A little help for a newb...

[Steve-O]

Hi, I'm starting my first ever salt tank. I've had every conceivable type of freshwater from 1 gallon to 55 gallons and everything from guppies to cichlids. Now I'm starting a salt tank for my office. I know I should start with a larger tank, but my desk will only accomodate a 10 gallon. The basic setup is this...

10 gallon tank
Penguin Mini Bio-wheel
Small powerhead
Marineland 100w heater
2 compact flourescent bulbs in the hood
10lbs live aragonite sand
8lbs live rock (I plan on getting a bit more, but the store ran out)

The tank is cycling right now, no livestock at all yet. Well, I did see a red worm in there that I think came in with the sand. I'm not sure what my water parameters are, but I'm using RO/DI water and the specific gravity is at 1.024. It's been running for 5 days now and the sand is becoming covered with brown algae. I plan on letting it run for another week or so before testing the water again to see if it's ready for inhabitants.

On to my questions:

1. Any problems or deficiencies with my current setup?
2. Is the brown algae a good sign or bad?
3. What sort of inhabitants should I be looking at? I was thinking a percula clown, a goby of some sort and a variety of snails, hermits, shrimp, etc.

Any help is appreciated and welcomed. Thanks. ;)

[treylane]

If this is going to be a reef tank, you can ditch the biowheel.

You should do a lot of water changes (1gal/day or something) while the tank cycles - that'll keep the brown algae down to a minimum, but a little bit of the stuff is pretty normal.

Definitely get a few snails. As for other livestock - I recommend a pair of gobies and pistol shrimp. Mini-clowns are fine too.

[Steve-O]

I found a great LFS near my office and I was able to pick up a used Red Sea Prizm skimmer for $30 (new ones were $99). So I have replaced the bio-wheel with the skimmer now. I've also put in another 8 pounds or so of tonga branch live rock.

After checking out the livestock at the LFS, I'm leaning towards this for stocking:

1 false percula (is there a mini variety?)
1 yellow clown goby
1 bicolor pseudochromis (bicolor dottyback)

[treylane]

Looks pretty good! I'd stick with one peppermint and no starfish for a 10gal, but plenty of people do it anyway. ;)

[Steve-O]

As for inverts, I'm thinking about these:

5 dwarf blue leg hermits
2 peppermint shrimp
3 turbo snails
1 orange sea star


Any potential problems or better alternatives? Keep in mind I'm not trying to buy expensive animals in case I make a big mistake and screw up the tank. Once I'm more comfortable with this tank, I'll set up the 55 at home and stock it with really cool stuff.

[Staghorn]

SteveO i wouldn't put that Bi color pseudochromis in that tank nothing but problems they become very aggressive and will bother any new additions to your tank if your looking for small fish try the gobies in the family of Trimma here's a pic. of a good choice:

[Staghorn]

Also SteveO a couple of club memebers are breeding clown fish so if you want to get them pretty small that would be the way to go ..... also there is a small version of the starfish you were thinking about only about an inch in size, the name ..... er can't think of it right now ( a little help out there ).

Will have to look through one of my books will let you know, one of the breeders is David M. in fact we just had a meeting at his place would have been a good chance to check them out.

Hope this helps,
Satghorn :cool:

Tank should cycle about 4-6 weeks and snails i would go with Astreas and Ceriths and maybe (1 or 2 nassairus snails for cleaning up left over food.)

[Steve-O]

Thanks, I'll look into them.

For an update, the tank is now doing fairly well. Here's my stocking list:

5 red hermits
0 snails (I've tried, but for some reason they keep dying)
1 citron goby
Green Star Polyps
Toadstool leather
Xenia
Candy Cane
A few different mushrooms

I'm debating putting another fish in there.

I'm having some other issues now though. I'm battling cyano pretty bad, but if I can just confine it to the rocks I'll be happy. Red rocks look ok, red sand does not. I've tried a few things (adding chaeto, reverse light cycle, water changes, etc.) but nothing seems to be working yet. I figure it may take a while to deplete any nutrients and then it will recede.

After checking my parameters, here is what I get:

Amm 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate ~10ppm
PH 8.4

I haven't bought test kits for anything else yet, they're pretty expensive. Anyone see a problem? Also, anyone know why my snails keep dying? Everything else does ok, but snails end up dead after a few days.

[Staghorn]

Yes , the Tank is still cycling, SteveO have you picked up any books on salt water, if not i would invest my money in this one ( The Conscientious Marine Aquarist by Robert M. Fenner our own local Hero ) so that you can do it the right way the first time and save some unneeded deaths of your livestock and yourself a lot of heartbreak and MONEY !!! How long have you had it setup with rock and water in it ???? Before the livestock and did you take a sample of water in to be tested by the store ( LFS ) to be sure your tank had cycled ????? SteveO saltwater is a little different then fresh ( you can pretty much plug and play) saltwater you have to take your time do it in stages and NOT OVERCROWD the Tank and you'll have SUCCESS. But invest in the book ask anyone on this forum and they will tell you the same !!!!!

Keep Us Posted !!!!
Staghorn :cool:

[Steve-O]

Although I respect your opinion, it's definitely NOT still cycling. I did take my water in to be tested just in case my results were wrong. They said anything under 50ppm of Nitrate was safe for livestock. Since mine only has about 10, they said I'd have no problems. If the tank was not fit for livestock, why is everything else alive and well? The tank's been set up for about 3 months now. I waited about 1 month before adding the hermits, then about another month before adding the fish and corals. I've been adding them slowly for about the last 6 weeks.

I haven't bought any books because I seem to be able to find answers to just about any question on the net.

[Staghorn]

Darn it , Just spent the last 5mins. typing a reply to you and just lost it !!!!
Heres the condensed version Don't get mad at my inquires .... you didn't list all of the facts about your system !!! So we are trying to narrow it down. If you feel that you don't need to buy the Book and that you are satisfied with answers you get and when you get them not a problem ..... Just realize that sometimes it nice to have a reference on hand and a one stop shop for all the info. you will need to get good foundation for this HOBBY so that you can avoid some of the problems people have when they first start a Saltwater system and you won't have to ask as many questions and you can start to enjoy your tank.
Here is a link for your snail problem: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/snaildisfaqs.htm

LMK if this helps,
Staghorn

[Steve-O]

No problem. I appreciate your opinion, I just don't agree. It seems from the posts you cited on wetwebmedia that many people have problems with snails dying off unexplainedly. I was hoping the experts would offer a more definitive explaination, but unfortunately it seems snails are still a mystery to many. I'm not sure it would help much with the cyano as it seems very few things do much for cyano, but perhaps I will try more snails in the future when the tank is more established.

[Staghorn]

Well SteveO it could be a few things ... snails starving to death from being unable to get past the cyano .... colone or cigarette smoke residue on your hands and you putting your hands in the tank , the snails falling off the rocks and not being able to right themselves. Just a lot variables ...... have tried running some carbon to try and see if it's something in the water , how did you acclimate the snails ?????

Staghorn

[treylane]

Cyano happens to new tanks. Even if it's not part of the "nitrogen cycle", people tend to group all the lousy stuff that we go through when setting up a new tank as "cycling."

It takes awhile for a tank to reach a balance of nutrients, and stuff that eats the nutrients. It's just a normal phase (albeit an ugly one) that will start to fade on its own in a month or two as your population of bristleworms, copepods, and other cleanup critters establish themselves. Time and maintenance: regular water changes, and good skimming/filtration (carbon?) normally take care of the problem. Might be interesting to get a phosphate test kit and see what your levels are at.

As for snail death - hermits find snails tasty, and like to use their shells as new townhouses. Or do the snails seem to be kicking off without outside help?

[peterluber]

water changes will help with the cyano as it thrives off of phosphates. that starfish was a bad idea. you should try to find the source of the snails' death as they should be alive. they work wonders for your algae, much better than having to scrape it. also, what kind of snails did you get? astreas are the best for algae, a turbo would be too big for a 10 gallon (it would trample over everything) and ceriths do better at eating astrea poo. in my 10 gallon i had about 5 hermits and 3 snails (astreas), and only in my 90 did iuse ceriths. also, keep in mind that bumblebeesnails do almost nothing.

[ratherbediving]

When you added the snails to the 10 gallon-- how did you do the acclimation? Snails in particular are quite sensitive to rapid changes in Ph/salinity (temperature?).... although there seem to be mixed opinions on this, I drip acclimated my snails for about 2 hours before I added them to my tank; I didn't have any losses.

HTH