New Tank -- Progress

Hi Marc

Thanks very much for the sound advice. I have been reading several of your
posts, and appreciate you taking an interest in an Australian tank.


Phil


"Marc Levenson" wrote in message
...
Hi Phil,

What I would suggest is that you take your time and just give it 2 more
weeks to
continue establishing a good population of beneficial bacteria. With no
fish in
the tank, your LR will have some interesting critters running around that
you
can observe during the day time, but even more so at night (flashlight
duty).

After two weeks, if your Ammonia is 0, Nitrites are 0, and Nitrates are
20ppm or
less, you can safely *begin* to add livestock a little bit at a time. One
or
two fish, then wait a week as your biological filtration adjusts to that
new
load, then something new, and wait.....

This is really the best way to assure success.

Btw, I'd keep cleaning the glass and skim non-stop.

Marc


Phil Krasnostein wrote:

A few days ago I posted the following:

We are in the process of setting up a new marine tank (about 1 week into
the
process) -- for the first time.

The tank is 1220 mm long by 350 mm wide by 450mm deep.
We have an Eheim 2217 filter (about 1000 litres per hour) with ceramic
rings
and sintered glass substrate, and 1 additional powerhead of 1200 litres
per
hour.
Lighting is one flourescent tube 40 watt Powerglo and one 36 watt
actinic --
about 50 mm from the surface of the water.
We have an air driven protein skimmer.
We have 28 kg of live rock and about 75 mm of coral sand.
We are targeting SG 1.022, pH 8.1, Temp 26 deg. C.
The NH4, NO2, NO3 seem to be doing as they should so far.

Following the replies I got, I have added another flouro. The tank is
now
around 10 days old. We got things going with purchased bacteria, then
live
rock, then yesterday more bacteria. Before the second dose of bacteria
was
added, we had spikes in NH3/NH4, NO2 and NO3, and then all settled to
very
low levels -- after the second dose, only the NO3 has spiked. The
protein
skimmer is removing loads of brown "gunk" and we have algae?? (fine
hairlike
green mostly) growing on the live rocks and now on the glass.

Based on what I have heard, it all seems to be happening too quickly and
easily -- or am I missing the point? How will I know when the tank will
be
ready for fish? Should I clean the algae off the glass or wait for fish
to
eat it?

Thanks in advance.

Phil Krasnostein

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