Am I ready

[EmperorLay]

My 135 has been up for a week. All the water parameters are good and I have 0 phosophates, ammonia, and nitrates. I added some damsels about two day's ago and they are really active and seem to be doing well. Am I ready to add some nice fish. I was thinking about some clown's and tang's. I have also been running my aqua 40 watt uv 24/7. Thank's

[jhnrb]

Your system is large enough to provide some forgiveness, however, your biological filter bed has not matured well enough to support much of a bio load at this point. you did not say, but I assume you did observe a cycle on the system. anyways, next should be the clean up crew. you might get away with adding one fish and wait two weeks between additions and look for a slight cycle in the system. My advice is to add nothing to the system until your parameters are constant and good for at least 3 months at this point. (beware of the new tank syndrome if you load up too quickly.) now is when the patients is needed to go slowly and read the helpful articles. there is information there to help you on stocking your system. good luck, be patient, and keep us posted. happy fishin.

[Chris]

jhnrb is correct here. You will save alot of money following his advice.

[EmperorLay]

Originally Posted by jhnrb

Your system is large enough to provide some forgiveness, however, your biological filter bed has not matured well enough to support much of a bio load at this point. you did not say, but I assume you did observe a cycle on the system. anyways, next should be the clean up crew. you might get away with adding one fish and wait two weeks between additions and look for a slight cycle in the system. My advice is to add nothing to the system until your parameters are constant and good for at least 3 months at this point. (beware of the new tank syndrome if you load up too quickly.) now is when the patients is needed to go slowly and read the helpful articles. there is information there to help you on stocking your system. good luck, be patient, and keep us posted. happy fishin.

Thank's for the remark's but I am kind of confused. What exactly is the biological filter bed. I read through the articles but could not find it.

[jhnrb]

The biological filter is a term used to describe various different bacteria that develope in your system to deal with amonia, nitrites, and nitrates. initially the bacteria will develope when there is an amonia source such as fish poop, excess food or uneaten food, the bacteria break down the amonia to nitrite at which time the various bacteria that consume nitrite develpe, and they consume the nitrite and break it down to nitrate which is the lease toxic to marine animals but is still bad if too high, hence water changes to dillute and remove some of the nitrates. now this explaination is just scratching the surface but maybe you get the idea, so if you have several damsels in a large tank, only enough bacteria will develope to handle the bio load the fish provide and what ever is introduced form other sources, if you load up too quickly on animals and corals you run the risk of developing too much bio load too quickly and if the bacteria is not well establish as in a mature system you animals could suffer and dye. I will post some articles for you to read that will explain it better. hope this response helped somewhat

[jhnrb]

In the helpful articles forum on page one is an article labled beginning saltwater aquaria. click on this and scroll down to part 6. this should help clear up the bacteria cycle. while you are there browse around and read some of the other articles for beginners, or new systems. keep us posted if we have helped and post back here for any remaining questions. happy fishin

[EmperorLay]

Oh your helpn alright, thank's