- Today is the 5 Minute Salt Water Aquarium Guide.
It's phase two of the cycle,
and getting past that ugly stage.
If you want to avoid or limit many of the challenges
that new salt water aquarium owners run into, today is how.
(upbeat music)
Hey I'm Ryan, your host at BRStv,
and the 5 Minute Salt Water Aquarium Guide.
This is a clear, simplified, and direct path
to setting up that first successful reef tank.
It's time to talk about phase two of the cycle,
sometimes referred to as a four month cycle.
This just goes way beyond the ammonia or nitrogen cycle,
and really gets to the heart
of setting up a tank for success.
The challenge here is new aquariums
tend to have what's commonly referred to as an ugly stage
where the rock turns brown, various allergies take hold,
or bacterial issues like red or brown slime cover the rock.
You run into that, don't worry.
It's pretty common and often only temporary.
Fact is, there's a ton of brand new surface area
on the rock and sand,
and there's total global warfare
going on in a newly started tank.
Every last organism fighting for territory.
However, most of the battle is in the microscopic level.
Only visible to the human eye
when something gets way out of hand.
So the four month cycle is all about supporting the right
organisms in their effort to fight off the bad.
Also, focus on an ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of cure.
In this case meaning,
if you listen to some of the advice here,
avoiding all this is nearly effortless,
verses dealing with it afterwards
takes a more involved strategy.
So implore Reefer's to consider these three steps.
First, before you turn the lights on,
get the utilitarian fish thriving in the tank.
In an earlier episode we talked about these fish,
but in each of these tanks we put a Yellow Tang,
a small Bristletooth Tang, like a Kole or Tomini Tang,
and a Lawnmower Blenny.
You'll need to get small tanks,
and they will eventually outgrow these tanks,
so be prepared in 18 months,
you may need to trade them out for smaller ones again.
These three fish eat algae for a living,
and why we put 'em in these tanks,
if you get them established for a couple of months
before you turn the lights on,
the chances that you run into a serious
algae issues common with new tanks are cut down by 80%.
We want you to be part of the 80.
We also suggest a Six Line Wrasse,
or yellow or green Coris Wrasse during that time
because it eats some of the coral parasites
and protects the reef tank in general.
Another preventative utilitarian fish
you might consider, but we didn't do here,
is the Aiptasia Eating Filefish,
which goes after another common pest in the tank.
We didn't add one here,
because they sometimes go after corals.
The second component of our four month cycle is again,
before you turn the lights on,
send in the microscopic troops
you want to help win the battle.
In this case, heterotrophic bacteria troops
which rely on food sources,
potentially sludge,
and other organisms like algae
or even pest forms of bacteria.
Vibrant and MicroBacter Clean are examples
of bacteria's Reefer's use to clean up the tank
after they run into issues,
but they can actually be used effectively
upfront to avoid the issues altogether as well.
Dosing bacteria like this is far from required,
but the goal here is the easiest path to success
and heterotrophic bacteria
are just a valuable tool that helps achieve that.
In fact in many cases,
they can be so effective it almost feels like cheating.
As to when and how, we're gonna use Vibrant
starting at a point in between
when the nitrogen cycle has completed,
but weeks before you turn the lights on.
Then dose every couple of weeks until you're confident
you're past that new tank stage.
These types of bacteria don't replicate in sea water,
so they do need to be dosed to prevent or deal with issues
that they're intended for.
I think you're getting the theme I'm taking here,
which is an aggressive approach
to avoiding algae altogether.
That's because algae and pest outbreaks in the first year
are one of the biggest challenges Reefer's run into.
It's kind of tragic that the hardest part
of owning a reef tank is the first year,
because it gets exponentially easier after that point.
Your point to cycling like this
is designed to make you wonder why that is,
because your first year was a total breeze.
Now the third step in the four month cycle
is really in unison with these other two,
just sit back and enjoy the fish for the first four months,
but do so with the lights off.
It's best to let the microscopic warfare play out
for the first few months without light.
That's because reef lighting is very bright,
and tends to fuel the growth of photosynthetic pests
like algae and brown and red slimes.
There's much higher success rates
with letting the tank build up natural bio films
and beneficial bacteria's before you turn on the lights.
So at the end of four months,
flip the switch and turn the lights on
with purple rock like real reef,
algae eating utilitarian fish,
and send in the proper bacterial troops,
you may skip the ugly stage almost entirely.
However, if you do run into some issues,
just let them run their course before adding corals.
I believe it's best to think of the ugly phase
as just part of the journey for many.
You can often cause more issues trying to solve it
than waiting it out.
Often a bit of patience and acceptance
that is often part of the journey pays off tenfold
versus dramatic changes or solutions.
Now that the lights are on,
this is a good time to add a clean up crew
of a dozen hermit crabs, Trochus snails, and Ceriths snails,
as well as a few emerald crabs to get started.
It's also a good time to go buy a single piece
of live rock from a local fish store,
and scrape off the purple coralline algae into your tank.
All you need is a tiny bit,
and it should go from there
and cover the entire tank over time.
Okay, so this tank is cycled, has fish in it, what's next?
Well, what do you feed them and how much?
I can tell you right now there is a right way
and a wrong way to go about feeding your fish.
One path leads to an awesome tank,
and the other, certain doom.
The entire 5 Minute Guide is always available here.
But if you want to know what to feed your fish
and avoid other's mistakes,
it's all coming up right here.