The tank is in a bit of an extended cycle and maturing period.
We came up against some unexpected vet bills for one of our dogs, so the funds got depleted a bit.
In the meantime I have taken some of the live rock I already have (about 250 lbs) and placed it in the tank with a couple of large LPS corals, a favia and a few euphyllias. I haven't suspended this rock above the sandbed, I am waiting to purchase some larger dry flat ecorocks so I can drill them, give them some legs and use them for the base pieces.
I have the bidirectional tidal flow working with the Profilux controlling 2 separate Dart pumps. It's working well and I'm able to play around with the rock placement and watch how it changes the water flow. I've been able to create areas where the water flow will shoot through a channel quite fast and areas where the water will swirl and food particles can accumulate. Those swirling areas are where I will probably place some larger polyp corals.
The only drawback with the 2 separate pumps is the gurgling when about 40 or 50 gallons of water drain back into the sump.
Oceans Motions is close to finalizing a 4 way set up for me and I am expecting the drain back to be much slower and less volume.
Other than that the whole system is really quiet and the herbie drain setup is working well.
I had bought 2 new 300w titanium heaters that turned out to be defective, one of them the top came right off, flipping a breaker in the night and exposing the copper wires inside to the tank water.
The favia is not doing too bad from the brief electric shock plus copper exposure but the euphyllias are still recovering. They're bleached and retracted.
I guess I'm lucky it didn't fry one of the $250 Profilux powerbars.
I've replaced those heaters with a couple of 500w Jalli titanium heaters.
With the tank covers on, and the sump covered except for a 2' x 2' open top portion, the tank is only evaporating about 2 - 3 cups/day. Pretty happy with that.
The tank's not looking too clean these days, going through the startup diatom and algae blooms. I've gone through 2 Prodibio dosing cycles, not sure if it's making much of a difference yet.
The sandbed is really looking scarce for any life migrating down from the live rock, but this rock did come from basically a FOWLR (with some corals) bare bottom setup, so I didn't really expect a lot of sandbed animals.
I'm looking forward to getting some mud from some suppliers.
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Mitch
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