10 gal. show tank/ what should I expect?

[photo64]

This is a poopy picture for right now with the flash glare and all, but I will add a better one later, just wanted to get it posted.

I just started this 10 gallon show tank about a month ago and was fortunate to have a roomate with wholesale abilities. I purchased about 13 pounds of fiji premium for 30 bucks, got the LS for free and a couple of Clavularia sp polyps that fell of of my roomates piece.

I have recently purchased the following:
1-peppermint shrimp
1-Solomon Blue Linkia Starfish (that I never see cause he frickin hides the little jerk!!)
11-Snails( variety)
1-Green crab( forgot the name of him)
1-frogspawn
1-Condalactic Anemone
1-Xenia on a frag
3-mushroom polyps I just addedon 5/3/05
1- sandsifting goby

I do a 10% water change every week nad add a coupledrops of amino acid stuff my roomate has.

Lighting is an orbit-24hr lighting system SunPaq Dual Daylight (10,000K & 6,700K)Dual Actinic (460nm & 420nm) and our Lunar Lightâ„¢1-65w Dual Daylight & 1-65w Dual Actinic lamps, 2-Lunar Lights with independent power source.

I have a cheap tetra filter thingie you can see in the picture, but it works. when Should I be changing out the carbon filter? My power head flows pretty well. Ph is staying at 8.0 -8.3 for a good 2 weeks now. I had a cycle where my new LR was going nuts with n02 levels but now they are at 0 finally. I had to do a 10% water change every day for a week.

I use distilled water but people are saying i should use RO water . Don't know who to believe because it seems to me that they both work. my roomate uses RO an I use Distiled.

My big questions is what should I expect my tank to be doing in like a year from now(bio wise like algae and such)? What are some nutrients I shouls be adding every week or bi weekly/monthly? My roomate is moving so I need to know what I should be adding nutrient wise or should I just stick to weekly wwater changes? When shiuld I expect to add more fish? I don't want to over do it and crash my tank. Lots of questions. any help at all would be much, much appreciated. thanks sam

 

[djconn]

Hey Sam,
Tanks looks good and you did a good job of putting it together for pretty cheap.

How do you like your light setup?

I considered getting a Linkia Starfish but a few folks basically talked me out of it. Apparently, they are kinda hard to keep and will foul up your water pretty quickly if they die.

As for feeding, I would honestly just do weekly water changes at this point while adding small amounts of cyclopeeze every other day. Keep testing ca/alk/nitrites/nitrates and see how your parameters are doing. I'd stay with your one fish for at least another couple months to let things stabilize.

 

[photo64]

Thanks for the info. I m loving the light set up. its awesome having that change in to the moonlight and its not that SUPER blue light, its more greyish white lie actual moonlight. the fan on the orbit is really quiet as well.
I found these zooanthids online for cheap, but I dont know if I should wait to add anything else. is it bad to keep adding coral like every week? Or should I be spacing it out more to let the tank adjust? And how long if thats the case?

Thanks again for responding

 

[shaggydoo541]

Its always better to go slow when adding things to your tank, but with corals its not as important as say fish. I added an average of one to two corals a week for the first couple months of my tank and so far all is good. You just want to make sure and leave room for the stuff you buy to grow.

 

[djconn]

A couple little frags throughout the month shouldn't be a problem IMO. Just remember, the slower the better.