Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: ~5-20 (hard to read, will do some water changes and retest, could be 50+)
SG: 1.026
Temp: 78f
So it looks like I cycled. Maybe just barely in the past couple days. I'll give it a while longer before calling it cycled. There is still some diatom algae but leaving the light off has helped as it is thinning and/or the hermits are scraping it off. Once the vacuum arrives, I'll try exporting more by cleaning the sand bed.
The sump changes are working great! It is much easier to adjust the head on the skimmer. I also aimed it away from the bubble trap baffles into a corner of the tank. Then lowered the DC-3000 return pump to 1 bar. That seems to have gotten rid of the constant stream of microbubbles that were coming. I'm going to try putting the skimmer and the return pump on a piece of silicon mat to see if I can quiet it down even more. ATO is working out very well -- it is accurate and sensitive. The current 1g ATO reservoir needs to be topped off every other day so figuring out where to put a larger container and getting one is pretty high on the list.
I tore down the QT tank and am soaking all that equipment in a mild bleach solution.
Nitrate: ~5-20 (hard to read, will do some water changes and retest, could be 50+)
SG: 1.026
Temp: 78f
So it looks like I cycled. Maybe just barely in the past couple days. I'll give it a while longer before calling it cycled. There is still some diatom algae but leaving the light off has helped as it is thinning and/or the hermits are scraping it off. Once the vacuum arrives, I'll try exporting more by cleaning the sand bed.
The sump changes are working great! It is much easier to adjust the head on the skimmer. I also aimed it away from the bubble trap baffles into a corner of the tank. Then lowered the DC-3000 return pump to 1 bar. That seems to have gotten rid of the constant stream of microbubbles that were coming. I'm going to try putting the skimmer and the return pump on a piece of silicon mat to see if I can quiet it down even more. ATO is working out very well -- it is accurate and sensitive. The current 1g ATO reservoir needs to be topped off every other day so figuring out where to put a larger container and getting one is pretty high on the list.
I tore down the QT tank and am soaking all that equipment in a mild bleach solution.