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Ammonia is a good alternative, like col said. Just make sure you don't use the "sudsing" type;)

Actually, as soon as the cycle is complete, you can start doing 10 percent water changes weekly or every other week, whatever you need to do to keep the nitrate at or below 20 ppm. With a DSB, you will be able to go longer between water changes, it's still a good idea to change 10 percent at...

Open the valve as far as you can without getting too many bubbles blowing into the tank.

Crabbypants, sounds like awesome LR, did you get it through this site?

The haze in the tank is caused by the different densities of the water, freshwater 1.000 saltwater ~1.024. If you look close it looks almost like the distortion of air over hot asphalt. Add the water slowly and allow the water to mix before adding more, I spend about 5 minutes adding 1 gallon...

Don't vacuum the brine shrimp off the sand, you will do more harm than good, just make sure you keep your skimmer cleaned and cranked to get the gunk out. I agree with the previous posts, get some more LR, make sure you have 4 inches of sand, and think about getting rid of the fluval, you don't...

The DSB will be live by the time he finishes the cycle. Saltysyd, everything looks good, you should see the ammonia come down within 1 to 1.5 weeks, you'll test it one day and it will be high, then the next zero, at least that's how it always happens in my tanks. It will take about another 1...

I think you would be fine with the remora, going with the pro might even remove too much, if you know what I mean. HTH

Bang Guy posted an excellent procedure for acclimating snails a while back, do a search on the board for "osmotic shock", I think it will help you.

A venturi skimmer is driven by a water pump, it uses bernouli's principle to draw air into the stream of water.

Magic, was he using a diatom filter to filter out the tomites?

Well, you may have light bulbs that are inappropriate for saltwater. Saltwater bulbs are a higher Kelvin rating. Kelvin is the color "temperature" of the bulb. The higher the Kelvin, the more "white" the light is, lower Kelvin is yellowish. A popular Kelvin rating in saltwater is 10,000K...

I wouldn't sweat it, there is a chance that your tap water is fine. Take a sample of your tap water to the LFS and have them test it. If it is bad, do the water changes after the cycle with RO water. HTH

Cut way back on your feedings until you can get amm nitrite low. You may want to put a prefilter on the sump before the water goes through the bioballs and clean it often, it almost sounds like uneaten food is accumulating in the bio balls, could be wrong though.

What size rio powerheads are you using?

I agree with Bang Guy as well, but for a different reason. Tanks are usually (in the past anyway) cycled with damsels. These are mean, agressive little fish and pretty hard to catch, trust me, use a dead shrimp.;)

Wow, wish I could get some live rock like that. Sounds like you might have boring worms in the rock, they make holes and expell the sand, direct a powerhead at the LR and that will help keep it clean. You can try using a phytoplankton substitute like marine snow or something like that to help...

What kind of lighting do you have, more specifically, what wattage, brand bulb, Kelvin range and age of the bulbs.

I use a table saw with a fence and it does a real nice job, try to get a fine toothed carbide blade, like 80 tooth or more, you'll get a nice smooth finish. Jigsaws always crack acrylic, no matter how hard you try. Never tried a router, sounds like a good idea though. To put the stuff...

petsolutions sells a retrofit unit for the eclipse12, it is 32 W PC. It is a pretty reasonable price and will give you enough light for some of the less demanding low light corals. You may find a better price on this retrofit somewhere else, but it at least gives you a starting point. HTH