Turkey Day update.
Water is at 1.025 SG. Hood is on and lights were tested with a few stand in bulbs. Ran with lights and fans running for about 3 hours. Very very cool under the canopy. Ballasts seem fine and as of right now 2, 4 inch fans, the slots in the top of the canopy and the back being open seems fine for cooling of the lights. Honestly the lights don't even seem to run that hot. Now after a 10 hour run things may be different but I can't cross that bridge till I get to it.
After I got the SG to 1.025 and let it run for awhile to confirm that the salt was mixed good throughout I went ahead and added my 360 lbs of Carbisea Ocean Direct Live Sand. Can you say giant cloud storm. Only now am I starting to spot some rock. Was wondering if the sand disolved all my rock
Is 1.025 okay for a reef tank. I have a book that says 1.024, but I have also seen and read about people running at 1.026 or 1.027.
I was running the Vortechs and the return pump but after about an hour I decided perhaps I should shut everything down and try to get the storm to settle. Starting to see some progress.
As for the glass tops, one thing I did a little different was I separated all the panes from those plastic hinge things. I'm not using the hinges as it is easier to just remove the individual panes if I need to and the front pane is very easy to tilt up for feedings. Not using the hinges does several things for me. One is it makes it alot easier to clean the individual panes, two it removes shadow lines from inside the tank since the black plastic hinges are gone, and three, the gaps left where the hinges were at provides for nice areas for gasses to escape.
I've read about reefers getting all worked up about gas exchange at the surface level before and I find it a little odd, your skimmer is pumping so much more oxygen into your water column than you will ever get from gas exchange at the surface. However I am all for breaking the surface tension using return nozzles and circ pumps however it's not to introduce Oxygen as much as it is to allow other gases to escape. Overflows also do a good job of breaking surface tension.
Back to the fans real quick. Each fan at idle speed circulates 50 to 60 cfm of air, at mid speed 75 to 85 cfm, and at full bore, 90 to 102 cfm. Multiply that times 2 and then consider that the canopy isn't completely enclosed and you might see then why I think I should be okay. Great thing I like about these IceCap fans is the heat sensor on them, depending on the temp at the sensor the fans throttle up or down. And in a worst case scenario I can easily add two more fans with the canopy still on the tank.
Caribsea claims that with their OceanDirect sand I should see little if any cycle. I find that hard to believe. Hitting my LFS tomorrow to grab a few small pieces of his live rock to help seed my base rock. Wife and son want me to get a few hardy fish tomorrow as well. I'm not sure yet if I trust Caribsea enough to use a couple fish as guiena pigs regarding not having a cycle. Afterall they also claimed that their clarifier stuff that comes with the Live Sand would cause the dust storm to settle fast. Hahaha, lies.
But I am considering it, their food and poop should help with a cycle anyway and with two fish in all that water I think they can handle it.
Looking forward to getting some algae in the tank, why? Cause I love cleanup crews and watching them work. I could stare are emerald and hermit crabs for hours. But I don't want too much algae
Just enough to keep the cleanup crew fat and happy. I know I know wishfull thinking.
Anyway thats about all for my Turkey Day update. As soon as the dust storm settles I'll get some pics. Light in the tank won't look that great since I am using some stand in bulbs, too much white. About a 3 to 4 inch deep sand bed along the glass ATM, but I'm hoping to bring that down some once I can see where sand isn't so I can move some there. I'll also take some out if I have to, I wanted about 2 ot 3 inches. Though honestly the 4 inch areas don't look bad at all.
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