I'm Dan

[Theicecreamdan]

Hey there new forum!

My name is Dan, me and my girlfriend Jenna are just now starting our first aquarium. Apparently a part-time job and full-time school just weren't enough to keep our time occupied so we decided to learn about some marine life the hard way.

Just a couple days ago we went and picked up a used 46 gallon bow front aquarium with an eheim canister filter, jager heater and a few other goodies. After a few trips to the local petstores we decided that the extra time, money and effort would be worth having a saltwater tank.
So we put in 10 pounds of bio gravel, 36 pounds of sand from Fountain's aquarium supply store along with a piece of dead coral and a big rock and around 46 gallons of salt water. After spending a while figuring out how to read the hydrometer correctly we've got the specific gravity right around 1.021. The filter is doing a pretty good job of clearing out the cloudiness from the water, and the pH and alkalinity seem like they are in the right ranges. So tomorrow we're going to go pick up our first couple of fish.

The first few people we talked to at pet stores we're telling us to get Damsels to cycle our tank, and a couple have said Clown fish should be ok. The last guy we talked to today said he starts all of his marine aquariums with a clown fish or two. So unless I read anything more tonight about clown fish not being a good first fish for a new tank I hope to go find a pair of clownfish tomorrow and begin our cycle.

I really look forward to learning a lot from this forum and I hope someday I'll know enough to be able to share some knowledge back to you. At least I'll be able to share some pictures of our fish as we develop their new community over time.

[Bifferwine]

Hello and welcome! If I were you, I would not use fish to cycle with. They almost always die. Instead, you can use a piece of raw shrimp from the grocery store. Just let it rot in your tank. This is a way to cycle the tank without wasting the money on a fish that probably won't survive. You can also cycle the tank using live rock. Which you will need to get anyways eventually. The plus about cycling using live rock is that if you do it now, before you have fish, it won't kill anything. If you add live rock later on when you already have fish, you run the risk of killing your fish unless you add only a little rock at a time.

If you must cycle using a fish, don't use a damsel. Yes, they are hardy, but if they survive, they will terrorize any other fish you try to add later on since damsels are so aggressive. Especially blue damsels, striped damsels and domino damsels.

What kind of lights do you have? Are you planning on keeping corals down the road?

Feel free to ask any other questions you might have!

[Theicecreamdan]

We have a 36 inch dual 30w flourescant bulb fixture. It came with 2 bulbs in it that the guy was using for his freshwater tank, and he gave us one actinic bulb (45k?) and he recomended getting another one like that for a saltwater tank.

So for a 46 gallon how much liverock would we want to put in there to start the tank cycling? I would feel bad adding fish into a tank now if we're going to end up adding things that will kill them, that's definitely not our goal and that's why we want to do our learning now. With liverock how long will it be before we can add fish? Estimated time I understand we'll be watching chemical levels before we go adding anybody in there.

Do you "feed" liverock anything? or do we just need to make sure it gets plenty of light?

[Bifferwine]

Ideally, you want 1 to 2 lbs of live rock per gallon. So in your case, 50 to 100 lbs. It's expensive. So do what you can afford. You don't need to do anything special for the live rock. What makes it live is that it has bacterial colonies already living on it. Most live rock comes with hitch hikers too -- little starfish, crabs, worms, if you're lucky you'll get a baby coral or two (although with your lights they probably won't survive). It's exciting to see what animals came along with the live rock.

How long it takes to cycle depends... First off, you will see ammonia rise, then nitrites rise, then nitrates rise, in that order. Once ammonia and nitrites drop to zero, your cycle is complete and you can do a water change to reduce nitrates. Nitrates are not going to drop on their own, unless you use a chemical or special filter media, usually the only way to drop nitrates is water changes.

Some tanks are done cycling in a week. Some take several weeks. It all depends.

[Theicecreamdan]

So if liverock already has the bacteria on it, don't we need something in there pooping and peeing to actually feed the bacteria to get them going?

[Bifferwine]

There will be some die off from the rock. This is what fuels the cycle.

[reeffreak]

Hi Dan.welcome to the forum.

There will die-off from the live rock to start the cycle.Either macro-algae or other organisms within the rocks.

[jhnrb]

welcome to the site.

[newbeetwo]

Hello And Welcome DAN... You will get alot of answers here but. BIFF reallys knows. whats she is saying....... all the help you will get in this forum will help but we all love our tanks and don't want to see any fish die... if your tank is not ready... your new fish WILL die.... SLOW GO SLOW!!!! nothing will die... you can go to wal-mart and get a shimp. dead already. put in your tank and make it cycle... Ammonia... nitrite... will spike.... when they get in check.... your bacteria will start this is what your fish and coarls need................ if you do it to fast all will die and we will all be sad!!! and you will be out lots of money.... SLOW thats the KEY

[Bifferwine]

Wow Lisa is really laying on the flattery tonight! She must want some of my algae...