New setup - Feeding & Lighting

[aravindk]

I am glad to announce that in less than two weeks time my cycle seems to be completed and based on my LFS recommendations, I bought three damsels today and they have been doing quite well so far. I have the following questions:

Feeding:
Is once a day a good enough? To begin with I am going to give them only flakes.

Lighting:
I understand for a reef tank with corals, many suggest a 12 hour lighting. For a fish only tank, what is the right amount of lighting? Also when to use moon light (blue light) and when to use the white light? Is blue light used only for cosmetic purposes or is there any benefit to the fishes?

TIA

 

[tjara03]

how did you initialy cycle your tank?? most of the people on this site prefer to feed once every other day at the most.. tell us about your tank...

 

[aravindk]

Mine is a 72G bowfront with 33g oceanic sump. I will try to add some pics later. I have about 65 lbs of live rock and 30 lbs of base rock. I first filled the tank with freshwater Sunday before last. Last sunday I put about 25 lbs of lr and 30 lbs of base rock. Last Wednesday I added another 45 lbs of fiji lr. Thats alll I did. Actually I wanted to add a dead shrimp etc., but my lfs suggested that is not necessary. According to him, adding a dead shrimp or a dead fish can help a fish only system. This is not required for a LR system, since most of the bacteria comes from the LR, no additional steps necessary.

Let me know if you need to know any other specifics.

 

[tjara03]

did you test your parameters throughout the cycle?? did you have a spike of ammonia??

 

[aravindk]

I did not test throughout the cycle. After seeing many exchanges in this forum, I was kind of settled for one month cycle, so I thought I will test after three weeks. Last night I tested and it was 0.025.

 

[tjara03]

either you may have gotten lucky and had a short cycle or you may not have had enough ammonia to boost your cycle, hence you may not have had a cycle at all, of course it all may depend on the quality of the life on the live rocks... in an earlier post you mentioned you filled the tank with fresh water then added live rock, i am sure you added salt before you added the rock, i just wanted to verify this... HTH...

 

[aravindk]

Thats right. I added fresh water first. then added live sand. then added salt and then added lr. Here is the chronology:

2/7 got my tank, cabinet etc. Put up the tank with fresh water to test for leaks.
2/8 filled the tank with 20lbs of ls and 20 lbs non-live sand. I added live sand with fresh water hoping to start the cycle. I did not add salt at this time.
2/10 mixed salt directly in the tank.
2/12 Got my first load of lr and base rock.
2/15 got another load of lr.
2/19 added fish.

 

[tjara03]

this may just be me but i feel that if you add fresh water to live sand it will kill off all the beneficial bacteria in the sand... but the live rock it may have worked for you... my advice would be to check your ammonia often and have some freshly mixed salt water for emergency water changes... HTH... Good luck!!!

 

[aravindk]

I added fresh water to live sand out of ignorance. Later I added the salt let it aerate for two days and then added live rock. Later I added more live sand to this. Yes, I am constantly checking all parameters.

 

[cmor1701d]

Where did you get the LR from?
Was it fully cured?
Please post all of your water parameters. It does not sound like your tank went through a complete cycle. If all readings for Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate are at zero and remain that way you may be ok if you slowly stock your tank.
As tjara03 said, keep some sw mixed and ready for PWC on a daily basis for now.
Are you sure you want to use 3 damsels to cycle your tank?
If they survive they can be a pain to remove later.

 

[aravindk]

I got 25 lbs of LR and 35 lbs of foundation rock from the LFS, both cured. Another 45 lbs from liveaquaria.com, cured.

One of the damsels appeared not so good, so I removed it and gave it away to a friend temporarily. The two others are ok.

Water paremeters today are:
0 Ammonia
30 nitrate
.1 nitrite
8.2 ph

I will do a pwc everyday until the readings become zero.

The LFS guy did tell me that damsels can be a pain once they become bigger and can bully other inhabitants. He suggested I can give them away after a while.

Pl. Let me know what else I need to do other than daily pwc.

 

[tjara03]

for now you should be ok with just monitoring the levels often and doing pwc's. after a few weeks to a month i would say you could slowly start adding fish to the tank... HTH

 

[aravindk]

ok, thanks.

Research says that keeping an aquarium reduces stress. I am an exception I guess. :-(

 

[tjara03]

once everything is good to go you will love it!!! i find myself staring at my tank all the time just to watch whats goin on in their world...