55 with wet dry! next thing to get!

[neubyreefer]

Hello everyone i have a 55 gallon aquarium. Its been running now after alot of hard work for about 8 weeks. I transfered about 40 lbs of rock and 7 or 8 corrals i had in my 29 biocube. Anyway now i have 14 corals and like 90 lbs of live rock and 22 fish. (two clowns, couple tangs, couple firefish, gobies, some chromes etc) Im running a little giant 4md with dual 1 inch feeds to the tank and wetdry. I have 4 t5 ho's aquablue, two 460 blue and 10k white with an l.e.d. strip i made up for moonlight at night. Everything is doing realy well fish, corrals, etc. I use B-ionic both parts every other day and 2 drops once a week of kent lugol's solution for the corrals. I check my water weekly and ph is good nitrates at 0 so i guess im doing good. I am getting alot of brown algae like in the prefilter box, and on the glass. What can i do about all the algae? I also just bought a protien skimmer that goes in the sump and my buddy told me i probably wont need it for like 6 months, and says i shoulda bought a U.V. sterilizer that would be much more useful for me to help with the algae!

Should i return the skimmer and get the uv sterilizer?

Thanx in advance for all the help!

 

[NanaReefer]

I'd return 10-15 of those fish before I'd return anything. Way to many fish in a 55g

 

[pandora32]

Agree a out to many fish. Your not going to want to get rid of that skimmer. The uv wont do much in the way of dissolved solids, ie. nutrients, which is a food source for the algae. I run a uv on my system, but for no other reason except help control green water. My tank gets ALOT of sunlight. If your going to be getting rid of anything, i know its hard, but downsize your fish count. Dont forget that corals are counted in the livestock category as well. Also, welcome to the site.

 

[colin779]

The skimmer will be way better for you than the uv sterilizer =)

 

[blk822822]

WAY to many fish..........and keep the skimmer unles it's a POS. You need a good skimmer. And with a bio load of 22 fish you need a skimmer for a 200 gal tank. To many fish.......use the skimmer.

 

[blk822822]

And at 8 weeks with 22 fish it may still need to fully cycle.....Not trying to be a jerk just hard to beleive you have that many fish in a 55. I know when we see a pic of a natural reef it has thousands of fish in huge schools. But it also has the rest of the ocean for filtration and water changes.

 

[kpiotrowski]

either you are being really ill-advised or this is some kind of joke. nitrates zero with that many fish and a wet-dry....they are nitrate factories! never listen to your friend who said no skimmer for six months again! seek your advice from many sources...and so far here they mention too many fish.

how much water do you change and how often?

 

[senji]

i secont that if u plan on ever haveing coral u have to ditch the wet dry. skimmer is a critical piece of equipment and should not be a cheap 1. can make or break a reef imo. uv only destroys bacteria an polishes the water by doing so not a needed piece of equip but nice to have. and if u think of how vast the ocean is as soon as u put 1 fish in an aquarium technically youre over stocked. invest in some top of the lime test kits hanna and red sea make nice 1ns even digital no matching colors. API test kits are garbage and unreliable. in my experiance with them. in this hobby 9 times out of ten u get what u pay for. never settle for the cheap thing. theres a reason why the other is more expensive.

 

[rayjay]

I wouldn't put that many fish in a 180 let alone a 55.
Also, dosing the lugol's solution is a waste, and, if you get too much, it can cost in terms of lost corals.
Iodine and it's various forms are not in need of addition beyond what normal water changes can provide, UNLESS you have a very specific type of gorgonians.
I've never added any in my 19yrs of reefing.

 

[tat2z_21]

I am sure that you have heard enough about your over stocking issue, however, you need to keep in mind that what ever you put in to your system has a biological load, and your filtration has to keep up with it. Take Dave Saxby for instance. He has a tank size of 1100 gallons, with a total of 3600 gallons of total water volume. He has over 400 fish in his tank, and 2500 gallons of water ( not display ) is for filtration. He also has a tremendous amount of corals, and invertebrate. Because he chooses to have this amount of bio load he had to make sure that his filtration could handle something this large. So I know that there are people that will jump on you because of your choice, I believe educating would be the best method. There are a tons of informative threads on here about maintaining a reef and fish tank. I would suggest that you take some time and read through them, and do what fits you best.