Chemistry watch help?

Hahaha Alex, your dad definitely sounds like the guy to take nitrate advice from! :D

But that is horrible that so many fish and livestock were lost :(
 
Reef Nutz,
Im 100% positive if you just put a fish in your tank while it had nitrates that high, it would have died pretty quickly. But if your nitrates rise so gradually that all your fish have time to adjust, then its not an instant death - more of a slow poisoning that could take several years.
I added a Naso and the Vlamingi to the tank before I started dosing. And the Trates were at 200. You can see them in my album pictures. They are alive and getting big. And not stresses out I might add.
 
Thats like saying, I upped the carbon dioxide level in the air. The human we chucked in the room survived. And we brought the level slowly back to normal, but they lived right?

Come on reef, no matter what you can say, that is irresponsible.
 
Thats like saying, I upped the carbon dioxide level in the air. The human we chucked in the room survived. And we brought the level slowly back to normal, but they lived right?

Come on reef, no matter what you can say, that is irresponsible.
I answered his question pretty well. I'm sorry you didn't like that answer either. Maybe you should get together on your questioning, for your tag team. And you can throw out here what you will, I did it and have been doing it. Nothing else I can tell you. It was a FOWLR, not a Reef Tank. But you guys are right about the inverts not liking it, well the bigger ones anyways. BumbleBee snails didn't seem to mind. Nothing else you can throw at me that I can't counter in this subject, so just drop it man.
 
I'm sorry this has gotten into a battle of opinions, even though I've only been "trying" this new hobby for only a couple of months, I sure have learned over all the information I'm trying to gather to make my scenario work for me is there are hundreds of similarities but hundreds of varieties to get this or anything done. And this isn't even including the LPS (a shot to lighten the mood).

On my behalf, let me just say this is an incredible community forum group, I've been a member of a few horse communities and they suck in comparison to this. I proud to know all of you and I respect all of your opinions.

Thank you all so much, but now we just have to get along, please, I'm starting to feel bad about asking such a newbie question.

You all rock, Thank you!
 
Well back to your original question. When only keeping fish the important tests are pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrates, salinity, and temp. You'll want to keep pH between 7.8-8.3, ammonia 0, nitrites 0, nitrates keep as close to 0 as possible, salinity between 1.021-1.026 and temp 77-82.

When you start with corals I would suggest starting with easy to keep soft corals. You won't NEED to add any extra tests for them but your salinity should be between 1.024-1.026.

When you feel more comfortable with corals and want to try hard corals you'll need to add calcium, magnesium, alkalinity, and phosphate tests. Keep calcium 380-450, magnesium 1250-1350ppm, alkalinity 7-11 dKH, and phosphates 0.

Hopefully this is more what you're looking for.
 
Back
Top