Final resting place determined:
I used an elaborate, back breaking, multi-bucket approach to cleaning the sand multiple times:
I'm kinda glad I did. I'm sure it saved me a few bucks, but I also really like the texture of the sand he used and the color was very white in his tank
My fill method was caveman-like. I honestly kept a 5 gallon bucket in my utility room. filled it up with a 1 gallon container, 3-4 gallons at a time, so that I could measure and mix the salt:
I was still a little uneasy/paranoid about the plumbing. I haven't used a sump in almost 20 years. I saw it in action, and I took pictures of his plumbing before we took it down but I still had this trepidation about pouring 100+ gallons of water all over the living room. so I filled it slowly and allowed the overflow to fill into the sump. I do believe that's how RedSea had recommended doing an initial fill. I also did a power off test and would go back and forth turning off the sump pump to see where the water level would rest.
I pulled out the refractometer periodically to see how my salinity was looking. I used up two leftover bags of instant ocean, and started on a large bucket (170g worth) of Redsea salt.
Previous owner had two switches on the power supply labeled "heater" I talked to him about that and in the past he ran two smaller heaters so that he always had a backup if one failed. I need to go to that method as well. However more recently he ran just a 150w heater in the Sump so for now, that's what I have going as well. Overnight it warmed from 68ish to about 70-72f.
The ambient temp in our house is not very warm as we run mostly off wood heat so 70f is definitely the heater at work, but I turned it up a notch before going to work this morning so I'll see where it lands tonight. the water has almost fully cleared and I have the 90w redsea lights dialed into the app. I would have took a picture this morning but the lights dont' come on until around 8am.
I seeded the tank with aquavitro:
NOW, my hope/wish/goal is to see how fast I can cycle and how soon I can feel comfortable moving corals into the big tank. My wife is super curious about trying to quarantine the clown eggs. They're unfortunately nestled into my largest rock so I'm really not sure if we can save the fry but this will be a busy week of musical tanks regardless lol.
I used an elaborate, back breaking, multi-bucket approach to cleaning the sand multiple times:
I'm kinda glad I did. I'm sure it saved me a few bucks, but I also really like the texture of the sand he used and the color was very white in his tank
My fill method was caveman-like. I honestly kept a 5 gallon bucket in my utility room. filled it up with a 1 gallon container, 3-4 gallons at a time, so that I could measure and mix the salt:
I was still a little uneasy/paranoid about the plumbing. I haven't used a sump in almost 20 years. I saw it in action, and I took pictures of his plumbing before we took it down but I still had this trepidation about pouring 100+ gallons of water all over the living room. so I filled it slowly and allowed the overflow to fill into the sump. I do believe that's how RedSea had recommended doing an initial fill. I also did a power off test and would go back and forth turning off the sump pump to see where the water level would rest.
I pulled out the refractometer periodically to see how my salinity was looking. I used up two leftover bags of instant ocean, and started on a large bucket (170g worth) of Redsea salt.
Previous owner had two switches on the power supply labeled "heater" I talked to him about that and in the past he ran two smaller heaters so that he always had a backup if one failed. I need to go to that method as well. However more recently he ran just a 150w heater in the Sump so for now, that's what I have going as well. Overnight it warmed from 68ish to about 70-72f.
The ambient temp in our house is not very warm as we run mostly off wood heat so 70f is definitely the heater at work, but I turned it up a notch before going to work this morning so I'll see where it lands tonight. the water has almost fully cleared and I have the 90w redsea lights dialed into the app. I would have took a picture this morning but the lights dont' come on until around 8am.
I seeded the tank with aquavitro:
NOW, my hope/wish/goal is to see how fast I can cycle and how soon I can feel comfortable moving corals into the big tank. My wife is super curious about trying to quarantine the clown eggs. They're unfortunately nestled into my largest rock so I'm really not sure if we can save the fry but this will be a busy week of musical tanks regardless lol.
