4 Week old reef tank

[Miller]

Hello,
I am new to reef tanks, the first photo is of my 10 gallon reef tank that is now 4 weeks old. The second photo is of a coral that my girlfriend and I are unsure what it is, we think it is a paly. Could somebody tell us what the corals are in the second and third photos?

Thanks in advance,
Barry

 

[sdexcalibur1]

wow nice, My tank never tooked that clean expecially at 4 weeks, You have a lot in their for the time it's been up.

 

[APISTOBORELLI]

The third pic are blue palys. Not sure on the second one.

 

[Miller]

We have 7 snails, a cleaner shrimp, 2 blue leg hermits, and a scarlet hermit for a clean up crew. I know we have a lot in there, its so hard to be patient. With the live rock and sand that we started the tank with it cycled in 11 or 12 days.

 

[GinaD]

Welcome!
My advice is to be very careful adding new things to a 10 gal, and to do it very gradually. Tanks that small are naturally unstable compared to the larger one's. You should do frequent water tests and water changes.
Enjoy!

 

[Miller]

Thanks GinaD
We do weekly water tests and 10-15% water changes every 10 days. Would it be better to do weekly water changes? I tired to add slowly, 1-2 creatures every 4ish days.

 

[DavidGallant]

which light do you have on the tank? I have a 10 nano too and i LOVE IT!

 

[Miller]

I have a Current USA light 2x65 watt 50/50 Daylight Actinic that hangs 4 inches over the water. The fixture is about 3-4 inches longer then the tank, I was buying some coral frags off of a lady and she gave me the light. Before that I had some not so good 20 watt light.

 

[RayD]

When adding fish you'll start to see the water parms changing.

The best advice anyone here can give is to gooo slooow!

 

[Miller]

We are not planing on fish until January. We were thinking a Clown fish or many a Royal Gramma. Any thoughts, suggestions or concerns about adding one of those two fish in January? Then we were thinking about adding the other fish the month after the first.

 

[DavidGallant]

I added two clowns when I first set up my nano. Adding them at once caused them to be inseparable, in my case anyway The smaller the better for the bioload of a 10gal, only because a big swing can cause the parameters to go out of wack. Do you have any flow yet in the tank either, with water pumps/powerheads?

 

[GinaD]

Thanks GinaD
We do weekly water tests and 10-15% water changes every 10 days. Would it be better to do weekly water changes? I tired to add slowly, 1-2 creatures every 4ish days.

1-2 creatures every 4 days or so is not slow at all for a 10-gal.
Your params are going to get out of whack pretty quickly at that rate.
I'm thinking you'll be experiencing the red slime pretty soon.

 

[Miller]

GinaD my girlfriend is saying "I told you so", she thought we were adding to fast. The water parameters are still good, hopefully we dont get red slime. Any suggestions on what to do if it does start to grow?

 

[Miller]

David, what do you have for flow in your nano? We have the Rio Nano Skimmer, no powerheads. We have been to two aquarium shops and have been told that would be enough. Is that enough or have we been misled and need additional flow?

Thanks for the info

 

[tone2607]

i think u r going to need a powerhed

 

[DavidGallant]

I've just got a powersweep in there for now, which will be replaced soon. Flow will help to prevent bad algae from building up, which always happens in the beginning. There are a few other smaller powerheads around, but make sure to read reviews about each first. I also have a Hang-On-Back aquaclear filter, for more circulation, a bit more water volume, and i keep extra liverock and a mechanical sponge filter in there to help with stuff that i kick up.

 

[Miller]

I think we might pick up a powerhead tomorrow.

 

[Miller]

We picked up a Hydor Koralia Nano today, so we are trying to find the best position for it.

 

[Gina McReeferson]

Hello Barry and welcome to the BRS!

-Gina and Dave

 

[chew*]

Welcome to the BRS miller and here's some friendly helpful advice. Stores make it sound so grand to have a nano but what they don't tell you is that a nano is more geared towards the advanced reefer and not the beginner. The reason for this is the smaller amount of water makes for a smaller margin of error.....smaller margin of error spells disaster quickly with little to no experience in this hobby.

That said you can do a nano sucessfully but you should take it very very slow.........

I set this tank up about 4 months ago and I was making "rock soup" a term we use for seeding deadrock into live rock for a month prior to that......

This tank was even stocked to fast due some unexpected circumstances, it was meant to be a frag/quarantine tank but recently I broke down my main display......Had plans gone as I wanted it would not have this much of a load 2 months from now............and as expected I lost a rather sensitive small colony (actually it had a 1/8" start of RTN, I sent it to a fellow reefer's house with a well established tank but damage was already done and it was gone in 3 days)

Patience pays off in the end....