Salty Fingers

anonymone

anonymone

Joined
7 May 2018
Posts
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Location
CAPE TOWN
After being a fishkeeper for some time I finally got bit by the marine side of things. I've had and still have various freshwater set ups.. Malawi cichlids, and have always been intrigued and fascinated by the beauty and elegance of marine tanks...so full of colour and vibrance.

This is how it started for me

Bought a 20l curved front tank off Guntree for R100 lol
AC20 hob filter
Jebo wavemaker
and a 25 watt heater

10 May...did my first salt mix with Coral Sea salt and RO and added 2.5kg liverock
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14 May...added 3kg Arag-alive

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Took a led 10w spotlight and taped two blue Tupperware lids to it

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Then the waiting game started. Ran the tank for 6 weeks just topping up and checking salinity and ph with a R20 ph test kit. Had a test done at local lfs on 19 May
Ammonia - 0
Nitrates - 0
Ph - 8
Kh - 7
Salinity - 1.027

Got my refractometer from @RealReefer to monitor salinity.
Did my first 25% water change on 17 June got salinity settled now at 1.025 when mixed and in the tank.
Got me a ph meter from @hadiosbourne and checked ph once a day

Bought a Salifert Kh test kit end of June and Kh has been within range - 10 down to 9.3 @ the moment.

Added a Zetlight 1201L nd I'm still using @Vleis Visagie's settings

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Loved the colour of the button polyps after the light was set up properly.
 
2nd water change was done on 1July nd got salinity spot on 1.025.
Had a water test done at lfs the next day
Calcium - 430
Magnesium - 1500
Nitrates - 0.05
My ph was 8.4 and Kh 9.6

Added my first two frags on Thursday...

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Acclimated them for abt 2 hours before adding them...temp was spot on and ph was the same as tank water.
Both hammer and frogspawn opened up abt 19 mins after being added.

I also got a brown plate frag as a freebie with the two euphyllia.
I'm picking up a cleaner shrimp after work tomorrow...maybe a snail of lfs has some.
They had dwarf hermits as well, might get one of those.

I got some used Salifert test kits off gumtree with Aquavitro Cal and Mag supplements so after my weekly WC on Sunday I'll test parameters again.

I'm loving this hobby more nd more each day
 
Did a 25% water change nd some maintenance tonight nd tested parameters.
Salinity - 1.024
Ph - 8.3
Kh- 8.8
Cal - 450
Mag- 1120
PO4 - 0.03
Just need a NO3 kit now

Will test again Tuesday to check Cal nd Mag levels.
 
anonymone said:
Did a 25% water change nd some maintenance tonight nd tested parameters.
Salinity - 1.024
Ph - 8.3
Kh- 8.8
Cal - 450
Mag- 1120
PO4 - 0.03
Just need a NO3 kit now

Will test again Tuesday to check Cal nd Mag levels.
Click to expand...
 
Tank looks amazing great work so far just abit concern on the swings I saw in mag and Kh
 
ReeferB28 said:
Tank looks amazing great work so far just abit concern on the swings I saw in mag and Kh
Click to expand...
Thanks @ReeferB28 I'm slowly gonna b adding more coral in the coming months...takin it slow so I can keep my hand on things.
The mag test was done at the lfs who used the red sea kit, the test of last night was with a Salifert kit...not sure if that difference is relevant.
Also I've added the two frags inbetween the two tests.
I will be monitoring paramaters this coming week. Hopefully it stabilizes in the next few days.
I'll post new test results tomorrow evening.
 
Great news yes just often abit of a lot of work lol but wil pay of if you can keep the swings at minimum or even spot in stable in future. But enough talking great tank tagging along
 
That's my aim yes, wanna try nd get things as stable as possible which then reduces the amount of work required. I'm still new to marines so getting the chemistry right is a good challenge...will do me good for the future.
 
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