The Accidental Aquarist . . .

mikewurtz

mikewurtz

FOWLR Power!
Hello everyone,

My name is Mike and I am new to the hobby and forums. My 'guy' at the LFS refers to me as The Accidental Aquarist because I seem to have fallen into the hobby. I have enjoyed reading various things through out these forums and thought it was time I start participating.

About 6 months ago a friend of mine was moving out of her house and into an apartment and couldn't take her tank with her. She asked me if I wanted it (for free) and without knowing what I was getting into I thought absolutely, I'd love to take the 90 gallon saltwater tank off your hands even though I don't know anything about it. (YIKES!!!! :shock:)

Needless to say I may have bitten off more than I can chew, but I have enjoyed learning about this exciting habit-forming hobby. Since inheriting the tank I have added 6 creatures to the existing 5 in the tank and so far haven't lost any of them ( that's a good sign right? :D)

Here is my set-up:

90 Gallon FOWLR Tank
1 Yellow Tang
1 Yellow Bellied Blue Hippo Tang
1 Hawaiian Flame Angel
1 Three Striped Damsel
1 Maroon Clown
1 Dragon Goby
2 Blue Damsels
1 Red Bali Star
1 Emerald Crab
1 Sally Lightfoot Crab

All my levels are normal and the fish are happy and thriving. The only thing I'm confused about is that the water seems to have a yellow-greenish tint to it. Any suggestions?
 
Hi! Welcome!

I am in now way able to answer your question, but sometimes my water looks a little green, I need to take the lids off and scrub them, and do another water change and it looks all better, but I am not sure of your lighting set up and if you have any lids on the tank at all. If you have the stock lids with the strip lights that comes on tanks thats what I have and I have to clean the arcylic that the lights sit on. But it could be something totally different too!
 
Welcome to the LR

In order to figure out what your water color problem could be it would be helpful to know what your equipment setup is; lights, sump?, are you running a protein skimmer?.
 
+1 adept -- we need your setup info.

Welcome to the forum! As an accidental aquarist myself, I didn't know what I was getting into :)

First off, one of the big nono's in this hobby is using tap water...tap water can cause algae outbreaks. So if you're using tap, stop, and get rodi water from your lfs, or distilled water from Walmart. If you are already using rodi/distillled, bravo!

Do you have a glass scraper? Sometimes, that's all the tank needs :)

I hope you didn't add your new critters all at once...that'll put too much bioload at one time....at most, you shouldn't add more than 2-3 in a 3-4 week time period...even that many is pushing it.

Anyway, just something to think about :) Definitely get us your tank equipment list. PLUS we love pics! Living reefs motto: Pics or it didn't happen!
 
Hello and welcome to the site, glad to have you. Everyone has you covered pretty much. As a side note, try running some carbon or chemi-pure to clean and clear your water up and make it sparkle again. Also, make sure you're doing some regular water changes(no tap water) to keep the water looking pristine. Good luck and keep us informed.
 
Thank you all for the warm welcome.

dcantucson: The hippo tang was already in the tank when it was given to me, she is actually over 4 years old.

I've gotten the water tint back to normal. I did a 20% water change and disassembled and cleaned everything in the sump. Turns out, the culprit causing the water discoloration was a pretty nasty filter inside the water pump. Which, I wasn't even told there was a filter there, I found it on my own. Bringing me back to my biggest issue . . .
I'm beginning to think that although my friend has been running different tanks for several years and this particular tank for a few years before giving it to me, I was wrong to actually take her advice on its care and maintenance. She has turned out to be wrong about SO MUCH. Thank God for the internet, library and helpful staff at my local LFS.

Instead of pictures I've drawn up a detailed diagram of the equipment currently in use which I will be posting in a few minutes. I have already replaced a few pieces of equipment after learning that they were for a MUCH smaller tank. Please look over my set-up and give me any advice you can.
 
Lol thanks. It's photoshop ( I use a drawing tablet ). I'm a professional web designer so I'm used to scribbling things up pretty quickly.
 
I see you have bioballs? I couldn't download/enlarge it. Bioballs are nitrate traps, but people here have successfully used it. You need to lightly rinse them one once in a while in old tank water (meaning, when you do a partial water change, rinse them out in there...at least I think that's what most people do here). You don't want to completely rinse them, as they have beneficial bacteria in there already, but you need to get the trapped debris out.

Personally, I'd ditch them (I ditched mine)...if you choose to ditch them, you must do it a cup at a time over a long period of time, otherwise you will cause your tank to cycle because you're essentially getting rid of bacteria that your tank needs.

Is there a skimmer? It would be a good investment. If the amount of rocks you have in there is accurate, you would need more rocks, too. To save money, you can add some base rock, since you already have live rock - they will seed your base rock.

Good luck! :)
 
The link I posted is for a png image, here is the actual image followed by a real pic of my tank.

tank.png


livetank.jpg


Sorry for the crappy picture quality, I snapped it with my phone because the batteries in my camera are dead.

As you can see, I don't have a lot of live rock at all. When the tank was given to me, I didn't think twice about the amount of live rock, but after seeing many photos of a ton of other tanks, I'm thinking I need WAY more. How much base rock can i get away with adding? will the small amount of live rock I have be enough to seed it? How do I go about adding it?

Also, there was a protein skimmer in the set-up, however upon initial set-up at my house when it was given to me, the powerhead on the skimmer cracked (maybe?) and the water in the sump was contacting open wiring and becoming electrically charged . The chick who gave it to me told me the skimmer wasn't a necessity and I could live without it, I'm starting to think that isn't the case.
 
When you say base rock, you mean dry rock right? You can add as much of it as you want. The live rock will seed it all for you but, the more live rock you have the quicker it will seed the others. As far as adding it, just make sure to rinse it out very well and then put it in the tank.
 
You want to shoot for 1 to 2 pounds of rock per gallon of tank size.A little more,or a little less wont make any difference.
One thing I would do,is get more flow in there.I'd add at least 2 of Koralia 4s along with the 3s you already have.
 
1-2 lbs. Cool. What's your take on lace rock? Will Purple Up harm my star or sea hare? Is there anyway to add coralline algae to the tank to speed up the spreading process?
 
Do you have coralline in the tank now? If so, turn off your skimmer (if you have one), take a piece of LR with coralline on it and use a razor to scrape some of it off, the powerheads will blow it around your tank, and wherever it settles it will start growing more. If you don't have any in your tank now try and buy a small piece of LR from your LFS with some on it and do the same process.
 
I do have (i'd estimate) about 25 lbs of live rock in the tank now. Is there a more precise way of placing it? I'd rather it not land in the sand or on the glass. Can I place it on the rock myself?
 
Not really, you can try to scrape it and place it on your rock but it's going to be such fine pieces that it will get blown off by your powerheads
 
Ive read about Coralline Algae 'Starter Kits'. Will using one of these speed up the process of spreading to my dry rock (in addition to the seeding from the LR)?
 

Similar threads

Mike
  • Sticky
New Member (Owner 😲)
Replies
0
Views
699
Mike
Mike
Mike
We're Back!
Replies
0
Views
621
Mike
Mike
Daniel C.
Cyano Assistance Needed
Replies
1
Views
2K
Captain Ron
C
H
New here but not new really
Replies
2
Views
3K
SantaMonica
SantaMonica
K
Reef Tank is Suddenly Cloudy with Unhappy Coral
Replies
3
Views
2K
dantimdad
dantimdad
Back
Top