trying new mini reef,,,

[nin1one7295]

I have a 100 gallon fish only now. But I want to start up a new mini reef in a 7 gal. bow face. I have a 27w smartlight in the mini. First, I move about 2 inches of live sand over to the new tank, along with about 8 lbs of live rock. I mixed new s/w and added the iodine along with 02 reactor. I bought a green damels and have him in the tank now for the cycle process. The temp is 78. Is there anything that I am missing. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. I plan on only placing soft corals in the mini.

 

[investigator1]

You should start dosing alkaline and Calcium. Also I would not cycle first with fish. I would start with small invertibrates because you will have algae bloom in the beginning that need to be handled by them.

 

[LA-Lawman]

I agree.

You should try ESV's Bi-Onic... It would be an easy way of dosing buffer and calcium. Also Have plenty of flow in that thing. Since the water volume is so small you need really efficent waste removal. 10lbs of rock and a DSD. I was using an eheim Liberty 200 filter on my 7g bow. it worked great. I used a small bag of chemi-pure and sea-lab #28 in the thing. works great.

I also hade a mini-jet powerhead in the tank.. about 330gph total system flow.


hth
-ben

 

[Bron-yr-aur]

If you are using rock and sand from your already established tank, you very likely will not have a cycle. Regardless, forget the damsel. But I would use water from the oold tank as well.