Pictures of my new tank 3month old

Wow Marc, those are some serious bubbles in your skimmer. What kind is that monster?

br12349, it really comes down to what crowd you hang around. I'm surrounded by skimmer lovers on Reef Central and elsewhere, and yet I don't cave in to Skimmer Envy where I have to have one that costs $1000 to $2500. :D However, I do want a quality one, and refuse to operate stuff that looks, feels and seems to be built by Fisher Price.

Whoyah - that is the most recent picture, which I took after I cleaned it last week. The white foam is pretty misleading though, because I had just dosed my tank with Chemi-Clean for three days, and that is what it looks like for the first 6 to 12 hours. After that it settles down significantly. That day, I skimmed out 4.5 gallons of watery skimmate, and just replaced it with more saltwater.

I hope my tank will improve with the skimmer. I didnt get anything to fancy. My goal is a algae free tank but as of right now i am using tap water to fill it. I do not have a RO/DI system as i have my priorities elsewhere at the moment. I check the tank daily.
Melev,I am sure my skimmer is made the same crap that fisher price uses from china. Prob consists of tons of lead just like the toys.

I have crushed coral for substrate mixed with sand.

Can i vacume that or should i leave it?
Also, can i scrub my live rock to get the hair algea off it. There are tons of bubbles on the rock and it grows so rapidly. I think its almost 2-3" long in some spots and my rock is all green on top (closest to the lights)

Feeding the corals DT plankton, and 6hrs of lights, how much time for my little frags to grow?
Thanks
Tom

I would stop using tap water completely. You can buy RO water at your LFS or your supermarket. They even have some places that fill up 5g jugs. You could also use distilled water. Tap water contains all the nutrients your algae loves. And I know a guy that sells RO/DI systems whenever you are ready. ;)

To get rid of GHA: http://www.melevsreef.com/gha.html

Since the substrate contains CC, I'd siphon it with a gravel-vac. Those are a large tube connected to a smaller flexible tubing, and the detritus (and some sand) will siphon out while the heavier CC will stay in the tank.

I wouldn't use any more phytoplankton in your tank at the moment. But for the sake of conversation, can you describe how often and how you are dosing?

Here's my page about feeding tanks:
http://www.melevsreef.com/feedings.html

What skimmer did you buy?

I am dosing DT plankton (keep it in the beer cooler at 1deg C) every other day. I am using 1 cap full. I would say that this is about or little less then 1tbs. The tank is 55G and the sump is 20 (filled with about 15G). I am in the process of vacuming my substrate right now. I just snapped some pics so you can see how its looking. I will stop using the tap water very soon, after the holidays. Has anyone ever thought of using destilled water from there basements dehumidifier? Will this work, instead of a RO/DI i would like to get a humidifer and kill 2 birds with 1 stone sorta thing.

here it is

Stop using tap water immediately. I'm absolutely serious. What you have in your tank is called dinoflaggellates, and they are probably one of the worst problems we get in our tanks. Siphon away what you can, stop dosing phytoplankton.

Top off with distilled water from the store for now. I wouldn't even do a water change, other than replacing what you have to after siphoning the substrate. You can do a google search on this stuff, it is a bear that many have struggled with. A guy in our club is ready to tear his tank down because it has gotten so bad.

Don't use the waste water from your dehumidifier. There is no way it is pure enough.

Feed your fish some frozen fish food from the LFS, and that's it. You don't have to put anything else in the tank for your corals, because they are getting some energy from the lighting, and some food from the daily feedings as well as the fish poo.

melev,
I did a little bit of research and from the pictures i could find (which were not many) mine didnt look like that. I thought it looked more like hair algae, with 02 bubbles on them. Maybe i was spelling it wrong or something, do you have a link so i can confirm. I hope i dont have it in my tank.

whats about using a britta type filter for top offs? im kinda in the same boat. i dont have an ro/di. my evaporation rate per day is about the same as the pitcher. so one trip a day is not so bad. but i still use tap for water changes about once a month.

Britta filters use silver, which is a metal that we don't want in our tanks. I wouldn't risk it. Buying water by the jug isn't too bad, as long as you don't mind lugging it home. Some areas have water stores, where you buy 100 to 500g on a card. The more you buy, the cheaper it is per gallon.

Not using RO/DI water in your system usually leads to problems. Since water is the key ingredient to keeping a tank, it is one area that should not be skimmed upon.

Here's an article that talks about them in more detail:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-11/rhf/index.php