elmuyloco5
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
We set up our new 55 gal SW about 2 weeks ago. We let it go for a week and tested. We get our filtered seawater from our local aquarium (25 gallons for the intial setup.....couldn't fit more buckets in our car.....and then 30 gal of tap water with instant ocean...proper chems added for conditioning). We also were using the biowheels and sponge from our freshwater tank that we had in there earlier that day (switched them to a smaller tank since we were seriously underloaded). We figure that the saltwater would kill any bacteria that was on the biowheel and sponge, but figured we'd try it anyway.
It appeared as if our tank wasn't cycling so we got some Zyme #9 to help it start. The guy at the LFS said to add fish the next day. Well we actually added them two days later as we couldn't get there the next day. So anyhoo....we put in three green chromis and one yellow tailed blue damsel. One of our chromis died, but not because of water quality issues. It was injured when caught (abrasion on side) and we should've taken it right back, but we thought we'd wait it out and pray that he got better. We've checked our water levels almost daily and still no amonia, no nitrates, and no nitrites. The ph is 7.9, temp holding at 79.5 and salinity at 1.020.
We just don't get it.....nothing seems to be cycling. By the way, we have a penguin 350 with bio wheels. We have added sponges in the back for extra bio. We have an undergravel filter powered by two powerheads on each end and the two middle towers from the UGF are just normal with the airline going through them. We are waiting for our Odysea light system (just reg lights now) and our protein skimmer. We are also in the process of making our own sump. We also hve about 25lbs of dry base rock that looks like it is already growing coralline algae (it has bright blue, navy blue, pink and golden yellow growing on it). We use crushed coral for substrate. I think that about covers it all.....I would appreciate any opinions you could pass along.
Thanks in advance,
Katrina
It appeared as if our tank wasn't cycling so we got some Zyme #9 to help it start. The guy at the LFS said to add fish the next day. Well we actually added them two days later as we couldn't get there the next day. So anyhoo....we put in three green chromis and one yellow tailed blue damsel. One of our chromis died, but not because of water quality issues. It was injured when caught (abrasion on side) and we should've taken it right back, but we thought we'd wait it out and pray that he got better. We've checked our water levels almost daily and still no amonia, no nitrates, and no nitrites. The ph is 7.9, temp holding at 79.5 and salinity at 1.020.
We just don't get it.....nothing seems to be cycling. By the way, we have a penguin 350 with bio wheels. We have added sponges in the back for extra bio. We have an undergravel filter powered by two powerheads on each end and the two middle towers from the UGF are just normal with the airline going through them. We are waiting for our Odysea light system (just reg lights now) and our protein skimmer. We are also in the process of making our own sump. We also hve about 25lbs of dry base rock that looks like it is already growing coralline algae (it has bright blue, navy blue, pink and golden yellow growing on it). We use crushed coral for substrate. I think that about covers it all.....I would appreciate any opinions you could pass along.
Thanks in advance,
Katrina