DerrickH

Use a raw shrimp to cycle.

Your CUC will most likely die during the ammonia peak in the cycle. Snails dont do well with even trace amounts of ammonia.

You can even cycle with fish food but takes for ever....Use a large raw shrimp and just let it sit with a little bit of flow in the tank, no skimmer running, no carbon, no lights. Bacteria will flourish and your will ride the cycle wave...

I started with live rock but let it sun bleach for weeks before using it to kill off any pests.

Do not use the purified water from say....heb/walmart....I did this when I moved my tank to RR, rock turned lime green in 2 weeks and had to bleach it out again to get rid of it! USE RO/DI water with 0TDS. Some people use tap water, but it all depends on whats in their water source.

Junk in her/his trunk....I seen this yesterday. Fix-a-flat...who knew?

That doesnt look like ich to me.

Make an offer, want to clear out my tank for the dreaded move...

About the size of a nerf football. $30

txt me at 254-6seven9-15fourty6

Will be home after 4:30 today in Round Rock

Cell phone pic doesnt show color well

I drink RO/DI water and Im fine.

I live in an apartment as well. I have mine hooked up to my washing machine outlet using a "Y" splitter found at walmart in the garden section. The waste line just shoved in the washer drain hole in the wall. If you dont have washer and dryer hookups then you may be in trouble....Think there is a faucet adapter you could use.

No, DI means de-ionized or something like that. Its an extra filtration process. Trust the others here, a good RO/DI unit is worth its weight in gold....and if your in an area like I am (RR) plan on changing your DI resin often. I have to about every 6 months. I bought a spectrapure unit, but the BRS ones are just as good and you can build your own kit. The more filtration the better. The GPD thing is kinda a preference. I only have a 40gpd unit but Ive got a smaller tank and I make my water 5g at a time so Im in no hurry.

I have had success with it. Took a couple week and coraline started showing up. I will say if your calcium is low this stuff will shoot it way up! Mine was well over 500ppm for the longest time. Now Im not using it since its a little pricing and I have coraline spreading and my CA is hard to maintain above 420ppm.

Yeah the sailfin will get far too large as well. Ive got a 72g but Im wanting something in the 200+g range.

My tank is overcrowded, but my skimmer keeps up...rated for 200g tank.....

Hopefully in the next month I will be setting up my larger tank.

Warlock, you need something that will raise the ammonia to get the cycle moving along. The live sand will be live in itself, but the dead rock needs the bacteria created by the nitrogen cycle. Ammonia needs to be produced and the byproduct is the beneficial bacteria through the cycle.

Dang guess Im breaking all the rules. I have a sailfin 3" and a hippo 2" in a 40g.....they get along perfect.

YGPM

You need to seed the tank with something. You can use a piece of raw shrimp for this. Also, there are direct ammonia methods to do this. Just google "saltwater cycle methods" and there should be a lot of different ways. Bacteria in a bottle is the fastest and natural I believe. Hit Mark up on this, he knows where to get it.

If you use the bacteria in a bottle you wont need live sand. However, using "dry" dead sand will give you a larger diatom bloom during cycling since there are far more silicates in dry sand vs "live" sand. When I set my tank up after the move, I used a couple bags of live sand and sun bleached rock and my cycle took only a couple weeks. I did however use some damsels and I regret it every day, they are punks and near impossible to catch, especially with a canopy on my tank.

Bulk Reef Supply

Yeah Im looking at a couple smaller kits from them to start with and see how that turns out. Im wondering if one very large heatsink would be any better or worse than using 4 smaller heat sinks.

My personal opinion is to use dry rock. You dont end up with pests this way usually but will take longer to cycle. Maybe get some of that bacteria in a bottle that Mark talks about, not sure where to get it.

Firefish are very low bio load and very skittish. Be careful, they are known carpet surfers(jumpers). Mine ended up in my OF box and was a total pain to get him out only for me to forget to close one of my canopy doors and he bailed out. Great community fish in small groups and easy to take care of. Note, if you get any other fish that are more aggressive, the FF will go into hiding most of the time and only come out during feeding. Dont use damsels to cycle either, if they dont die they will drive you crazy trying to catch them to remove later when they start being nazi's

I msg you but did not get reply. I can come to Elgin if that would help. Would like to see his tank again anyways.

Yes will cycle. Dry rock means no good bacteria is inside it. Basically what us reefer's call sun bleached.

Most important key ingredient: Patience

Haha! Thats no understatement! I should have chose classic car collection...would have been cheaper!

YGPM

I dont feel so bad after reading this. Threads on other forums confuse the hell out of me as Im no electrician and hearing the stories about using to many or too few LED bulbs with the wrong driver ect....or whaterver they were trying to convey, but in the end they burn up a bunch of LED's and was a waste of money. I'd like to go LED in the next few months but will be on a 48" tank and that seems pretty common but still have yet to find a thread that explains WHY you must use this many LED in series parallel ect with this driver pulling "x" amount of mA ect....Im no electrician by any means so a simple formula would be nice....