UBER-Nano

[RobbAdams]

Not because its awesome, just because its a "Big Nano", can we say oxymoron! OK here is the story, Got all my stuff yesterday, to get my little reff started. My set up includes, a 28 gallon bow front, a 24" 2x65 watt (10,000K and Actintic)Aqualight. CPR Bak PAK II Skimmer, Rio 90 powerhead (Think I need a bigger one) and obout 25 pounds of live rock to start with. (I plan to buy a bit more each payday, until I get the tank looking fuller). I have opted to not put in sand yet, to see if there is going to be any die off from the rock, but the rock looks really quite cured already, with heavy coraline coverage.

Any way, I filled the tank most of the way with water started up the powerhead, and skimmer, and started adding salt, according to the package directions. I started bu placing about 10 cups of salt in as the packaging suggested that you need 1/2 cup of salt per gallon of water. after the salt appeared to be disolved, I used my handy hydrometer to read the salt level. The level is not registering on the needle, so I keep adding salt, and waiting for it to appear to be disolved and measureing etc. finally I get it to about 1.022, and place in all of my live rock!

I sit down on the couch and admire my handy work, for an hour or so, and decide I should clean up the mess Ive made before my fiance gets home. As I go to empty the hydrometor I look and the reading is now 1.027!!!!

I assume, that the salt I had added was not completly disoved yet so I immediately, do another reading from the tank, and it is reading 1.028 so I quickly pulled a couple of gallons of water from the tank and replace them with fresh water, repeating until I get a readng of 1.022-23.

Do you think this is going to cause problems for my live rock? do I have any chance of any of the stuff I had on it surviving?

Also, my skimmer is putting Tons of microbubbles into my tank. according to the CPR's website, this is because I used a water conditioner, to remove chlorine, that has other additives in it that add to the surface tension of the water? Any suggestions on a brand of dechlorinator to use, that will not, have all the extra slime coat helper stuff in it? I dont really have the space in my condo to have a big buket of water around that would dechlorinate on it own in a few days!