New reef tank, again

Welcome back to saltwater Ryan.

 

Welcome back

 

I'm new to GIRS but I've had a 29g biocube (that has stock 36w actinic and a 10,000k and 3 LEDs) a couple years now that I got in trade with it fully up and running (he even brought it to my home and set it up) and I know very little about it and there aren't any salt water fish stores here, locally, that can help me.

I have a few different hermit crabs ranging in size from an inch or 2 to 3-4 inches...2 clowns, a blue damsel, a purple tip anemone, some pink Xenia, some button coral, a bunch of snails, a huge colony of yellow polyps and a couple misc frags I'm not even entirely sure the name of.

When I first got the Xenias, there were a lot more as the colony seems to have shrunk significantly.

There was a nice hammer coral that shrunk and eventually died (and I recently tried to add a one head hammer that also didn't make it)

Over time, I've added a few other frags that didn't make it.

I was buying 5 gallon boxes of "real ocean water" from Petco to do bi-weekly water changes, but they are expensive so I'm now using 5 gallon culligan RO and mixing reef crystals for water changes (I'd love to find an affordable RO unit, but I don't need a fancy one because my tank isn't huge)

I've been told not to clean the bio balls that are in the back chamber and to just leave them alone...so I haven't touched them.

It also came with a biocube protein skimmer that I'm not sure how to use.

If anyone on here can help me out with these things, I'd be greatly appreciative. If someone is in the Waterloo/Cedar falls area that might be able to help me out, I'd be happy to trade a couple frags for help on what I need to do to get the levels where everything is flourishing and how to maintain them there...but I'd take any help I can get.

Thanks

-Paul

 

@xroads could you help @Pauls biocube ?

 

Welcome back!!!!