madhattertcm
Reefing newb
Hopefully I'll get a good pic today to post, but was curious of your thoughts.
My girlfriend and I inherited a saltwater aquarium. Basically her parents, who had one had one running but hadn't kept up with it in about a year. There was live rock and a serpentine star living in there. The algae was pretty bad and we'd scrape it off the walls once it got bad and that was all. No water changes, no getting the scraped algae out.
Here's a pic of it when we decided we'd start taking care of it:
I've never taken care of a saltwater before. I'm pretty knowledgeable about freshwater, but in comparison freshwater seems super simple compared to all that can be done with salt.
Slowly but surely we've gotten most of the nasty algae out from the wall scrapings, i took some soft bristles to the live rock to get some of the algae off that couldn't be gotten with a turkey baster. Overall, it's looking a lot nicer now. All the levels are fine and there's now some life: handful of hermit crabs, turbo snails and a damsel. In a couple weeks, we're going to do another cleaning (getting more of the algae scrapings out and cleaning 3 of the other rocks a little more).
Overall setup is really basic:
55 gallon cube tank.
marineland emperor 280 filter
heater
stock light
Until we're ready to shell out money for lights, this will be a fish/liverock tank.
Questions:
1. what are some basic musts I may be missing that I should check for before going further?
2. I'm aware that damselfish are territorial/aggressive. I may return it once we're ready to put other fish in. We put it in to make sure we can even take care of it though before shelling out money for more expensive guys. What are some alternative low-cost (sub $30/40) fish that we can stock the tank with that would be friendly with future mates?
3. Are there other interesting things like feather dusters to add to rocks for interest?
My girlfriend and I inherited a saltwater aquarium. Basically her parents, who had one had one running but hadn't kept up with it in about a year. There was live rock and a serpentine star living in there. The algae was pretty bad and we'd scrape it off the walls once it got bad and that was all. No water changes, no getting the scraped algae out.
Here's a pic of it when we decided we'd start taking care of it:
I've never taken care of a saltwater before. I'm pretty knowledgeable about freshwater, but in comparison freshwater seems super simple compared to all that can be done with salt.
Slowly but surely we've gotten most of the nasty algae out from the wall scrapings, i took some soft bristles to the live rock to get some of the algae off that couldn't be gotten with a turkey baster. Overall, it's looking a lot nicer now. All the levels are fine and there's now some life: handful of hermit crabs, turbo snails and a damsel. In a couple weeks, we're going to do another cleaning (getting more of the algae scrapings out and cleaning 3 of the other rocks a little more).
Overall setup is really basic:
55 gallon cube tank.
marineland emperor 280 filter
heater
stock light
Until we're ready to shell out money for lights, this will be a fish/liverock tank.
Questions:
1. what are some basic musts I may be missing that I should check for before going further?
2. I'm aware that damselfish are territorial/aggressive. I may return it once we're ready to put other fish in. We put it in to make sure we can even take care of it though before shelling out money for more expensive guys. What are some alternative low-cost (sub $30/40) fish that we can stock the tank with that would be friendly with future mates?
3. Are there other interesting things like feather dusters to add to rocks for interest?
