12 Gallon Aquapod Salt water

[rocstx]

Hey I have been doing some reading here, and this is a great forum. I have few ?'s for you guys. I am very new to the Salt Water thing. I just purchased a 12 Gallon Aquapod set up and all the goodies to go with it for a salt water set. Here is my info: 5 pounds of really nice live rock. and about an inch and a half of very good live sand(course grade). I got pre mixed salt water from the store where I purchased the tank from, everything checked out good on the salt meter.
Are there any suggestions you guys can make for keeping a small tank like this running fairly smooth. Like I said, I am new to this side of the fish tank scene, so I need some good suggestions. The tank has two power heads to the upper right side if you are looking at the tank from the front(How should I position these?) Thanks in advance to all that chime in.

Thanks,
Jim

 

[mmkeeper]

Well I will welcome you to RF and leave the discusions to the guys with the little tanks.

 

[Krish]

Welcome to RF Jeff! Hope you enjoy it here

As for your tank, one thing to keep in mind is that do to it's size, it will be easily influenced by certain things like temp swings and so forth so you'll need to keep a close eye on things as you don't have as much margain for error as you would with say a 75gal. An example would be say instance you accidentally poured a cup of salt too much in your tank...Your salinty will probably shoot through the roof, but if you did the same thing with a bigger tank (say 75gal again for eg) it probably won't change the salinity at all so you need to keep a close watch on things ike that. The good thing about having a small tank though is say you change 6 gals of water...You've just done a 50% water change which is great if a need ever arises to dilute a problem fast when on some other systems, a 50% could mean 50 gals or more. In any event, I say stay on top of water changes doing them atleast once a week, don't overstock (which happens a lot), try not to over feed and take your time...The hobby isn't going anywhere so take your time and plan well and you'll be happy you did later

Just a few thoughts...Good luck and if you have any questions feel free to ask

 

[rocstx]

Hey thank you for the advice. you guys respond quick!! lol. That's a good thing for me lol. I added the rock and the live sand to the tank, and let everything run for a few hours, I re-checked the water that the store mixed for me at this stage, and it appears that "it did shoot through the roof on the scale". I have no idea what happened between the store water check, and now that I have added everything in the tank. Is it possible that the rock & sand conatained a level of salt themselves? Other then that I have not added any salt on my own. Any thoughts will surely help. I'll check back soon.

Thanks,
Jim

 

[Krish]

Not sure if the rock held salt although if the rock was moist then I guess it is quite possible. However, what did you check the salinity/specific gravity with? Was it a different hydrometer or refractometer than what the LFS used? If so, what you are using and what the LFS used may not be calibrated exactly the same and one could quite possibly be off from the other...Just a thought. Maybe you can take some water out of your tank now that it is set up and let the LFS test it again to see what reading you get

 

[rocstx]

Hi, The name of the unit that I am using is Instant Hydrometer-company name is Marineland Labs. I did not notice what they were using at the store

 

[Krish]

Cool...They say hydrometers aren't as accurate as refractometers although I've onle ever used a hydrometer One thing to keep in mind with them is any bubbles settling on the swing arm will throw off the numbers giving you a higher reading so be sure to shake them all off

 

[rocstx]

Will do, Thanks for your help

 

[Krish]

No prob! Good luck! If the salinity does happen to be a bit higher now, just take out about 1/2 a gal of water out of the tank and replace it with just fresh ro/di water to drop the salinity slowly

 

[4251cpd]

Everything that krish has suggested. Do a search using key words 'newbies guide'. I haven't updated in a while but I am on the vampire shift so it's kinda hard to. And welcome.

 

[rocstx]

Thank you all very much for the fast help. I took out just under a gallon of water last night(replaced with fresh), and decided to run it overnight to see if thing settled down after filtering for a while. I am gonna re-test the water in a bit. I'll chime in later to let you know if the salt has calmed down at all.

Thanks,
Jim

 

[Krish]

Good luck! Here's that thread Mike suggested. Best thread on nano reefs...Even won him and Oscar

http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14008&highlight=newbies+guide

 

[rocstx]

Sorry I did not get back to you guys the other day. The water came in on the hydrometer at just under 1.022 I put a Blue Damsel in the tank as a start up fish, and it is doing great so far. Thanks for the help.

Jim

 

[rosemarie]

I'd recommend more rock to act as a filter in your small tank. 5 lbs doesn't seem like much... Any thoughts on this, reefers with lots of experience?

 

[Krish]

It all depends on the bio-load as to how much rock is really needed, but personally, I'd probably stuff a bit more rock in there myself

 

[billaweed]

15 lbs of live rock should do the trick as from what i was told when i was looking at 12gallon nano's. Ive been told about a dozen different rock-to-water ratio's, but I think 1 1/4 lbs of live rock to every 1 gallon of water would be sufficiant..

I too am fairly new to the sport as well, but i figured I would throw in my two cents..

 

[rocstx]

Okay Gang off to the store I go tomorrow lol. I'll toss some more rock in there right away so things can adjust all together for my initial tank start up phase.

Thanks,
Jim

 

[rocstx]

Okay, this is what I am starting out with.(Camera is not great, but you can see enough to tell me how I should proceed) I know its not much of a tank(12gallons),and I am affraid to add any thing else due to the start up phase not being complete. How far should I really go with adding more live rock? Everyone please chime in to help me get this thing started the right way. If It is okay to add more goodies, then I will be at the store taking car of busniess tomorrow lol. I seem to recall reading somewhere in this forum that to much live rick is not so good. and then I also remember reading it is good for the tank acting as natural filter to some extent. I am a little confused as to what I can really add to this at this point. PLEASE HELP!!.

Thanks,
Jim

 

[Krish]

For starters, the tank looks great! That's a really nice show piece of rock As for adding more, yeah...I think it is safe to say you could use a bit more in there. Your live rock will be your primary source of biological filtration so you will need enough to support your bioload and what you have (going by the pic) to me looks like you could safely do with a bit more

 

[rocstx]

Here it is, all 12 gallons of it lol Please tell me how much I can still do to this setup at this point. I would really like to add the extra live rock/some living plants now, so the tank can run its course from the start instead of introducing what I want later and possibly screwing my tanks water balance up at that point. Help me out if you can.

Thanks,
Jim