newbie

[portion]

this is my tank right now
i have it for 2.5 months and well seriously i never did water changes as yet
i need to get buckets etc cause i have to set the water for some days rite???
or can normal tap water be used??
i normally use the tap water for top off which i leave for some nights in a bucket
nothing happened so i think thats ok
i have heard about b4 puttin corals u should have some coralline growth or something like that
??
what does coralline look like?
i already added 2 corals?? would anything be wrong?

 

[WarOrks15]

well what are your levels in the tank. and what lighting do you have ion the tank. salt water should really sit for 24 with a ph on it and a heater to get the temp and such to the main tank. you should really be adding some thing to remove the chlorine and chloramines from the water when doing top offs.

 

[excited_newby]

The above sounds good. I am kind of surprised that your tank is doing so good with topping off your tank with chlorine filled water (assuming you are in a city). Good on you haha

Before I give yo any advice I will warn you that I am in the process of setting up my own first SW tank, but this is what I have learned along the way.

Coraline is the tiny growth that is most often seen on live rock. I am sure that there are other that could comment on this better but if you have LR you have coraline growth.

Have you looked at a RO/DI system. You can use the bottled stuff to remove the chlorine/chloramine but the best is reverse-osmosis/de-ionization. By the same token the systems are very expensive, and somewhat impractical for beginners like us (I am lucky, the tank I am working on is in the lab of our highschool and it has a water distiller).

Well I would suggest that you give us the parameters of your water:
PH, salinity, temp, nitrites, nitrates, ammonia,

as well as the specifications of your tank:
size, inhabitants, lighting etc.

So HTH and I hope that there are others more knowlegable than me to expand on those topics!

 

[jackdp]

Post a some more detail about your tank. What size tank is it, what kind of lighting do you have. Most corals have very specific lighting needs and if you don't have adequate lighting the corals will suffer. The tap water may be fine in may not. Either way you should be using a dechlorinator on it and testing it for nitrates, phophates. If your tap is high in either of these you will have algae problems down the road.