New to the board and reefkeeping

[slomonkey]

Hello all,

I have just started my first aquarium setup, this is something i have wanted to do for years

I finally bit the bullet with a little push from the girlfriend,heres my steup

used 75 gallon seaclear tank, a all in one sort of setup i figured i could add a sump later if neccesary .

upraded the pump to 900gph

two koriola power heads

about 90 lbs live rock ,venuatu uncured

cheepo pc halide lighting (not really cheap just cheaper)500w MH 260w pc actnic

coralife light timers three

It took about two weeks for the water to test zero all around

amonia 0
nitrate 0
nitrite 0
phosphate 0
ph 8.2
salinity .025

had quite a bit of diatom growth everything turned brown aaaaaaaaargh
scary

i then added 60 or so critters
hermits ,a couple of varieties,the blue dwarfs being my favorite they are very busy little eaters!!
assorted snails ceriths ,turbos and a red footed conch

i let them work for a week or so and the tank was still stable and looking much better ,time to add coral??

what the heck we added a few corals hammers torches ,some kinda zenia looking purple stuff very cool looking a purple cabagy leather thing some yellow polyps small frag of zoos and some mushrooms

and yes i did make one really crappy purchase its beatiful but may not survive
a brown and green alveopora bummer i didnt research and i am guilty of the impulse purchase doh< i will do my best

a few days later with all tests still good i added a few fish

lawnmower blenny
starry blenny
one pair black clowns
one pair maroon clowns

everybody is getting along fine,

both pairs of clowns were doing there thing and all was well
the maroons were hosting in the alve
and then next day..........only one clown i am super bummed i have looked everywhere and no sign of him

well just wanted to say hello ,and post a little progress of how our new tank is coming along


would love any thoughts as to where my little clown may have went

I think the Alve ate him !!!!

heres some pics

opps cant get pics small enough ,any tips

thanks

 

[returnofsid]

I'd suggest that there's a good chance the maroon clowns killed it and it's in the back being eaten by hermits.

Your set up sound pretty good, though you don't mention a skimmer.

It also sounds like you did things fairly patiently, UNTIL it came to adding fish. I'd watch your levels very closely to make sure you don't end up with any spikes. Adding 6 fish all at once, might prove disastrous. I hope not. Also, typically 2 similar Blennys in this size tank isn't a good idea and you may see some aggression between the two. I would suggest removing one. 2 species of clowns typically don't do well together either. ESPECIALLY if one of the species are Maroons. They're the most aggressive of the clowns and also grow the largest. They probably won't tolerate another species in with them.

as for pics, do you have a pic hosting account such as Flickr or Photobucket? If so, you can use the pic location from those hosting sites and post here using the IMG tags. Shortcuts to IMG tags are located at the top of the post window when you're posting in a thread.

Oh and WELCOME TO REEF FRONTIERS!!!!

 

[tamarindthai]

welcome to RF,,you will like it here

 

[G&NSalty425]

Welcome to RF!!!!!

 

[darklcd]

welcome

Like Tamarindthal said you will like it here there are lots of friendly people on here that will help you wth pretty much everything.

Enjoy I know that I do

 

[Myteemouse]

Get a sump and WELCOME!!!!!

 

[slomonkey]

Thanks for all the welcome to's,

Sump would be awesome, i foolishly tried to start the reef on a budget there is clearly no such thing HA! budget reef tank what was i thinking

I should have been more clear about the clowns , it is two pair ,one pair of black Ocellaris and one pair of gold band maroons.

We intentionally purchased mated pairs ,also the maroon pair is tiny purposely smaller than the the ocellaris's Knowing that maroons are agresive i thought this might help.

It was the smaller of the maroons (only about 1/2 inch just a hair smaller than the female) that went missing.

I assume now that he is somewhere in the tank dead

here is a link to the pics
http://picasaweb.google.com/peterburnsgray/Reef#

Also the adding of fish was over a couple of days ,more than a week ago now with water parameters still in check still makes me nervous that something will go wrong tho

c you all around ,thanks