New 20 gallon salt water

[minimoose]

Hello! I started a 20 gal. reef tank and am having serious issues! I've heard you guys are awesome so i would love to hear your opinions! Tank has been up since feb. 25. I used live sand and rock (maybe around 20lbs rock? And 40lbs sand) and am using lighting with 3 actinic bulbs and 3 t5s. Just using hob filter, have a protein skimmer but don't have it in tank as it makes me crazy! Also have small circulator. Nothing will live in this thing! I've tried both ro water and tap and all readings seem good. Nitrates 0
Nitrites 0
Salinity 1.024
Everything else is where it should be but i don't have numbers off the top of my head. I am starting to think that the tank is too clean. I've had a brown algae bloom that was pretty bad but now it is sparkling clean! I have 2 blue leg crabs and 3 narcissus (spelling?) Snails in there now. Also have zoas polyps that are alive and will somewhat open but not all the way. Had a clownfish do well for a while and added an anemone, it died and wiped the tank. Now (with totally new water (straight tap water with salt and a buffer) since anemone incident) i cant get a fish to live to save my life! Opinions on tap vs ro? Too much lighting? Tank too clean? I really don't know. When i take water in for testing they tell me it looks great! Well, clearly its not great if a damsel will die within an hour being in there! I do drip acclimation. Tank is 80°. I'm trying to think of all info i can so if i left out something let me know! Thanks so much for any help!

[Skeeter4158098]

Well sounds like you are having all sorts of issues. Hope some one on here with some good knowledge of salt water tanks can help you out.

[JRMagno]

Your nitrates should not be at 0. You should buy a liquid saltwater master test kit and test your parameters yourself. This will help to identify an issue before it wipes out the whole tank. A lot of fish stores will tell you it is great when it is not, especially since most use test strips, which can be inaccurate. This is the first step to fixing your problem. Any suggestions would just be a shot in the dark without accurate perameters

[minimoose]

I can't say for sure that they are zero as I'm using test strips, so it is just showing no color at all! I asked about getting a better test kit and was told by a few different people that they are unnecessary. But I've been getting a lot of differing opinions about most things! so I could be on to something maybe with my "too clean" theory? if nitrates shouldn't be at zero what could help bring it up? it struck me as odd that a massive brown algae bloom would suddenly just disappear without a trace! I'll put up a pic here soon so people can get a better idea of what we are dealing with along with some better numbers! thanks for your reply!

[JRMagno]

I've never had it happen, so I don't know much about it, but your tank could have crashed and restarted its cycle? Maybe someone else with more knowledge can help with that? But I think the majority of people on here would agree that a liquid test kit is far more reliable than the test strips.