Nano's are harder than I thought

[ThatGuy]

How you making out Josh?

Whenever ur ready, I'll make sure your little one gets some more "nano frags" for her tank!

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I think its doing okay. Still has the crab and I put her satanic damsel in there aswell. Parameters seem pretty steady now with the waterchanges and that there is about 15+lbs LR in there. I don't think I'm going to do any corals right away but when I do I'm going to do a test run with a kenya and xenia. If they don't melt and seem to be doing fine, then I'll add something like zoa's or maybe even GSP. I'll definatly let you know when I'm going that route though.


On a seperate note I was thinking of picking one of these up for the nano. Anyone have any experiance with them? http://www.amazon.com/Taam-Rio-Nano...F8&qid=1344476659&sr=8-2&keywords=rio+skimmer

 

[Classklown90]

Yes, that is an ammonia badge.

sorry to jump in but are these accurate?

 

[mfisher2112]

sorry to jump in but are these accurate?

I would say as long as they detect ammonia at all, they don't need to be accurate, since any ammonia is bad.


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[NikkiT]

I had a rio, it stunk. I would not recommend one.

If you want an easy HOB skimmer, go with an aqua c remora. It is overkill on a 10g, but it will make your the nano a lot easier to maintain.

If you are looking for a different HOB trickle filter, I would look at marineland (I may have an extra in my basement that you are welcome to if you want it). I used marineland filters for my nano for years with pretty good results.

On a side note, I noticed you said you added the damsel back in. I hate to tell you this, but his gills are likely to be burned by the ammonia from the cycle. Will he survive? Most likely, but keep a close eye on him, if you aree not very, very careful, his gills will be perminantly scarred from the ammonia in the tank as it goes through its cycle. If you are set on leaving him in there, consider adding bacteria. The "old" way to cycle a tank was by adding a damsel, and while it worked, it is very hard on and sometimes fatal to the poor fish. Adding a bacterial culture (Dr. Tim's or biosperha to name a couple) will increase the likelihood that your little girls fish will still be alive and healthy in two weeks.

 

[ThatGuy]

On a side note, I noticed you said you added the damsel back in. I hate to tell you this, but his gills are likely to be burned by the ammonia from the cycle. Will he survive? Most likely, but keep a close eye on him, if you aree not very, very careful, his gills will be perminantly scarred from the ammonia in the tank as it goes through its cycle. If you are set on leaving him in there, consider adding bacteria. The "old" way to cycle a tank was by adding a damsel, and while it worked, it is very hard on and sometimes fatal to the poor fish. Adding a bacterial culture (Dr. Tim's or biosperha to name a couple) will increase the likelihood that your little girls fish will still be alive and healthy in two weeks.

I know you keep saying this but I don't understand why the tank would cycle. Everything is out of the DT outside of the sand and one rock. What is there to cycle? There should be sufficient bacteria. Like I stated above the parameters are all good. I think the fact that I added 4 fish 3 shrimp a crab and some snails in the cource of a week might have contributed to the ammonia and nitrates. I did run empty for a little bit and everything stabalized with no sign of nitrites, So I added the fish. Everything is still normal and I'm feeding the fish one pellet/flake at a time making sure nothing is just sitting on the bottom to rot.


Its kind of like when I downgraded from a 135 to a 42 and 40. Since everything was out of the DT there was no cycle. Its kind of the same concept in my mind.

 

[NikkiT]

Any time you have ammonia, your tank is going though a cycle becuases you have insuffient bacteria to break down the ammonia into nitrates and nitrites. The ammonia came from the livestock, not rotting food IMHO - they produced too much poop for the bacteria to deal with in the small tank.

You had ammonia. Hence, the cycle. Before you can have nitrates and nitrites, the ammonia has to be broken down by the bacteria. It's chemistry. We call it the de-nitritricication cycle, shortened to "cycle".

Do I know why you cycled? My guess is the sand and that one rock you spoke of, plus the 4 fish. The inverts are unlikely to have contributed much before they died.

Good luck with the tank.

 

[Hawkeye]

I would say as long as they detect ammonia at all, they don't need to be accurate, since any ammonia is bad.

Yeah - basically i'm wasn't looking for accuracy, but rather if it ever moved off the safe mode (color is yellow). If it turned ever slightly towards blue, I knew a major water change was needed. I used these when breeding clownfish fry. Here's a really old pic of one of the first fry i had:

Badges are great for FO or FOWLR tanks. you have to pay more attention though if you have corals in the tank since nitrates impact corals.