thanks Mandy,
Things are coming along nicely. I just got my GFO in the mail today and put it in the system. according to the directions, it requires 8floz per 50g of water. Since I have roughly 75g of water that is habitable at the moment, I added 12floz to the reactor and adjusted it to a slow tumble. Unfortunately, the bad tipped over and a little spilled out on the floor. It was more of an inconvenience than anything.
The grinding of the pump is driving me up the wall. I see that Amazon is now selling the Jebao return pumps and the RW series powerheads - I think I'll be doing a little bit of shopping soon.
.
Those two snails are awesome. If the GFO works like it is supposed to, I don't think that I will add more than two snails to this whole system - and probably no more than two hermits either. It just seems like they wouldn't have much to eat. If algae gets bad, I might add more, but for now it's all doing pretty good.
I am excited to see if my cycle is over with tomorrow. If it is, I've been eyeballing this beautiful 2" tomato clownfish at my LFS. I think he deserves an anemone eventually. My fish store hasn't gotten anything in much in a month now because of all the snow and ice. I don't blame them for not ordering anything. If the tomato is sold by tomorrow, I'll have to wait until their next shipment arrives.
One more month and I'll install the kalk reactor by the end of March. That should give the tank enough time to settle down and stabilize and get ready for growing some coralline algae and other goodies on the live rock. Oh, by the way, the explosion of copepods just happened today - They are all over the glass, the rocks, everything. It's great knowing that I have a healthy stock of them in my tank.