simon j
01-06-2009, 11:45 AM
could any one please give there advice .have kept tropical fish of many types,and for many years ,and have bred many victorian cichlids .i think it may be time for the next step ,a reef setup .a couple of months ago i found a spare 10g juwel tank and hood and decided to have a go at mini reef tank ,so not to go in blind i bought a decent couple of books called (the new marine aquarium) by michael s.paletta ,and also ( a pocket expert guide marine fishes) by scott w. michael . after reading the new marine book cover to cover, i decided to give it a go .from what i had read became awear that it is harder to keep a mini tank stable than a larger 75g tank bacause of the lack of water .my thinking is that if i am able to keep this tank stable then if i decide to convert my 75g tank to reef things should go fairly smooth.i started with the 10g tank because if i found it too hard or fell out with the idea it would not have cost me as much .first step was to change the normal tropical bulb for a reef white one .fitted small (hob) protein skimmer ,then fitted in tank filter about 800 lph,also fitted small power head 250lph at the other end . then bought 6 kg of live rock and 5kg of ocean rock to bulk up .then used coral sand for the bottom . it has all been running for about 4 weeks now . there seems to be quite a bit of life going on in there now . tested the water yestday . temp stable at 77 f ph stable at 8.2 , ammonia reading 0 nitrite reading 0 nitrate reading between 5 and 10 so i have done 25 percent water change which then brought it down to between 5 and 0. the salt level seems stable at 1.024 . i know i will stugle to keep most corals. but could any one give advice on what may be available for this type of set up.and also if im doing things right . i intend to put too small clowns and an african flameback angelfish and may be a couple of shrimps and that would be to its limit . any help advice or feed back would be great many thanks .