First SW Tank Arrives Tomorrow but Stupid Questions Start Tonight

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You can also cut rings of pvc pipe just a bit shorter than your planned sand bed and rest your rock on them, that way none of your expensive live rock gets "wasted" by being buried in the sand and it's still stable if any of your tank inhabitants take to excavating/re-aquascaping your tank.

 

i like that pvc idea skyfire. i never thought about that before.

 

It's assembled and filled with sand, rock and what appears to be skim milk. Hopefully the cloudiness will go down tomorrow so I can at least take a picture that looks like something. Thanks for all of the advice over the last few weeks. It has made this much easier for me. I'll keep you posted on my progress or lack thereof.

 

Good idea with the PVC.

yumm..skim milk. . lol

Can't wait for the pictures!

 

Here’s a quick update. The water was almost clear last night but I unfortunately directed the flow in a direction that blew sand all over my rocks. I blew the sand off the rocks with a turkey baster and the water became cloudy again. Lesson learned. The tank was pretty clear this morning but I tested the water instead of taking pictures. I could only heat about half of the water I added to the tank, so the temp in the tank was in the upper 60’s by the time I had it full and could turn on the heater. Some of my purple and maroon coralline has turned pink and what I thought was a dead brain coral on the rock is now all slimy. I’m also pretty sure the spaghetti worm hitchhiker that was on my rock did not survive the move. I’m guessing the die off will cause a bigger ammonia spike than I wanted but at least it will be easy to know when the nitrogen cycle is completed. Here are my current parameters after 36 hours:
Temp: 79 degrees
pH: 8.4
SG: 1.025
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
I still need to test the calcium, phosphate and alkalinity but I figure those are not so important yet. I’ll try to start a new tank thread and get some pictures up Saturday. It’s just rock, water and sand right now, so you aren’t missing much.

 

You may think its only rocks and sand but we see so much more!! We see potential! You must feed the hunger!! PICSSS!!!

 

I will start my new tank thread on Saturday but here is one quick iphone pic.

 

Looks great!

Now the hard part, watching, testing, watching..........

 

looks good, look forward to seeing more pics. Not sure if its the light washing it out, but the rock look very "clean" for LR.

 

I only added 15 lbs of live rock (bottom right and two that you can't see) and 50 lbs of base rock.