I want to know too! Half of us are professional nerds, and the rest nerds by association.
I am also a professional nerd being an engineer at Microchip Inc.
Back in the 90's I had a reef setup in a 90 gallon display tank. Went on vacation and lost everything because the tank overheated even though I had a room AC and 1/4hp chiller. The Metal Halide lighting was just too hot and I swore to never have another reef setup until LED lighting was perfected. Needless to say I work for a company that produces LED drivers and knowing how far LED lighting has come decided this year was the year to get back to having the reef setup I Love so much.
My research started back in October and found may options for LED lighting so I decided it was time to get back into the salty side of aquariums. BRS has a lot of YouTube video's about setting up and taking care of salt water aquariums. My 36 gallon corner fresh water setup was the candidate for converting over to salt. After more research convinced the wife I needed some necessary supply's and Santa was the guy to ask. I watched the BRS video's on NSA and bare bottom vs sand, decided that I would do my own aqua scape and have sand for a more stable setup. For Christmas Santa brought me a 5 stage RODI system, 40lb of base rock and a bag of Carib Sea Agra-alive sand.
Here are some pictures of the base rock cycling with two snow flake clowns in the garage while I cleaned up the 36 gallon corner tank.(12/30/20)
The BRS video's that Ryan and Randy produce are very informative, I was able to learn more about taking care of salt water reef tanks then ever before.
I learnt about all of the water parameters that honestly I never payed attention to before.
PH 7.8 to 8.3
Nitrates less than 3.0
Phosphates less than 0.07
Alkalinity 7.0 to 10
Calcium 410 to 440
Magnesium 1250 to 1350
All this science was involved and I had no clue back in the 90's. I was so excited to get my first coral but with all the research I had learnt says that was not going to happen any time soon.
As everyone says "Nothing good happens quickly in a reef tank"
So I let my setup cycle slowly over the course of months.
Here is a picture of the setup once the tank was cleaned. (1-3-21)
I added the Caribsea Agra-Alive sand two weeks later along with a couple more fish. (Pic 3-21-21)
After the addition of the sand, my plan was to add lighting after my birthday in May so this would give me time to keep an eye on the water parameters, make sure the tank would be cycled and ready for coral. I also added a bottle of copepods to help with bio-diversity. The tank started to grow brown algae even though I had no lighting. Ordered the Hanna ULR phosphorous checker late in April. My first phosphate check came back with 2.5ppm. I could not believe it was so high but explains the brown algae. I did an 80% water change and added bright wells phosphate E and quickly got my reading down to below 0.07.
Now it is May and I added my lighting for my Birthday, the Relassy 300W LED dimmable coral reef light. One more power head for circulation since it is more important than lighting and one green Kryptonite Coral(Bottom Center). I also removed all fish and plan on getting a yellow watchman goby and maybe a few other utilitarian fish to help keep tank clean.
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I hope all my research has paid off and have little to few problems maintaining this tank. I must thank BRS and R2R for all the education about taking care of a reef setup. BRS also pointed me to R2R and they lead me to BAR. My user name is stephenwjr on R2R
Hope to get to know everyone and I will become a member here on BAR soon.
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