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jamesvreeland
James
@jamesvreeland · 2 months ago

Quick AI Prime 16 question for a new reef tank.

No corals yet — just copepods and clean-up crew.

I’m trying to keep the light low to avoid algae, but still make the tank look good.

Thinking:

RB 25 / B 25 / W 5

Everything else 0

5–6 hours/day

Light about 9–11” above the water

Is this a good starting point, or would you run it differently?

2
DanDavid87
David Ribi
@DanDavid87 · 4 months ago

Hey guys, im a month in with my first nano (80l) and hitting a bit of trouble which id love some advice on.

Currently no fish, but added 4 trochus snails 10 days ago to start getting some life in there once cycle was complete.

My LFS recommended adding 2 bags of copepods and 2ml of phytoplankton once a week whilst we don't have fish to (i think) speed up algae growth.

For the last 5/6 days the water has looked a bit cloudy and nitrates have dropped from 18 to around 2 or 3. Chat GPT is saying it could be a bacterial bloom.

Continued in comments...

6
Reefzilla
Josh
@Reefzilla · 9 months ago

Hello everyone! I am having trouble keeping my phosphates up. I am consistently at 0.00

I am dosing sodium nitrate which keeps my nitrates consistently between 9.0 - 11.0

I also have a cyanobacteria outbreak that I can't shake off with chemi-clean. I am using reef roids daily to try and raise phosphates. I have lost almost all my LPS since this situation came about. If anyone can give insight it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

8
FloridaMan007
Casey Jones
@FloridaMan007 · 1 year ago

Skipped last weekends 50% water change because my nitrates and phosphates bottomed out after adding a fleece roller, feeding less, removing a clownfish, and adding a bag of copepods

My nitrates and phosphates are still bottomed out.

Over the week, I've done the following since I last posted the issue.

- Skipped Water Change

- Slightly increased feedings

- Lowered Speed of Fleece roller

- Reintroduced Clownfish from QT

- Stopped cleaning rear wall algae

I also tested Calcium and Magnesium, and those have dropped to critically low levels which I assume is due to skipping the water change. Ammonia and Nitrite 0.

Should I go ahead with my normal 50% water change to at least bring the calcium and magnesium back up a bit?

6
Jaz187
Jazlyn
@Jaz187 · 1 year ago

Tested water parm today, did a water change yesterday. My salinity is 1.017… how can I raise that up? I don’t have any salt to mix.

On the other hand, my bubble tip is gaining color back!! You can see the green coming back. My Duncan is doing good. I added 2 new corals, Rasta Zoas and a Kenya tree. My mushrooms have been reproducing like crazy but all my corals except my gsp look to be doing just fine. My gsp hasn’t fully opened in a couple days, I’m assuming that’s because my salinity is low.

I have a couple types of algae coming back, brown/tan algae on the sand bed and my glass, then that green hair algae looking stuff is coming back too.

All fish seem to be doing fine.

8 photos
1
Razz05
Lindsay
@Razz05 · 1 year ago

Can anyone help me figure out why my tank is so cloudy? Did a 15% water change yesterday hoping it would clear, but it's the same. We have a lot of hair algae (got a lawnmower blenny). We took the front rocks out yesterday and cleaned them (just with a toothbrush to get some of the algae off) in the water we took out.

Tank is 2.5 months old, has 3 fish and a bunch of CUC. I was adding Purple Up for a few weeks every 3 days or so and that was making it cloudy, but haven't added any in almost 2 weeks because of the constant cloudiness.

Please be kind, I'm still learning. My parameters are below and have been steady. We used Dr Tim's method for startup and have had 0 Nitrites and 0 Ammonia since mid-January.

2 photos
36
sliceoflife
Brit
@sliceoflife · 1 year ago

Looking for suggestions on beginner friendly fish and corals to start adding. Tank perimeters have been stable , tank is over a month old. I have not hit “the ugly stage” but I had a couple of very mature live rocks from day 1 in my tank (the 3 on the far left). I read with seasoned live rocks the ugly stage can be prevented or severely less (not sure it’s it’s true or not but not getting my hopes up) I do not have a clean up crew right now, LFS has said it’s to early to add as I don’t have any algae in my tank yet. I have had some orangey looking algae grow on the back of the plastic cover and on the output nozzle

Currently have:

2 black and white clown fish

1 green chromis

1 blue springer damsel

Corals:

2 toad stools

1 GSP

3
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