get one). The heater should be on for 25 degree celcuis which is the average. Also put the pump on etc. the whole tank equipement on. Leave it for around 2 day so the water is the right temp.
2- The water temp is stable, you can put the salt in and follow the instruction of how much to put in so you can get nearer to the sg you want. Average sg is 1.025.(need a refractometer to help getting the reading for sg) Again leave it for more than a day and test the sg. If it is less then add more, but too much then take a bit of water out and replace with just ro water only to dilute it a bit to get down to the right sg.
3- Once the temp and sg is stable Which you have a week to do that then you can add the live rocks and live sand in. Depend how cured the live rocks is and quickly put into the tank you may be lucky not to get any spike of ammonia, nitrite etc but leave it for 3 weeks to let it cycle or may not but patient is rewarding to have a good successful tank so leave it for 3 weeks wether it cycle or not as letting the tank mature will give you the advantage of thing going right. Important that the ammonia,nitrite is 0 and the nitrate could be anything from 5-50or more but that can be take care of when the cycle is done.
4-Cycle is done (expect to have algae which is norm in the cycling) then you do at least 20% water change and you can start stocking cuc (clean up crews) to help to eat up the algaes that is left.
5- After the cuc at least a week later and all the parameter of the water is fine then you can add your first fish. Next fish should be at least 1 month later so the tank can catch up on the bio-load. Also corals can be add in soft corals are hardy and easy to look after. Hope this help and get used to your marine tank the in and out of all the equipement and take your time.
Tony