New to marine.

[Freshwaterjimbo]

Hi everyone my name is AJ for short.

I've been a freshwater and brackish water enthusiast for the past 8 years.

Moved to a new city a few weeks ago and decided to do my first marine tank.

I've decided to go with a 25gallon/100L aqua sun.

I've been reading on posts for the past few years to get every bit of information as I possibly can.

I've set up my tank with live rock, set up a canister filter and added a Skimmer with marine lighting a small WaveMaker, I tested the waters everyday for two weeks did needed water changes and have added 4 two month old clown fish in an attempt to create a clown fish harem.

The canister filter has a top layer of after market sponging and a bottom layer of charcoal, anti ammonia pellets and quartz balls and pieces of live rock, canister in question is the cascade 500.

Here is my experience.

2 weeks with water parameters nitrite on 10ppm and ammonia on 0.15ppm

Week 3 I started testing every 2 days, the nitrite has gone down as well as the ammonia down to 0ppm and nitrite at 10pp.

Phosptae, and nitrate were in near perfect conditions.

Salinity stable at 1.025 (I only add in RO water for changes)

And for the 100L I do a 5L water change once a week.

After week 3 starting week 4 added 4 baby clown fish to the tank, the nitrite has spiked up to about 20ppm but has been going down gradually.

We are now at the end of week 4 and diatoms have started kicking in the other water parameters are near perfect.

I know it's a 50/50 with canister filters and no sump however at the end of the day it's personal choice and if I go bigger I'll definitely be getting a sump for bigger tank.

We are at week 5 now and these clown fish are active they eat bribe shrimp and marine pellets.

I have also noticed a small magnificent anemone on the liverocj I purchased from someone who had a cycled tank and it's just been growing and moving around.

For a first time saltwater tank I possibly made tons of mistakes and I might have gotten lucky.

This is just an introduction and I know I have much to learn.

I would like to ask everyone's experiences on the following so I can compare to my notes of others.

- canister filter opinions
- Skimmer opinions.
- 25galoon tank opinions.
- clown fish harem opinions.

 

[Mike]

Hi! Welcome to the site (a little late). How's the aquarium going? Any chance we might could get some pictures of it?

 

[kbuser92]

Welcome! Unfortunately, this forum isn't as active as it once was, but hopefully that changes!

Sounds like you're on the right path. I would take the charcoal and ammonia pellets out of that canister and just throw in a bunch of live rock. That has always worked well for me. Sounds like everything else is running normally for a new tank: nitrite spike that's going down, diatoms...it'll sort itself out. I always liked to do a 30% water change every 4 days or so with a new tank, slowing down to 20% every 5 days and then working to 10% every 7ish days (some weeks are tougher than others) once it stabilizes a few months in.

As far as skimmers, don't worry too much about it. At 100l, you don't need one, and you really don't need one until you get corals, anyway.

And for harems: the dominant will change into a female. Generally, you'll want to keep them in pairs, but I believe there are a couple species that harems will work in (except its 1 female to multiple males - does that still count as a "harem"?). Once they pair off, you can pick the nicest two and trade the others for something else like a peppermint or scarlet skunk. You won't want much more than a couple clowns in a 100l tank, anyway, so fill up your cuc (I love reefcleaners!) and call it a day!

Good luck! If you have any questions, ask away, and be sure to post some photos for us!