saltwater aquarium build

That is great! I love it! When I own another house, I will be doing something like that for sure, you did an amazing job with it! My sand sucked and took like 2 weeks to clear, but it was just majorly cloudy from the start. I ran 2 HOB filters and found they collected the most stuff if I ran them for 24hrs then cleaned them. Yours doesn't look as bad as mine was so hopefully it wont take that long. Mine looked like milk in the tank.
 
The tank is still cloudy, but it was cleared up enough dinner time that I could see into it. So I shifted the rock around a little and blew the sand off them. Then evened out the sand bed getting rid of some high and low spots, needless to say it’s cloudy again.
I know that the rock work is going to change because I don’t have half of what I want in there yet. I have a few big pieces sitting on the glass and a few smaller ones as well, but now I’m thinking I might not have enough sitting on the glass moving forward and adding more rock. So since the tank is new and there is no life in it beside for the rock, can I just push some of the new rock, I get next week , down into the sand until I reach the glass? I don’t think it will be a problem stirring up my sand again in a couple of weeks, seeing as it was all only set up a few days ago right, this might have been a problem if the tank was a year old. I will epoxy some of my rock together in the future as well I’m sure. I want to avoid a rock slide!
 
You should check out what I did with my rock, I glued the bottom pieces with some rods to a piece of acrylic. That way no matter how the sand moves the rocks always stay stationary, just an idea.
 
I did my first test today, this is the results with only 35lbs of live rock in the tank and new sand, there is also 5lbs of live rock in the sump and a pile of cheato, since Sunday (3 days). It came of an established tank and was only out of the water for 5 mins. I am going to pick up some more live rock Friday and perhaps some base rock as well, should I be expecting a spike.



sg = 1.0245
ph = 7.8
Ammonia 0.5ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 0ppm​
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I never got much of a spike in mine at all, I used all live rock from established tanks and new sand, and never got much. I'm guessing I'll get a bit of one when I add fish, but using the established live rock made mine hardly noticeable.
 
I noticed I am losing about a gallon a day to evaporation. I have topped it up for about a week or longer now with ro/di water and noticed that my sg dropped, so I had to add some more salt the other day. So my question is would it be better to add small amounts of salt into the ro/di water I add daily?
 
Here are a few pics of the live rock I picked up the weekend, still got this crappy blackberry camera though:frustrat:. I will be adding more rock this weekend and once everything settles down I will take some time and snap some nice pics. Planning on getting the first fish this time next month. Do pods moult, I think so right? I think I see a lot of exoskeletons floating around the tank?? One pic shows the polyps that hitchhiked, not sure what they are but they are mostly purple, with a small bit of green. :bounce:
 

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You shouldn't have to add salt. If you top up to the same level all the time then the SG should stay the same as salt does NOT evaporate. If you build an auto top off which are super simple to do then you won't see fluctuations in the SG as the water level always stays the same.
 
coolhandgoose said:
You shouldn't have to add salt. If you top up to the same level all the time then the SG should stay the same as salt does NOT evaporate. If you build an auto top off which are super simple to do then you won't see fluctuations in the SG as the water level always stays the same.
Click to expand...
If you're running a skimmer, won't it pull some of the salt out when it's pulling the :pooh: out of the water?
 
coolhandgoose said:
You shouldn't have to add salt. If you top up to the same level all the time then the SG should stay the same as salt does NOT evaporate. If you build an auto top off which are super simple to do then you won't see fluctuations in the SG as the water level always stays the same.
Click to expand...

Ok I will keep an eye on it to make sure, there will be an ATO in the future for sure, after xmas I’m thinking.
 
BL1 said:
If you're running a skimmer, won't it pull some of the salt out when it's pulling the :pooh: out of the water?
Click to expand...
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Maybe here and there you may have to fiddle with the salinity in tiny amounts but his system has been up for only a week, the skimmer shouldn't have any affect at this point.
 
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