Finally tank is up

[sgallagher7]

Well I received my first corals. 2 zoa's, a pink yuma ricordia, and I bought a pink tipped frogspawn from my LFS. All seem to be doing well. This weekend I get 2 PPE's from a local seller. Very excited so far. Frogspawn is fully inflated, and the zoa's are all open. Here are some pics.

[JerseyWendy]

NIIIIICE, Shawn! How excited are you? Isn't it a special feeling when you put your first corals in your long-anticipated, carefully planned tank? Love your choice, and great-looking pieces and super pictures.

Please post pics of the Purple People Eater, too, when you get them, ok? I'm looking for some more zoos and rics right now as well. Just a few colorful ones to fill in some blanks.

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Wendy

[sgallagher7]

Thanks wendy. The excitement was like the day I got the rock from the airport. I have 3 more frags coming in this week. Purchased them on e-bay. So far im satisfied with the shipping and quality. Pics will be coming on those as soon as they are in the water.
Been running chemi pure for the last 4 days to help keep some cyno and diatoms under control. Seems to be working well.

[JerseyWendy]

Shawn, any updates on your tank?

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Wendy

[sgallagher7]

Wendy. Thinks are moving slowly. Having a bit of a problem with bubble algae and some other types. No fish yet, and my corals dont seem to be growing at a pace like yours. Any suggestions to kick things into overdrive?

[JerseyWendy]

Believe it or not, I have some bubbly algae as well. Whenever it "pops up", I try and carefully remove it without busting it open. Sometimes I use the syphon to pry them loose and then hold the syphon right on it, in hopes none of the spores attach themselves elsewhere.

The only thing I dose on a regular basis is Tropic Marin's Bio Calcium and Magnesium. That's it, nothing else.

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Wendy

[sgallagher7]

Well I figured its time to update my tank info. Things have been going fairly well. Doing my water changes, coral are growing slolt but growing. Polyps popping up on my live rock. Tube worms, snails, and amphipods growing like crazy. Looking like water fleas. Nitrates have been around 25 to 30. Unable to get them down. No nitrites, ammonia or phosphates.

Did a great deal of reading about my first fish! yea. I was very excited. I was concerned about the nitrates and the fish, but things I read said it should be ok. Bought my first fish. A cute, 3 inch tang, and a larger lawnmower blenny. Feed them frozen cyclopeeze evry other day. Things seemed to be going well. Day 5 I see both fish struggling to breath, and by day six both had died. I felt terrible. I dont know what went wrong. Testing showed the nitrates to be higher than 30.
At this point im shell shocked. Im planning on doing a 50% water change, and start using sugar to reduce the nitrates down to 0. Its the only thing I can think of. Any suggestions to pull me out of this funk?

[JerseyWendy]

Oh no! Shawn, I'm so sorry. How terribly sad you must be.

Doing a 50% water change sounds like a good idea. For the world of me I can't figure out why your trates are up like this. You are using a fuge with macro, right?

What type of tang did you buy? I'm only asking because if I were to start over, I'd add a tang last. Remember the spotted Kole tang I added to help me battle my hair algae? Well, he was a HUGE help all right, he tore it down like there was no tomorrow, but he is THE most aggressive fish in my tank. He thinks he's Mr. Uber-boss, which ticks me off often enough.

Hopefully someone experienced will jump in and help you figure out how to keep the nitrates down.

Keep you head up, too, please.

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Wendy

[JerseyWendy]

Look what I just found. Perhaps that'll help you.

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...light=nitrates

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issu...t2003/chem.htm

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Wendy

[sgallagher7]

Thanks Wendy. It was a hard blow. I was patient with everything since day one. Nitrates have been driving me crazy. I have chaeto and callurpa in my fuge, as well as some different types growing on the rocks. My turnover is well over 25x, and aeration doesnt seem to be a problem. My ro water tests out at 0 for everything. Im scratchn my head bald.

The tang was a small pacific blue. Seemed to like some of the plants growing on the rock. Same for the blenny.

[ToxicPoison]

Have you tried a different test kit? Maybe you got a bad batch and your readings are off?
Just a thought..

[sgallagher7]

Yup. Tried 2 different test kits and the salifert shows the highest reading. I'v read every article out there. The entire time the nitrates have been high, no feeding occured. I just had a few zoa's and a frogspawn. The inverts are living happily. Just dont know what happened to the fish. My guess is that the nitrates are just too high, but thats just a guess. In at a loss for lowering them since i have also read that the water changes will only drop the nitrate levels just so low, but not below 20 or so.

[JerseyWendy]

Shawn,

Again, I'm so sorry about your fish.

Perhaps trying multiple large water changes over a period of a week or so will help.

To be honest, my trates had gone up to over 20 at probably more than one time, but I've never lost a fish to it. Heck, the fish didn't even show any signs of stress but continued on their merry way.

Is it at all possible that something was wrong with the fish to begin with? Perhaps it wasn't your water afterall.

What are your other parameters, like pH, ammonia, nitrite, salinity, hardness, calcium? (I don't think calcium would matter with fish either)

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Wendy

EDIT:
PS. Something just dawned on me. I cannot keep a lawnmower blenny in my tank with my tang because he would kill him. For some reason he HATES bottom dwelling blennies of all sorts. My Tang furiously went after the Bicolor (when I still had one), NEARLY killed a lawnmower, but I managed to rescue him, and KILLED my sandsifting goby. So perhaps they were both stressing each other out too much? I'm just guessing here.