New Fish Only & Live Rock Setup

[daledom]

Thanks everybody for your advice, I have since done a water change and cut done to 6 hours of light. There has been a great improvement in the tank in just 3 days.
I have been told to only feed my fish every second day by my LFS, Is this OK ?
I have also added 2 turbo snails, would that be enough ?

My water parameters are
PH 8.2
Ammonia - 0ppm
Nitrite - 0ppm
Nitrate - 10ppm
S.G. - 1.020

Should I test for GH or KH ?
What other test do I need to do ?

Cheers
Dale

[DavidA717]

im using the carib sea live sand and i love it, ive never heard of the marble sand

[bobby]

Two snail is not going to be enough of a clean up crew for a tank that size. I would add more as the algae grows and stop adding when the cleanup crew cna keep up with the ditrius and algae. Nassarius snail are great for cleaning the sand bed, and astreas snails are great for eating the algae off of the glass.

[matthew1048]

Now I don't know I have this right or not, but here's my take on your situation. Marbles are made of glass, glass is mostly made of silica sand, your sand is made of crushed marbles, so techinically you have a sand bed of silica....which is utilized by diatoms to produce there shells. My guess is that you have golden diatoms. You can leave the sand you have in there...but you will always have silica in your system. And thusly you will probably have diatom outbreaks frequently. I would recommend that you find a temporary home for your fish and snails, remove the sand, add in some argonite based sand and some more live rock. Let the tank cycle again if necessary, and then add the fish back in. Hopes this helps...and I hope I'm half way right. Maybe some of the pros around here can correct me if I'm wrong!

[reeffreak]

Originally Posted by daledom

Thanks everybody for your advice, I have since done a water change and cut done to 6 hours of light. There has been a great improvement in the tank in just 3 days.
I have been told to only feed my fish every second day by my LFS, Is this OK ?Every other day is fine
I have also added 2 turbo snails, would that be enough ?You may need more as time goes on

My water parameters are
PH 8.2
Ammonia - 0ppm
Nitrite - 0ppm
Nitrate - 10ppm
S.G. - 1.020You need to raise your SG to 1.024-1.026

Should I test for GH or KH ?Testing akalinity is important in reef tanks.
What other test do I need to do?calcium,phosphate is also important.I also test Iodine and Magnesium,but they are not as important,regular water changes usually takes care of that.

Cheers
Dale

On the subject of marble sand....I had a chance to look it up in the states and marble sand is sold as pool sand.Matt may well be correct that its a type of silicate sand and may lead to algae blooms.Dale I would still change it out,but the choice is really up to you...good luck.