ricoop's 30g long build. UPDATED W/ PICS

The cycle appears to be coming close to being over. The past couple of days the ammonia has fallen and today was the first day to read 0. Nitrites climbed as the ammonia fell, but are now falling. Nitrates had settled around 40ppm when I started the skimmer to get it broken in.
Here are today's params:

ammo: 0ppm
nitrite: 1ppm
nitrate: ~30ppm (it's in between 20 and 40 but the API kit doesn't show a 30)
pH: 8.3
sg: 1.024
temp: 79

I will be going out of town tomorrow until Weds. Hopefully when I get back, ammo and nitrite will be down to 0. Will do a water change and wait a few days to make sure things are steady, then I will be ordering a CuC from Reef Cleaners!

Oh yeah almost forgot, my RODI system got here today. No more trips to the LFS with 5g buckets for this guy!

 

Cycle Winding down, we have life!

So got back from my trip this morning to find my first livestock in my tank. Was checking params when I got back, looked in the tank I have some pods! I guess they came in with the piece of LR i got at the LFS to seed my dry rock. Also the coralline that came on that piece of LR has spread noticeably.

 

It has been a while so I thought I would do an update.

Water Params have been stable no amm. or nitrite and nitrates have been 10 or less. SG has stayed at 1.025 and pH has been a steady 8.3. I only have one fish and a few corals right now.

Here's the Livestock so far.

Firefish
Red Mushroom
Green Mushroom
Blasto(one head)
GSP(I know, but it's isolated and am watching closely)
Yellow Zoa(only 2 polyps)

Also, I just built my sump. The baffles are in and silicon is curing. It is going to be a sump/fuge. I went with a 20L and an Eshopps PF300 overflow box. Can't wait til its going.

 

I know you are far in to the build, but I would try to find a way to still reinforce your stand legs. The only thing keeping them in place are a few screws. Definitely not sturdy in the long run.

 

Gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. Each leg is pocket screwed in 2 directions top and bottom. No movement what so ever. The way the stand is designed, all weight is supported and transferred through the wood, not the screws. Plus skinning it adds more support/stability. Done quite a bit of engineering/design/fabrication work and all the calculations I did came out more than adequate. I appreciate the concern/advice though.

 

So I've been slacking on updating this. So here are some pics and a little bit of what has been going on. The sump has been up and running for a while now and I am very happy I did it. I had a bit of a cyano outbreak a couple of days after installing it, but after the chaeto did its job, I am over the hump and seeing the last remnants of the cyano going away. Since the cyano outbreak, I haven't really added much to the tank. Last week I found a pretty sweet little ricordea frag that actually had 2 rics on it for $15 at the LFS. The current stocking is:

Fish-1 Firefish 1 Sixline

Single polyp Blasto
4 polyp Candy Cane (1 just split!)
Yellow Zoa
GSP(It's growing nicely)
2 polyps Ricordea
Frogspawn
Various Snails, Blue Legs, and Emerald for CuC

You can still see a little bit of cyano in some of the pics, but it is getting less and less everyday

 

Here are a couple more pics. Sorry for the quality, but don't have that great of a camera. Look forward to everyone's input.

 

Looks good! Thats some nice lookn rock! Is the sump running yet? Any pics?

 

Sump is running, and I love having it. I have started to see growth in the chaeto and it is slowly chipping away at the cyano. I don't have any pics of it finished and running yet, but I will put them up as soon as I take some.

 

Great looking rock work. Animals look good.