Lareina&Mike

Hi all, I would really appreciate some help. My husband has looked up a million things and tried a million things and talked to a million guys at the local fish store and none of the ideas anyone has given us has helped. So now I'm here, asking for help from the gurus instead of relying on my husband to eventually find out what's up... Our fish tank looks like this: This brown stuff has come and went away a little bit for a time but then came back just as strong as it once was... I have no clue what to do and my husband is slowly giving up the fight with it at all so now, it's my turn to jump in and try to figure something out. Any ideas you can give me as to what it is and what we can do about it would be appreciated. My husband has gotten so frustrated with it that he's now contemplating selling our fish entirely and it annoys me to no end that we put so much money into this and now he's just done... Please help so we can love our fish tank again! Lareina P.S. It seemed to arrive shortly after adding some new sand to the tank.

Hi all, We have a 30 gallon tank (30"x18"x12") and we currently have 2-8W T5's which isn't much as far as I've been reading. I've been researching a bit and thought if we got 2-24W T5 HO's it would be enough but now I'm doubting myself... We have some soft coral frags we just got (2 mushrooms, 1 clove polyp and 1 candy cane coral) and the guy at the LFS told us as long as we had a T5 we'd be fine but now I'm getting conflicting ideas from what I'm researching about how many watts are appropriate. Does anyone have any tips on lighting? We'd love to get an anemone some day as well but I'm pretty sure we'd need a lot more light before we do that... Please fill me in!! Lareina

We purchased the tank used with a couple fish already in it. We saved every last drop (okay, not quite but pretty close) from the old tank when we moved it to our house and it seems to be doing fine so far. Right now, we have a yellow tang, a blue niger triggerfish, a chocolate chip starfish and a blue-knee crab that the lady gave us when we bought the tank. We are probably going to end up selling/giving away the current fish since I don't think they all fit in with our general idea of what we want (coral & community fish) which is kinda disappointing since they're soooo pretty but we still have a few weeks to wait before we decide for sure since we only got it 2 weeks ago now.

Hi all, My DH has always wanted a saltwater fish tank and sooooo, about 2 weeks ago, we got one (a 30 gallon tank)... Does anyone have any tips for us that I can share with him on what we need or how best to care for it? We love it so far and have read up a bit but I'm sure there's tons more to learn. We got it used so it was already started and we have a couple fish (a yellow tang, a blue niger triggerfish, a chocolate chip starfish and a blue knee crab) and it has live rock and live sand for a base. We got some tips from the lady but I thought I'd ask all the knowledgeable people on here for advice. We are also thinking of selling the triggerfish and the starfish because we want to make it a reef tank and we want to have more peaceful community fish (so any ideas of appropriate fish would be great too). I've heard the yellow tang can be okay in a community tank but I've also read you need a 100 gallon tank for it eventually so we're not sure if we're going to keep him as well. Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!! Lareina P.S. My dh likes the lawnmower bleny's, bi-color bleny's, firehead goby's, or blue-green chromis. I like the clownfish. Any tips on whether these would go together well or good/bad things about them would be appreciated as well.

Hi everyone, My husband (Mike) and I are new salt water enthusiasts (any and all tips appreciated) and this site was recommended to us as a great way to find out everything we needed to know (besides the million and one books we took out of the library). We have a 30 gallon tank and are hoping to set it up as a reef aquarium with more peaceful friendly fish. We have a couple more weeks to wait though to make sure everything is ready to go so we would love to know some great places to go for fish and all our supplies in and around Edmonton as well. Thanks! Lareina