Jestersix

180 Custom Gallon Starfire

Well all leaks cut out and fixed, replaced one dead pump and away I went. Pumped out the freshwater emptied into drain in stand, then pumped in my entire saltwater bank tank to fill the display. Still needed a bit more, and already had the RO/DI filter out another 40 gallons, so pumped that in, added extra salt, then fine tuned the sump area and added more substrate. It's still clearing out but it's cycling now... now if Coralvue could just send me my dam skimmer, ordered it on Jan 14th! They keep telling me you'll get it in a couple days. So I'm now expecting it's arrival on Wed. Fingers crossed. Other than that the tank is ready to go.

Going down the street tomorrow to collect a couple dozen white hermit crabs to clean out the sand. They can clean out the tank for a couple weeks, then get turned back into the wild :)

Filling the tank up
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Sand Settling out and clearing up
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You are lucky to be in Florida! Lance Ichinotsubo is opening a LFS there and it sounds like it is going to be one of the best in the country.
Look him up! Or...
I suppose gimmito might have info about his new store :)
 
Well the base rock is in there, now more waiting I guess. Tested the main parameters, all is fine, but tank is a bit cloudy, guess thats just the cycle process. Here's the recent picts. I resisted from putting too much rockwork in there I want to make sure I have enough room for the corals to grow out. That was my last mistake on my other tank, I ran out of room way too fast. This time I left a bit of the tank open on top and alone the sides to give fish room to swim and corals room to grow out.

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Well the first set ofvreadingsare in, got my test kits today. Here they are.

Salinity 1.025
Temp. 82
Ak. 7.0
Ca. 400
Mg. 1,300
No. 2ppm
Po. 0.04ppm

Looks like a spike in NO though. Moved my fish over today and yesterday. The fish actually all seem much calmer in the big tank and they don't hide when you walk up to the glass.
 
Here's the latest tank shots, hope you enjoy, the tank is still going through the cycles, at the moment it seems to be consuming alot of Alkalinity, so I'm upping the doser to try to keep stable. Plus doing 10% weekly water changes which seems to help.

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Awesome tank setup!

Curious any reason why your tank would be consuming alkalinity with little to no calcifying corals?
Your magnesium is lower, which means more calcium could precipitate out of water column, thus taking carbonated (alk) with it...

Could that be why? Or is it something else?
 
Not sure, I have heard that new tanks consume alk due to getting the dead rock and sand bed going. I know I've been having bacteria blooms, was cloudy for a couple weeks then cleared up.

Right now I'm dosing daily
60ml Alk
20ml Cal
12ml Mg

And the Alk is still dropping daily and wanting to stay around 6.7-7.0, so slowly increasing the doses to find the stability point while also doing water changes. My RO/DI mixed saltwater is at 9.0 on the AK, and a 10% water change raises the tank up to 7.7 from 7.0. But then in 24hrs it's back down to the 6.7-7.0. So I just figure it may need to level out and I figure it'll be after the tank is not going through cycles anymore. I do feed heavily and I know that detris will cause the alk to drop. So I'm sure that may help to bring it down, but we'll see. Also the Bio Pellots are also getting online now and I need to increase them to 100ml from 50ml currently. So maybe that will help as well.
 
The tanks coming along nicely !

Here's the link you requested:

http://www.captiveseasaquariums.com/

Shoot Lance or Mikey a e-mail regarding more info on their new store.
 
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