willis stanley wrote:

In article et,
says...
NO, not to small for reef, but i hope you get experience about good
water conditions quick, and would not add any fish that needed
feeding yet or if at all(ok i guess 2 perculas would set it jsut
right). for now i would add only stuff like scooter blenny and
whatever you can get that doesnt eat much brine shrimp and stuff.
try just a blenny, and hermit. in my tank, i added no snails, when i
cycled they appeared, by the hundreds and hundreds, now its down to
about 500-1000 pre-eraserhead sized snails that are invisible for the
most part because of their camouflage.


sounds like you need a low range nitrate tester, mine testes(lol)
from 10-100 in high range, and 1-10 in low range, if you get a 10 in
the high range, you NEED to test in lower range to see actual.
now are you sure that is 15 and not 150ppm? im assuming your tester
reads between 10 and 20? if so, thats kinda high, but not for a new
tank. wolfhedd

"Doug Wright" wrote in message
...


Hi this is my first post and I must say that I am new to
fish-keeping. I
read
books and crawl the web before I made the commitment to go with a
marine tank. After this research I finally bought the biggest setup
I could
afford.
I know it's not much, but I hope to upgrade in a year if all goes
well.
Here
is what I have...
29-gallon Eclipse Show Glass aquarium, Eclipse 3 Hood, submersible
aquarium
heater, digital thermometer (link to the tank setup below)

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/produc...y.cfm?siteid=6
&pCatId
=9018
Even though this is small, the LFS (learned the acronym for this
group)
said
that I could put together a very nice setup. I got 2 bags of live
sand and 10lbs ornamental rock and 30lbs of live rock. I dropped 2
snails and 10 hermit crabs in to work the rock while the tank
cycled. I opted to not put any fish in to cycle and let the live
rock drive the show. Well, just 10 days later salility held at
1.023, ph at 8.2, ammonia was at 0, nitrites were under .2 (test
kit has that as lowest color), and nitrates were 10. I added 2
perculas and waited for my inexperience to catch up with me and
for
ammonia and nitrites to go to 900,000ppm. 3 days later the stats
are the same with the exception of my nitrates which are now at 15.
I went back to the LFS and picked up an orange star and a sand
sifting star and 2 turbo snails. Everything seems to be on track,
just taking so much less time
that
i thought.
Yep, a 29gal reef is possible. Way too small for a tang, but there
are plenty of reef safe small fish you could add (though with two
clowns, you've probably only got room for 1 more) I've got a 29 w/
about 40lbs of live rock, HOB refugium with macro algae, CPR bakpak
skimmer, 6 line wrasse (would probably work well in your tank), flame
hawk, algae blenny, misc. snails & crabs, serpent star, asst. soft
corals and 130watts of 50/50 PC light. Circulation is driven by a
Mag3 running in a closed loop with a SCWD (though I think this is
underpowered). If I had it to do over, I'd probably set up in a place
that would let me put a proper sized sump/refugium beneath the tank
and perhaps use a 175watt MH pendant.
The bigest pain I've found in working with a reef this small is that
you have to be religious about monitoring water chemistry and making
adjustments promptly. That and algae takes hold SO quickly....


I have almost the same setup in my 29 gallon, but I am only using the
live rock and a seaclone (modified to work better) protein skimmer, but
I don't have corals. I have a false lemon peel angel, 4 red stripe
hermits, a yellow-tailed blue damsel, and 2 neon gobies. and 7 turbo
snails. I plan to eventually add a royal gramma, and a midas blenny.

--
Remember, wherever you go, there you are.