Welcome to the most frustrating and enjoyable hobby I have found yet!!!!
I say that because some days it can be frustrating because you want to get it right and you will get a lot of advice from a lot of people,
As a new guy myself here are a few things I have noticed.
First off, Start Slow. It sounds like you are.
I also cant afford a lot of
LR at once so I must buy a rock or 2 every payday. Some people will tell you that you want to avoid drastic swings, or changes. So perhaps buying 3 or 5 pounds at a time might not be too bad of an idea.
You had mentioned
MH lights, I have a friend who works at the
LFS and is not out to sell me anything. He made it sound like the
MH lights are rather extreme and really wont be needed until you get into a very advanced tank.
One thing i learned is that it is very easy to over feed a tank, Now I feed every other day, and every thing is doing fine.
Just a story to share about an experience I had. I had an outbreak of this black hairlike mess that had been identified by someone on this site as cyanobacteria (SP?). To combat this I had cut back on feeding, purchased some crabs, a lawnmower blenny, liverock, and a light, and changed different methods of the way I was doing things. In the end, I went home (from College) for 3 weeks. I had a friend feed the fish every other day. When I came back, the cyanobacteria was gone!. the water level was low due to evaporation, but the tank was the cleanest it had ever been. After thinking about it, and talking to people, there are a few thoughts...
Perhaps every thing I had done worked like it was supposed to and fixed the problem.
Perhaps it just needed time to finish cycling,
Perhaps I needed to allow it to grow and starve itself out, instead of physically removing it weekly when I did a
PWC.
The point is, even if some one has a tank exactly like yours, with the same fish, rock, substrate, etc,,, what works in their tank might not work in yours, and what works in yours, might be the very wrong thing to do in yours.
Not all
LFS's are bad, but the best advice ever, is for you to do the homework and research, then you will have an idea if someone is trying to sell you BLINKER-FLUID (car maintenance reference
LOL)
Any way, like I said, these are just some
fo my thoughts as a fellow new guy. I hope the old salts will add comments and or criticism to support or disprove my opinions.
Good luck and understand that even if you do every thing right, the tank might not cooperate.
Sorry this is long winded, but I work nights and have had too much coffee
LOL
Wade
What should I do? I have that buffer junk I can throw in there but I thought I would ask first, being as I put it in initially.
