Water testing questions/concerns

[Myka]

Hi Kevin, welcome to the hobby!

You would find most of your answers in some of the articles I have written that are listed in my signature.

pH test kits are usually rather inaccurate, or present colors that do not match the scale. Don't feel discouraged! Personally, I wouldn't bother testing the pH with a kit, a calibrated handheld digital pH meter is much more accurate, but not always necessary. You are unlikely to run into an pH related issues, so I wouldn't worry about testing it. I am assuming you are going to have a FOWLR (fish only w/ live rock) tank?

It looks like your cycle is under way. Read the link in my signature for more details, but once ammonia has spiked, and dropped to 0 along with nitrite your cycle will be over. It may take several weeks.

Your salinity is creeping up due to evaporation. The best bet is to top up at least once a day, but twice a day is better. You can save some time by just filling to the same line everyday, and test the salinity once a week if you would like.

For a clean up crew, hermit crabs are opportunistic snail predators meaning they will usually eventually kill any snails they inhabit space with. For this reason, I prefer to use snails instead of hermit crabs. Start with just a few (once the cycle is over), and slowly add some as needed. Maybe try 3 Astrea snails. Turbo and Trochus snails get quite large, and can be a pain in the butt if you want to have corals. If you don't want corals at all, both Turbo and Trochus are big eaters. I also really like Ring Cowries. In 4-6 months when the sand bed is more established you will probably want a sand sifter. Your tank is too small for a sand sifting starfish, but one of the smaller species of conch or a small sand sifting fish would be a good option.