New Tank, Ready for a few inverts and fish?

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cyphur01

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Nov 2, 2003
Messages
3
Location
Norman OK
Hey,

I am new to this SW thing and was wondering if I could get a little advice. I have a 46gal bow front tank. I am setting up a fish only tank. So far I have a Emperor 400 hang on filter and 2 powerheads ( kinda weak but mainly for water movement) setup with an UGF. A berlin turbo protein skimmer. I have a 3" substrate with crushed coral and live sand on top. I dont have very much live rock as I cant really afford the expense right now. The tank was filled with distilled water and mixed Ocean Salt in for a spec gravity of 1.022 Anyways I was wondering if some of you gurus could check out these readings and tell me about them and if its ready for some stuff.

Ammonia- 0ppm
Nitrate-0ppm
NItrite- 0 ppm
PH-8.1
Alkalinty normal.

The tank has been going for about 2.5 weeks now and I have been adding biozyme to start off the cycling process since day one. The live rock which was cured at the LFS has begun to develop some brown algae looking stuff on it. I dont know if this is a good thing or bad though. Is it ready to add a couple of inexpensive fish yet?

Thanks
 
the algae is probably brown diatom algae, its normal for new tanks and if your tank has cycles and your levels stay constant, then i would add a fish or 2 :mrgreen:
 
if your ammonia, nitrate and nitrite have already spiked and returned to 0, then you are ready to add critters. If not, you should wait until after that happens. You can trigger the spike yourself by adding an uncooked shrimp. There is a good article on here about fishless cycling, but I don't know where it is.

Anyhow, if your tank has already cycled (spiked and returned to zero), then you are ready to add fish. Just a word of caution though, add fish slowly or you will induse a spike and start the tank will cycle again.

HTH
Phil
 
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