Sparty, this isnt a race. Odds are you will have fish in your tank before me anyways. I am jelous of your tank due to the brittle star fish that you had come along for the ride. So far, I have had aiptasia, molusk eating snails, some wierd green snail, some kind of worms, some bristle worms, and other random suff come along for the ride that is freaking me out. I have had to catch and flush so much stuff its not funny. I am starting to wonder if I did things right by adding in the second batch of LR as that is where most of the baddies have seemed to come from.
I didnt buy live sand, and I chose to go with the basic sand for 2 reasons. The first reason was price, and the second reason was that no one around me sold the live sand in bags with water. How bacteria can stay alive in a bag of sand that is not wet is beyond me. Whatever they do to make the bacteria "go to sleep" and not wake up until it gets wet cant be that good. What I do think that helped us get to 0 ammonia so fast is the "mud" from the LFS combined with the grape caulerpa. I have a very strong feeling that if that aglea wasnt in the fuge, I would still be sitting at .5 or .25 ammonia right now. If your fuge is setup and running, be sure to get some macro algea in there. Ask your LFS for a handful of algea out of their coral display tank's sump. If they are willing to do that, ask them for a scoop of "mud" from that sump as well. It is what we did and the mud and algea only cost us $5. Its probably the best $5 we have spent on this whole tank.
Water test at 10 pm
80 degrees F
SG 1.024 (and rising due to salted top off water)
pH 8
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5
Thats 2 tests in a row, woo hoo. We had to go back to the LFS today to return the cat carrier that we brought home Percy in. While there, my daughter somehow got the idea of getting a hermit crab in her head. She must have heard me talking with the wife about getting some snails and the one crab for the fuge. So I said to her," fine, you want a crab? You can get a crab, but you have to pay for it." And wouldnt you know it, she brought along her purse with the money in it. The one time I say she can get something as long as she can pay for it and she has money. Darnit. SO she picked out a blue legged hermit crab for a whopping $0.99. We drip acclimated him to the tank and he is happily munching away on something in the fuge. He is more active than what I would have thought and my daughter is happy.
The LFS got their order in of live stock and they had one tank with about 20 clowns in it. They were all real small and just about every single one was calling out to me, "take me home" and it was really hard to resist the urge to do that. I knew the ammonia was at 0. I knew the tank was supporting life just fine. It was real hard not to pick up the partial CUC and a pair of clowns. The only problem was the LFS didnt have peppermints in stock. I will have to make a call to them on monday to ask them to be sure to order some in as I will be in there on Friday or Saturday to pick one up.
So now we currently have in our tank:
4 urchins (I can trade 3 in for a better deal on the CUC)
about 3 or 4 different snails
a hermit crab
oodles and oodles of dusters
some bristle worms
some coral
Looking forward to Tuesday when my protien skimmer and charcoal arrives. I got the Aquac Urchin skimmer as it will fit in the sump without a problem. I also got the chemipure elite to place into the sump when I am ready to do so. The chemipure needs to go into a high flow area correct? Can I place it in the bubble trap between the intake and the fuge? Will that decrease flow too much?
