new nano tank

[squirt]

Well, this past weekend instead of fixing up the new house that my boyfriend (pm64971) has bought, we went out and bought equipment for salt water tanks. He has been researching what we need to start a saltwater aquarium, so we got what we think we need, tank, pump heater, Instant Ocean, live sand, and live rock. We put spring water in the tank and added salt to so that the specific gravity was in the 1.02 to 1.023 range. Then we added the live sand and rock.
Are we on the right track so far :?
Does anyone have any advise on how we should continue with this adventure

Pam

 

[e-cat]

what size of tank is your nano tank? from what i know , when your starting out with salt water , the bigger the tank the better and a nano is small, some one with more experience will be by soon too give you some ansewers.

 

[BBReef]

youre on the right track. you want to put the pump in the tank to circulate the water and the heater to get it to the right temp, about 79 degrees F. put on a filter if you got one and then just let it run. itll take about a month if not longer to cycle and youll want to do tests along the way to make sure everything is cycling properly. if the ammonia or nitrate gets too high, do a water change to lower it. once the ammonia and nitrate zero out, you can finally start to add stuff HTH

 

[loganj]

I would use distilled or RO/DI water instead of spring water. The bottled water sold as "spring water" is often worse than tap water...may be loaded with nitrate and phosphate. Did the LR come from a dealers tanks? If so, you may not see much of a cycle since it would already be cured. You'll want to, as mentioned above, watch for ammonia and nitrite. If, after a couple of weeks, you don't see any, you might try doing a fishless cycle with a piece of shrimp.

 

[pm64971]

We actually already added the shrimp. My girlfriends ammonnia is off the top of the scale. Should we take the shrimp out and do a partial water change?

The hardness is also very high, how can we decrase that?

The live rock came from a dealer, a bristle worm crawl out of one of them.

There is lots of water movement, and the salinity and specific gravity are good, but the ph is at 8.5 or higher. How can we lower that too?

Thanks,
Phil & Pam

 

[BillyZ]

right now don't worry about the hardness or the pH, they will flutuate throughout the cyle. Ammoniaq off the scale is expected as part of the cycle. it will stay high for a few days then the nitrites will rise and get quite high. Following that the nitrates will start to come up as the ammonia starts to come down (it may come down a little before, don't wory about exact timing) eventually the ammonia and nitrites should disapear and the nitrates rise a little. That is when you remove the shrimp and do a water change and your cycle is complete.

that is, thats how i've done it with a larger tank, anyone with a Nano have any differences that should be pointed out??

 

[BBReef]

not really, the same things pretty much apply to nanos as larger tanks. only difference is you have to care for nanos much more to keep the water quality stable, but that comes after the cycle.

 

[pm64971]

what should we be measuring right now?
What should the levels be?
thanks,
Phil

 

[BillyZ]

during the cycle you should be measuring:

Ammonia
Nitrite
Nitrate
sg
Temperature

during the cycle the first three will change dramatically. When the cycle is over the first two should be zero and Nitrates will likely be present. After the water change the Nitrates should hopefuly be less than 20. This is ok for a FO tank, but if you plan on having any inverts in teh tank you'll want the Nitrates to be a close to 0 as possible as well.

sg should always stay near 1.023 and temperature should be 80-82f