About to go "live".

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Beverly

If your LR is not already cured, make sure to cure it without a sandbed. This way, all the crud (and there will be a lot of dead stuff that will slough off your uncured rock) can be siphoned out. I use a turkey baster on curing rock to blow off anthing loose on the rock. You wouldn't believe what I siphon out weekly on the 20 lbs of LR currently being cured.

i would personally cure my rock outside of the aquarium in a rubbermaid or tote bin thats what ive always done.there is no cycle from moving from a storage bin to tank and no mess of detrius or leaking of any phosphate into your tank.

[JrdBen]

Thanks all.
Decided to get an Ro/DI now as opposed to later.

Re timing.
Have no plans to add fish until its cycled. If at the 3 month mark I have a couple I'll be happy. Im really in no rush and want to take my time, even deciding what fish when I feel I can +1.

Re 60pds LR.
Have it in my mind that number is just to start. Im a bit of a tinkerer, when I did my Koi pond it was months before the 2 tonnes of rock had found its finally resting place. So 60pds now see how it looks and then once I have the shape I can add more if desired, or as mentioned the sump (hadn't considered that..thanks).

Thanks for the cure tip . Its all being delivered same day, so while plumbing and hardware isset up is occurring a bath/rinse/baste in some prepared water?

[kafug]

Watch adding live rock after the tank is setup. Make sure you cook it for about a month. I learned the hard way after I bought some so call cured live rock and dropped it in my one year old set-up. It crashed my whole system. Wiped out all my fish and gave me a bad case of hair algae and glass anemones. Needless to say that was the end of that tank. I just started a new one after a year. Just because they say it is good does not mean it is. Sadly to say a lot of people just want the sale. So now I stick to the small fish stores.

[JBen]

Thanks all.

It's basically a month old. Everything is humming along perfectly, better than expected actually (knock on wood).

Bit of a silent cycle.
After 10 days and not seeing so much as a blip on any chems, was beggining to wonder if I should add a shrimp to kick start AM, and then I finally saw a blip (.5) in NO3 and shortly after that a diatom bloom (now mostly gone with DR/bed more white again, than brown) some daily algae on the glass Im hoping will slow down, reduce in time. Considering adding a few more snails to the CuC, but waiting to see how things progress a little more first. Absolutely no issues (yet??) with the LR

Thus far.
Everything seems to going perfectly and the only thing I'm really keeping a close eye on is Phosphate and NO3 (daily test) all else every other now. The residents I have all seem perfectly happy. So for the next month or so its status quo and watching grass grow.

AM=0
NO2=0
NO3= 3 to 5
ALK= 11
Calc= 480
Phos= .25

Salinity solid at 1.024
Temp fluctuates between 77 and 78.5
PH 8.0 to 8.3

J