400 gallon project

[untamed]

Here's the results of the salt measurements:

Mg: 1350ppm
Ca: 440ppm
Alk: 3.0 meq/L or 8.3dKH

Those are certainly better numbers that I ever got from Kent.

The water is clearing up. Tonight, I added 4 large, very dead, tiger prawns. There is a bucket of bio-balls under one of the overflows. I'm going to cycle the tank using these bio-balls, so that when the LR comes in, there will be some bacterial support for the new rock.

Once the tank is stable following the LR addition, I'll remove the bio-balls.

Meanwhile, I've solved most of my skimmer problems. Capping my gate valve mod made it a lot quieter, and had the side effect of lowering the foam level to the point where the gate valve could now control it. I've never seen it recommended that you cap off the top of the gate valve mod, but it is working perfectly in this case. I'm going to have to glue the cone to the skimmer body because that seal just leaks too much for my taste.

Since I'll have some time to wait, I can start working on that black box...