Help

[PhilFagan]

Hi Everyone

I am new to the forum and although I have been keeping marine fish for almost a year, my knowledge is limited and due to bad bad bad advise by the retailer, when buying my set up, I have been fighting to restore my tank to a healthy setup for the last 4 months.

Now this is where my nightmare started (and please believe whet I write, some of you will roll about laughing).

I was advised to go marines 'they look after themselves mate.'
No need to do any water changes
No need for any water tests, apart from a salt level test
Size of tank... nah don't matter how big or small all will be ok

So your getting the general drift... well after filling up the tank and buying rediculouse ammounts of corals and live stock (around £1000 just on corels and fish alone), my hoineymoon period started to go real t*ts up after about 5 months.

The same shop keeper advised me to purchase a wrass which slowley decided it would eat it's way through half my fish (and the cheeky git did it while I watched). Anyway having been told this was odd and I must of bought a fish with brain damage (yes true) I decided to seek alternative advice. So after chatting to a reputable fish keeper he was stunned to hear I still had any fish as I hadn;t done any type of water changes or anything. So after taking his advise and doing a small water change I obvioulsy disturbed the waste in the gravel and over a period of a few months I lost 99% of the corels, although up to date my remaining fish have survived.

Anyway to cut to the point. I began doing Nitrate tests and you guessed it, off the chart and over the last few months I have managed to get the reading down to 50mg.

Anyway I am now looking at putting together a list of my fish so I can start to get advise about building my reef system up slowley and I purchased a marine book to help me. Unfortuntley I am struggling to recognise a lot of my fish and although I have pictures from my digital camera, I am almost certainly guessing at what I have. I can recognise my clownfish, Chromis etc but I have a tang and can not work out the type and I have various other fish I am lost trying to name.

Would anyone off the list be able to help if I emailed them some of the images of my fish and/or if I tried to descibe them?

Please email me off list if possible and I can send over pics....

Hopefully I'll be posting to the list for more advice soon....

Phil
email: mail @ philipfagan . com

 

[Navarre]

Welcome to the marine forum of TFF Phil, seems like you have had a rough time my friend.

Ok lets see if we can put some things in perspective here and get to the root of the problem.

The shopkeeper mentioned a few so called facts to you so lets go through them 1 by 1...

I was advised to go marines 'they look after themselves mate.'

Essentially he is kinda right. What you mus remember is that you are not primarily a reefkeeper but more importantly a water keeper. Keep the water at high quality and the tank should take care of itself.

No need to do any water changes

Hmm.. a bit misleading but i can see where he is coming from. I have gone over 7 months without a water change and had no problems with the tank. I only did a water change then because my conscience (and of course many say that water changes were needed) forced me to do it.
This doesnt mean that all tanks can function without water changes. it is an individual thing such as the types of corals in the tank (they will remove trace eliments) what filtration is being used (Mud filters do tend to last longer beween water changes that som other types of filter)

However, essentially, i would advise 10% - 20% water changes every 2-4 weeks. this will replace trace eliments in the water far better than a bottle of chemicals can.

No need for any water tests, apart from a salt level test

When the tank is stable then regular water tests are not needed. As you gain esperience you will learn to see the signs far quicker than a test kit can show you. I watch my corals as a good indicator, if any of them look suspect then i check water.

I would advise that you check regular, Sg and PH levels

Size of tank... nah don't matter how big or small all will be ok

Now this blatantly wrong. The larger the tank the easier itis to keep. SMall tanks are a nightmare to keep stable and things can quickly go wrong in a small tank.

As for the rest of the post, i will gladly give you my email address (i will PM it) and you can send me photos etc so these fish can be identified for you.

In the meantime, i would advise that you give us your entire setup readings and dimensions so we canbe more accurate with our help.

Tank size and capacit etc.. type of lights, how many powrheads and how powerful, how much liverock, do you run a skimmer etc...

And finally a set of readings of the water.. Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, PH and if you have the following then these too.. Phosphate, Calcium and KH



Hope some of this helps you.