samuel88

wa, i just posted a post about all my previous tanks everytime crash, and yours never crash at all even without water changes. what about water evaporation top offs? how often you top off and what kinda water you use tap or RO or distilled?

somehow i feel that the less i do things to my tank the longer it'll live. when i touch it everyday by doing water top off shit happens.

if i had used dechlorinated tap water before and my tank crashed, perhaps i could blame it on some impurities in my specific area, but even with distilled water it crashed. and i've used the same setup, same 3 to 4 day top up once, but when i try to switch to more frequent less amount top up, it happens. within each time frame. when i used dechlorinated water, on the same setup, first time it crashed happened when i tried to switch happened in 6 months, second time 3 months, third time 3 weeks, followed by 3 days. so after being scared of our tap water, i used distilled water, all was fine for 3 weeks, then when i tried to switch to every day top up, almost happened again but i was there to do a huge water change. alot of people use dechlorinated water as well with no problems, so i don't understand how come it happen to me even when i switch to distilled. after so many problems doubt i'll ever try to daily top up again. but i really wanna know why.

my water parameters are KH = 8.6dkh nitrite = 0 nitrate = 5 ammonia ran out of test kit.

i use dechlorinated tap water before, this latest crash was done with ONLY distilled water

i hope the test results are straight forward, i'm kinda expecting the ammonia to be high, but the ammonia being high could be triggered by the addition of the distilled water somehow. what should i be testing for other than ammonia?

hey guys, this problem has been bugging me for a really long time, long story short, whenever i do water evaporation top offs frequently (less than 24 hours in between) even with the same amount of water (eg, lets say i pour in 3 litres of water once every 3 to 4 days, but in this case i pour in 1 litre of water every day sometimes split into 500ml one after the other a few hours between), my tank always starts to have bacterial bloom which starts killing everything. doesn't matter if i dump it all in my tank, or i put it into the filter compartment of my HOB, or even if i drip my water via airline tubing. i've used tap water dechlorinated with seachem prime, i've used distilled water its all the same result. BUT when i do the water top off once every 3 to 4 days, i NEVER have this problem. i've had different tanks, with cooling fan, without cooling fan, with chiller, without chiller, 5 gallon, 15 gallon, berlin method, canister filter, 1 fish, 1 shrimp, no fish no shrimp, coral only, 6 months, 1 month, 3 weeks, 3 days before crashing, all with different conditions, but same bacterial bloom when i start adding water frequently. i don't have a water test kit, but i kept a sample of the water today that turned cloudy, and i'm going to run some tests on it. so does anyone have a theory why doing water top offs daily causes my tank to crash BUT doing a larger amount of top off once every 3 days is fine? i thought that doing it daily makes the aquarium more stable. i've used distilled water from supermarkets so i doubt its the quality of the water that's the problem. i personally think that somehow, everytime i add water in, my tank takes a day or two to stabilize before i can add in water again. but then again large amounts of water less frequently are supposed to be less stable than vice versa right? :S EDIT: the tank that turned cloudy today, luckily i was there, i saw my hitchhiker crabs dying, and the floating bodies of some copepods, i did bout 80% water change with some aged water i had lying around so i managed to save my shrimp.

price wise depends on how big the bottle is. if you're already using seachem just stick to that, any LFS should sell dechlorinator. it should just take a few minutes for the dechlorinator to do its thing, but aging it won't do any harm i guess. for me unless its RO water i wouldn't top up with dechlorinated water so much cause it didn't work for me, might work for you tho. safest is to wait at least 24 hours, before topping up with freshwater again, cause it lets the water stabilize. tap water dechlorinator if i'm not wrong it doesn't remove impurities in water, it just makes it easier for your filters to process them so you have to give your filters time to get rid of them. and seachem prime according to the webby takes 24 hours to dissipate from your system. when it comes to lighting, it all depends on what you wanna keep, i'm not really good at how many watts you should have over a tank, but for me i just get whatever fits nicely onto my tank, after all its a decorative piece in the house. the ammonia and nitrite should both be zero, if there's still a bit its best to just let your biological filter run longer, some people wait even months before adding anything. the longer you let your tank mature the more stable it will be.

i'm also on a damn tight budget like you, don't be too stress about the chiller cause its more of the temperature fluctuations you should be worried about. if your temperature is constant it should be ok. if you like colorful corals, you should stock up your tank with corals realllllyy slowly, i've been guilty of stocking up my tank with corals so fast that sometimes i regret cause after buying a coral i see more colorful versions of the corals that i already have. so enjoy the stocking process slowly, sometimes over months before you fully stock it. first start with soft corals to boost your confidence before diving into LPSes. lighting wise, T5 is actually just the size of the bulb if i'm not wrong, what you really wanna look at is the wattage that it has, WPG rule can sometimes be a lil inaccurate because what matters more is the depth of your tank. i use a mix of actinics and super sun bulbs. don't worry about the LR cause any other life you have in your tank will probably spread over it in time. oh yes, and if you're on a tight budget i don't suppose you have an RO/DI unit, so you wanna be careful about adding water into your tank. best to buy distilled water from supermarket, or if you're like me and don't like to see so many plastic bottles going to waste you can get a tap water dechlorinator but don't do freshwater top offs too often with this kinda dechlorinated tap water especially in a nano tank where it builds up very fast you wanna give it time to dissipate from your system before adding again. trust me i've had alot of bad experience with this. good luck with your tank!

thanks for the advice, i'll make sure i keep a really close eye on them.

Update of my nano tank after two weeks Equipment/maintenance Its been two weeks, and the only thing i've changed is added a cooling fan. but i've decided not to use it unless the weather is really really hot because it causes the water to evaporate too fast. i've always been a bit hesitant to do freshwater top ups due to some bad experiences with doing them daily. I use seachem prime to dechlorinate and it takes about 24 hours or less to completely dissipate from water and it removes chlorine and chloramines from tap water to leave the ammonia behind for the biological filtration to process which i feel if i add too frequently via the tap water it causes my tank to go haywire. Of course this isn't a problem if i would buy distilled water or use RO water, but i don't have the money for a RO unit, and i don't really like the idea of wasting plastic bottles. so i just do water top ups every 3 days to a week, the break in between water top offs is to allow my tank to stabilize (take care of ammonia from the dechlorinators, seachem prime to dissipate etc etc.) i'm going to buy some water test kits soon. Livestock 5 sexy shrimps 1 pom pom crab purple seafan (from previous tank) the shrimps are doing good, i'm a little disappointed about the crab cause since the first day he went into hiding and i haven't seen him since. i'm probably going to leave the live stock this way for a long time to let the tank stabilize and when theres zero ammonia, nitrites and as low as possible nitrates. i've read that nitrate is the end product of the nitrogen cycle but with live rock/anaerobic areas (little oxygen) the nitrate can actually be converted into nitrogen gas which leaves the tank completely. so i hope i can achieve this with understocking and lots of live rock. i've noticed 2 hitchhiker crabs, but they seem really peaceful, and they've come out more often even when i'm staring at them ever since the intro of the shrimps, i don't really wanna remove them cause they're not causing trouble and they are actually really fun to watch. the sexy shrimp are constantly picking at the rocks and the sand so i've actually not fed the tank for a few days already, and don't really plan to unless i see them run out of stuff to pick on, but i highly doubt so there was a little diatom growth on the sand bed but it was quickly taken care of by the constant picking of the sexy shrimp. there's also been an explosion of copepods which are really fun to watch too. i'm quite happy that the tank is 'providing for itself' which makes it have a very natural feel to it. i doubt i'll ever add fish to this tank cause its too small and i like inverts much more than fish unless the fish are really unique (frogfish, lion fish, mandarin fishes etc.) which is a big reason i feel, why i decided on saltwater instead of freshwater, cause the variety of invertebrates available is so much more diverse. Thats all for this update. Thanks for reading!

yes definitely its possible. IMO if its a nano tank i'd rather do manual dosing, but for larger tanks a CR is more convenient. if you're keeping soft corals like mushrooms and zoas and leather corals you don't even need to dose calcium at all (some people say that calcium and carbonates help coralline growth though) oh yes, if you're dosing calcium, you have to dose carbonate as well, cause they're tied together in some way if i'm not wrong.

the size of your tank plays an important part as well, and when it comes to marine species aggression sometimes varies within individuals. but most probably the fighting's due to a lack of space.

if you have a refugium of macro algae, and you don't over feed, maybe your test kit just messed up?

now that i've gotten the livestock, its time for the corals, i think to 'test water' i'll be getting an easy, cheap, and attractive coral i like, which would be the green star polyps, i have a 2 feet tank that doesn't have any corals as well, so if i buy one GSP i can tear off the loose bits to put into my 5 G nano, and put the mother colony into my 2 feet tank. i think that's a great way to save money and more efficient use of the coral.

i just went to ML today to pick up a frogfish i had a deposit on, and guess what i saw, lots of sexy shrimps and pom pom crabs! so i bought 5 sexy shrimps and 1 pom pom crab, i couldn't find the pom pom after i added it into the tank. but the sexy shrimp are doing great, here's 2 pictures, one where i'm acclimating them and the other where the shrimp are happily waving their tails around. i'm gonna feed them with dry food that sinks, if anyone has a better suggestion feel free to let me know.

think i'll be heading to CF soon to look at their inverts. aiming for pom poms and sexy shrimp. kinda hesitant about hermits even dwarf ones, cause heard they always knock over frags, attack other small inverts, nip at stuff etc etc. but i'll think about it.

from what i've heard they are reef safe, they don't really bother anything else. they're mainly scavengers, but when it comes to crabs you can never be 100% sure. oh yeah, and try not to put them in large tanks, cause you probably will never see them again cause they're always hiding from the larger fish, so a nano tank would allow you to fully enjoy their company. oh yes one more thing, i've heard they can be kept in groups, that would be really cool to have a group of pom pom crabs. they're so timid and meek that even hermit crabs take advantage of them for further info, http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=67217

icic, sometimes i find it hard to differentiate the hermies, but mainly i'll stick to those really small ones like 1 to 1.5 inches.

yeah i would love to get an overflow skimmer, i hate the dust that collects on the surface of the water, occasionally i'd take a net to scoop them all out. is there any place that just sells the attachment? cause if i have to buy a brand new one it'd be quite a waste cause this HOB pretty reliable been using it for a freshwater tank for really long time.

if only i could catch the pom pom crab from my other tank, haha.

Just got this tank up and running for a week. Equipment 1.5 feet, 5 gallon tank with 5 KG of liverock (at least 1/3 to 2/3 of the tank is filled with rocks.) and 1.5 inch thick fine sand bed. a HOB filter 80GPH that's filled with lava rock airstone skimmer i had lying around. 2 X 16 watts T5 bulbs, one super sun 12k and one actinic blue bulb. i'm considering adding a wave maker but i think 80 GPH from the HOB filter for 5 gallon tank should be enough for now. May change my airstone skimmer to something better but i don't want to waste the skimmer i had lying around and since my tank is so small, we'll see how it goes. The temperature in my room can get to 28 degrees but i use my room fan to cool down the tank and i'll be getting a cooling fan soon. I'll probably be getting dwarf hermit crabs and shrimps that don't get larger than 1.5 inches to keep the bio load low and the water quality high. aiming more for inverts than fish since i heard that marine inverts don't really add significant waste to the system. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Potential inverts any dwarf hermit crabs clapping shrimp (or any similar shrimp) sexy shrimp pom pom crab (there's actually one in my other tank but it'll be so hard to catch) harlequin shrimp (but getting the starfishes it needs is gonna be a pain) pistol shrimp (not sure if it'll break my glass) Corals? [*]none for now, although 2 x 16 watts over a 5 gallon tank gives me a lot of options in terms of corals that need bright lighting. that's like 6 watts per gallon.

the recommended stocking levels for fish i heard is 1 inch of fish for every 5 gallons of water, but what about marine inverts? such as shrimp, hermit crabs and such. i heard they produce much lesser waste than fish, so is there a guide line for the stocking level of marine inverts? i just set up a 5 gallon tank with 5 KG of liverock (at least 1/3 to 2/3 of the tank is filled with rocks.) with a HOB filter 80GPH that's filled with lava rock and a airstone skimmer i had lying around. and i wanna stock it up with inverts rather than fish. well, maybe i'll get a yellow clown goby at most. so any suggestions?

at first i tot when you said algae scrubber it was those that you use to physically clean the glass. but i read up a little more about it, it seems like it seems quite amazing but i've never seen people use it before neither have i seen one before.

that sounds cool, i've gotta try that out.