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a month and a half ago i set up a 26 gallon bowfront salt water tank, it ran empth for about two and a half weeks. I bought the salt water master test kit to test all of the water parameters. currently the ph level is 8.2, the ammonia was 1.0, nitrite reads 0, nitrate reads 15ppm. the lfs tells me that all of these things will go up and then back down after the tank cycled. i have 2 1" damsels, a baby porcipine puffer fish(1 1/2") and a snowflake eel(4"). One of the damsels died today, i feed them marine flakes, frozen krill, small sinking pellets, frozen baby brine shrimp, and a frozen pellet omnivorous mix. The bottom has only crushed coral, no airstone (Are they a bad or good idea, or does it not matter?) anything i should add or remove? Any answers or suggestions are greatly appreciated. thanks

It sounds to me like your tank is over stocked for how old it is... If it were my tank there would only be the 2 damsels at this point. Also I cant tell from what you say but given the number of foods you are feeding my thinking is that you are probably over feeding the tank alot. You should only feed saltwater tanks every other day or slightly less often then that because the water quality issue is SOOOOOOO important in comparison to freshwater. If you dont have a massive skimmer on your tank dont feed every day, and definately not multipule times a day. With the puffer in there I would say get a good protein skimmer, something like the seaclone, or prizm protein skimmers would work great on your size tank.

You dont want an airstone at all, it will cause massive amounts of salt creep. When the air bubbles burst at the surface they will splash minute amounts of water and salt onto the tank or whatever is around over time this will turn into a crust which is called salt creep it is bad for equipment so as little splashing as possible with any filter and no airstone is the ideal saltwater setup.

To conclude your tank is much much too small for the fish you chose, except for the damsels, so look to upgrade to a 75 gallon tank in a few months to a year, the puffer is really really messy and will get about 8-10 inches, the eel will get about two and a half feet long and will need at least a 55 gallon.

the bottom of the tank has crushed coral as i said before, there is a brown coating that forms over it and looks really bad. also on the inside of the glass i see it forming too, it goes away when i vac the bottom but seems to grow very rapidly. what should i do about it?