# First Attempt at Saltwater



## Sully

Hi all,

Well, I recently upgraded my 20 gallon freshwater to a 65 gallon tall freshwater. After talking the wife into that purchase, I also talked her into letting me attempt to convert the 20 gallon into a our first saltwater tank. Here's what I've done so far (I may miss a few things so feel free to post and ask the obvious incase I've left anything out.)

1. Broke down and completely cleaned the 20 gallon tank.

2. Found a new home for it and started the set-up. Used approximately 30 pds of Carib Sea Ocean Direct Live sand, Instant Ocean for a start-up as I didn't want to screw up the mixing portion of the water from the get go, and about 14 pounds of Live rock.

3. I'm currently running a standard HOB filter system for a 30 gallon tank. A 100 watt submersible heater and a 500 GPH circulation pump (thinking about a second but dont know if it is needed?)

The tank was set-up on Saturday, the cloudiness took about a day to settle and thought I didn't have enough LR so have since added about 5-6 more pounds and will probably add more down the road.

I took a sample of water in yesterday and had it tested and they said it tested good. I didn't have a hydrometer at the time so picked one up at the same time along with 2 seperate saltwater test kits (the 6 n 1 and the ammonia) and so far tests have been good. My initial test a salinty came in at 1.029 and I was able to exchange ou about a gallon of water and bring it down to 1.025-6.

My questions now are this. I've heard varying opinions on Skimmers but am leading towards eventually getting one to hopefully cut down on water changes a bit. Am I correct in thinking that with the skimmer I could go from weekly water changes to every 2 weeks? I do understand that until the tank is competely cycled and stable the water changes will be when the tank tells me to change it but I was thinking more down the road.

Second question is, if my water stays stable through the weekend, would I be ok in starting with a fish and maybe a hermit crab or snail of some sort?

I've read what I can to this point (and am still baffled by all the acronyms thrown out there) but still feel like a complete fish out of the water.

Thanks for any input, please be kind, lol.


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## Reefing Madness

500gph powerhead is more than enough for a 20g tank.
If you bought and used Fully Cured Live Rock, your water parameters will not budge at all, and you are safe to put fish in after a week, or even just a few days. If you did not use CUred Live Rock, wait, the cycle has yet to come, and if you put fish and inverts in there yoiu risk killing them.
Ammonia and Nitrites must be 0, and Nitrates under 40. 
At this point yoiu are correct, no need for a skimmer if you do 10% water changes per week. Get quality skimmer and your water changes go from there to once a month, some do every 2 weeks, but your water parameters will be the better judge of when.


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## Sully

Thanks RM for the repsonse. The live rock was sold as cured from 2 different pet shops. I plan daily water checks and if all stays good through the weekend, I plan to add my first fish or 2 and maybe a hermit crab or snail.

I may wait a month or so on the protein skimmer. I like the idea of twice monthly water changes. I'll try and get some pictures up from start to present.


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## Reefing Madness

Right on, good stuff.


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## tike

Do you plan on keeping corals? If so, what type of lighting are you running?


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## Sully

Corals are WAY down the road for me. I'll be happy if within a month I have something that's stayed alive for more than a week. But for the lighting question, just a standard flouresent light right now. I plan to upgarde to a 50/50 bulb soon.

Quick question. Tested the water again when I got home and PH levels have seemed to drop off signifigantly. Any thoughts? All other readings looked good.


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## tike

How far of a drop off? You will find in the night your tank will drop slightly in pH.
For corals I would recommend T-5 lighting on a 20 gallon. T-5 are a very slim bulb but put out more light then a standard flo bulb.


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## Sully

Drop off may not be as bad as I thought. I ran a second strip through and this one came in right around 8.0. It's the Tetra 6n1 kit and the PH one on it is really hard to read compared to the others it seems. They just dont show up as bright as the others on the strip so I had to look closer to the "shade" of the strip and it looked fine the second time around.

Thanks for the info on the lights, will keep that in mind.


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## Reefing Madness

No need for other lights if you just plan on fish at this point, you can always upgrade when you are thinking about Corals.


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## Sully

Well, I jumped in with a fish, a yellow tail Damsel. He's been in for two days now and looks great. He was very shy at first but now he's eating and showing himself quite a bit. He's already seemed to pick out his territroy/hidiing spot. Water checks have been stable. Also added a few hermit crabs a co-worker gave me from his tank. They have been all over exploring the reef. On my way down with a water sample to the lfs for a double check.


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## Reefing Madness




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## phil_n_fish

Sully said:


> Well, I jumped in with a fish, a yellow tail Damsel. He's been in for two days now and looks great. He was very shy at first but now he's eating and showing himself quite a bit. He's already seemed to pick out his territroy/hidiing spot. Water checks have been stable. Also added a few hermit crabs a co-worker gave me from his tank. They have been all over exploring the reef. On my way down with a water sample to the lfs for a double check.


yikes I hate damsels cuz they are soooo aggressive and they are too fast to catch unless you remove the rocks when it comes time to get other fish. But you are on the right track  

If you are not looking at coral at the moment, you can always put in a sea mushroom because they are so easy to care and can live in low light.
And its important that you use only RO water because tap water will cause huge algae blooms.

I would recommend 1-2 pounds of live rock per gallon and atleast an inch of sand. 
A skimmer would help a whole lot on water quality. You can get a hang on cyclone filter for 100 bucks at petco or get a cheap drop in skimmer for 30. Maybe you will become interested in having a sump in the future to hide all the equipment and a good skimmer


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## Sully

Thanks Phil. Day 3 now with the fish and he's looking good. Took a water sample down today for a check from the fish store and it came in with amonia at right in between .5 and 1.0 so he recommended a 25% water change. Did that and retested myself a few hours later and it droped it down below .5 but not quite a zero. Put in a small chunk of carrot and a frozen pea on a totthpick in the sand for the hermit crabs and two of them found it within about 30 mins. The biggest one stripped the pea of the toothpick and is curled up in a ball on his side with it cluthed and another one has moved in and is helping him.

Hopfully water checks out good in the morning.


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## Reefing Madness

Try Romaine Lettuce instead of Peas and Carrots.


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## Sully

Never thought of Romaine lettuce. Will give that a try in a day or two. Day 3 with the Damsel and he's looking great. Hopefully everything stays stable through the week and I can go look for my next purchase.


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## Sully

Day 4 with the new fish and hermit crabs. All is good. Amonia levels are still at .5 or less (hate the test stip kits) and Nitrates are finally starting to register a little bit. My wife kept saying she sees what look like little worms and I finally saw them. They are very small (about 1/4 to 1/3 of an inch long) but dont think they are works. I'm thinking leaf algae? Also noticed for the first time what looks kinda like a centipede (red with white legs, can only see about 1/3 to 1/2 inch of him but cant tell because he goes back into the hole of the LR and cant tell how far. Any ideas? I know pics would help and if I can figure out how to get better quality pics from something other than my cell phone I will.

Thanks in advance.


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## Reefing Madness

Bristle Worms
Bristleworm


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## Sully

Thanks RM! That's it. From the source you provided seems like nothing to worry about.


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## Sully

Well, this is pretty much day 7 with a fish and the crabs in the tank. Everyones happy! May go down and look for a new addition this weekend. Trying to decide between a shrimp or a couple clown fish?

Sure seems like a big drop off in posters here lately.


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## Sully

Thought I would update. New addtions last week were a coral banded shrimp and 3 nasarius snails. All are doing good. Here's a pic of the tank. Not much happening at the time, lol.


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## Sully

So a few updates if anyone is interested. 2 1/2 weeks ago, added a CB shrimp and some nasarius snails. The CB shrimp molted this past weekend which was pretty cool.

Last weekend, picked up a mushroom and a green stony coral (Greenie was given to me from one of my lfs's as a starter. The Green stony coral took a day or less and was in full bloom. seems to like the location I got him in. The mushroom fluttered around the bottom of the tank for a day or two and I finally blocked it in next to the LR with a few empty shells and it looks great. I'm going to leave the shells there for at least another few days to give it a chance to grab ahold of the LR. Hopefully it doesn't attachto the shells, lol, but if so, no biggy.

Today I upgraded my lighting to a dual bulb hood with a 10k 14 watt t-5 bulb and an actinic 14 watt bulb from Coralife. ALso bought a hammer coral. Waiting now on the hammer coral to open up. Here's a few pics.

Green stony









Hammer coral









Mushroom









CB shrimp


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## Reefing Madness

Green Star Polyps. Top pic. Or Star Polyps
Green Star Polyps, Starburst Polyps - Pachyclavularia
Star Polyps, Starburst Polyps - Briareum spp.


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## Sully

After looking at both links, I'm confident in saying star polyps.

Am I ok with lighting so far in your opinion?


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## Reefing Madness

Should be ok with those lights. They are T-5's. LED's would be better in this case, but you should be fine with T-5.


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## Sully

Water checks this evening:
PH 8.2
Amonia- less than .25 (I'd call it 0 but it may have a slight spike due to probably overfeeding last night trying to target feed my corals a bit of flake)
Nitrite- 0
Nitrate- < than 5 but looks closer to 0
Phosphate- < .25 but looks closer to 0


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## coralbandit

Just my thought; but I discourage flake food in marine aquaria.All foods(even frozen{the water used with them} )have phosphates in them, flake food much more.Also most marine life will do better with mysis shrimp(even corals).


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## Reefing Madness

Yea, Flake really isn't good for Marine tanks, especially not for Corals. Try- Squid, Mysis, Brine, Cyclopeze, Phytoplankton, Marine Snow. You can use a turkey baster to target feed your corals with Mysis and Brine.


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## Sully

Well, I haven't updated here for awhile. I've been having issues with my green star polyp. It was getting overgrown by halimeda. I pulled it and got the halimeda off of it and it came back a few days later. I then went through a hair algae bloom. Cut my lights down to 2-3 hours a day for 5 days and got that under control but the algae that grew on the GSP pissed it off and it wen tinto hiding again. I pulled it yesterday and tried to get any hair algae off it I could but that was futile. Put it back in the water and it wa happy again within a couple hours.

Also noticed when I got my mushroom situated in a good spot again that it has made a baby mushroom. *w3 Just a little tilt on the shell that the mushroom has is situated on made all the differance. It's now spread out to over 2"'s across and looks great. It's little spawn is only about a 1/4" or so but I'm pretty happy that stuff is reproducing. My GSP has also spread off of the rock that it started on and starting another colony on a adjacent rock.


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## Reefing Madness

Very nice Job Sully!!


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## phil_pl

hows the tank coming??


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## Sully

It's going well. I changed a few things. Pulled out the YT damsel and returned him back to the lfs. Pulled out the CBS and put him in my QT. Added a Lawnmower Blenny, a high finned red banded goby and a tiger pistol shrimp. The goby and pistol shrimp weren't paired at the lfs but they paired up pretty quickly when I put them in the tank. Trying to go for a little more peaceful tank. Last thing I will probably add will be a clown fish. Only thing that kinda sucks is the goby and shrimp have built there burrow behind some LR but I can still get a glimpse of them a couple times a day. That shrimp can move some sand, lol.

ALso forgot. The original mushroom is now 4 mushrooms on a single empty hermit crab shell.


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## phil_pl

Sounds like everything is running great! Can't wait to see some more pictures


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## Sully

Here you go Phil!

New Goby and his buddy:

Protector:









Protector and protectee: (so happy they've expanded the tunnel to the front of the rock and we get to see shots like this now once in awhile)


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## Reefing Madness




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## coralbandit

Super nice ! I got your goby in my 29 ,he's awesome one of my favorites.Check out barnacle blennies if he really strikes your fancy as they hide in any hole they can find and dart out for food in a flash!First look at my 29 would say there's no one in it,but their in there!
Loving the banded goby and pistol shrimp! Great pics Sully!


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## Sully

Here's a few more of various things.

New Anchor/hammer coral.









New Leather coral. Even more extended after this picture.









Zoa









Lawnmower Blennie









Snail with some crazy new growth. All the dark shell has grown on him in this tank in about 3 months or so.









Clove polyp









New Hector goby. He took a few lumps finding his niche but seems to be doing better now.









Original hammer coral. I think he's getting close to splitting.









And finally, pulsing zenia.


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## coralbandit

Wow!Looks great!You got it going on man!


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## Reefing Madness

Out did yourself man!! Looks freakin awesome!!


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## Sully

Thanks both of you. Means a lot. Question on the 5th picture down. Is that normal growth for a snail shell? Never seen one in a tank that had changed colors and texture like that before.


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## Reefing Madness

Yup, seen that a few times on Mexican Turbos. Some pics you see if you look at the bottoms by the trap doors, you will see that pattern.


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## phil_pl

OH WOW! Everything looks SWEEEET!
in tank symbiosis, coralline on the back glass, full polyp extension and growth. sounds like a successful tank to me!! CONGRATS


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## dvanbramer88

Looks great man!


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## Goby

spectacular


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