Newbie aquarist in San Antonio

[Louis]

Hey everyone, I'm new to the board and to reefkeeping. My friend and I have setup a 10 gallon and 7 gallon nano reef.

In the 10 gallon tank I used 10#s of uncured florida live rock and live sand to cycle the tank. After 3 weeks its finally ready to go. The 7 gallon was cycled in 2 weeks using 12#s cured fiji rock and live sand. We just started dosing our tanks with Kent Liquid Calcium, Kent Iodine, and Kent Strontium & Molybdenum. I also purchased a bottle of Kent Pro-Buffer dKH, I dont have an alkalinity test kit so I decided not to use this product yet.

We've been doing weekly water changes using IO salt. I've heard that doing faithful weekly water changes would be enough to replenish trace elements but I would like to hear other peoples opinions.

I think we're finally ready to purchase our first corals but are unable to find a good selection in town. We're currently looking for healthy zoanthids. If anyone here in town has any for sale please let me know!

Thanks for reading!

[Andrew]

Welcome to the club Louis!!

Other than Calcium and buffer and weekly water changes (12 %), I'm not planning on adding anything to my tank in the form of supplements - good salt mixes already contain higher amounts of elements such as strontium and molybdenum than does natural seawater.



40 gal. reef w/50+ LR, 45lbs LS, bak pak skimmer, 192w pc


andrew

[fx300]

Hi Louis, and welcome aboard,

I would strongly recommend you not to do much to your tank just yet because one extra element can make your settings jump up/down quite fast. First, you should buy several test kits (not all at once) and the following are the ones I have become accustomed to use:

Aquarium Pharmaceuticals " Saltwater Master" includes: ph, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate
Seachem Reef Status "Calcium" Tests Calcium Levels
Seachem "Silicate" Tests Silicate Levels
Hagen "PO4" Tests Phosphate Levels

Also, you should ask someone locally to exchange with you some of their sand. You would do this because theirs will have all of the biological needs your tank is requiring. You can even use the product Biozyme, which should speed up your process even more. Again welcome and please don't be a stranger to this board.

Fabian ;)

[Louis]

Thanks for your advice. I'll pickup some testkits very soon.

What I can test for right now is Amonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate.

Amonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0

As soon as I get more test kits I'll post the numbers here.

[Chris]

Glad to have you aboard Louis!

Generally new hobbyists do well to using a larger tank as their first since fluctuations can appear so rapidly in smaller tanks. Nano's are great though and a fun challenge. Just take things slowly and don't go overboard and you should enjoy yourself.

You should also check out www.nano-reef.com as there's a whole community based on maintaining smaller sized tanks.

Hope to see you around.

Chris ;)