Jscwerve
New member
Long story with no real point, you shouldn't even read it. Seriously. Just ranting.
My 125 has been cycling for over two months. I started it with about 120lbs of live sand, probably 80lbs live rock (that I cycled in another tank) and about 30 dry. My parameters have been good to go for several weeks and I've just been taking extra caution and giving it more time just for good measure. Only residents have been a CUC from my other tank I set up just for rock. I've been dropping a third of a cube or so of mysis every 4 days or so to keeps the few crabs and snails happy, as well as the massive amount of brittle stars that have shown up as well as brittle worms, sponges, and dare I say it, amphipods that have seemed to appear out of nowhere.
Got my first corals this weekend by attending a local club meeting/swap. I figured it was time to finally start my skimmer. Got it running on Sunday and tuned it the best I could with ZERO experience, no manual except what I found on the internet, and barely enough space in my sump for it. Skimmer is a used Reef Octo otcx160 bought from here.
It was making good foam, but not really any skimmate. I figured maybe it needed some breaking in, although it was used, I did clean the holy livin **** out of it when I got it.
It created microbubbles in my display. Like LOTS. Cloudy water. I didn't know what it was because my water had always been a bit cloudy, I figured new tank issues. So I went to LFS yesterday and bought a filter sock. 24 hours with that and adding floss to the sump where the skimmer goes from its space to the return pump made crystal clear water!!!
Bubble problem taken care of, newly acquired frags open and happy, water clear as I could imagine. Has been at least a week since I ghost fed anything. Turned off the return, dropped a half a cube in the tank and let the crab and nassarius frenzy commence. Let that go for about a half an hour, started the return pump and skimmer back up, walked away.
Two hours pass by.
Check the sump for any changes because I'm paranoid, theres 1/2" of green nasty crap in my skimmer cup!!!!!!!!! IT WORKS!!!!! I am amazed at how fast it happened! even with a filter sock grabbing all the solid left over mysis that the overflow sucked up!! I am in awe to see how fast that worked. I was skeptical before, but now I see that I am going to oin the camp of "a skimmer is a requirement". Just wow.
That's it. Just a rave about how patience has paid off greatly and I've been working on this tank being finally ready to go since about the end of October last year. QT will be running this week as well and the first fish residents will finally be purchased this weekend (I'm thinking the quintecential clown pair).
Thanks to ReefCentral for all the info, and all the horror stories as well!!!!! I'm finally past the first bumps in the road and looking forward to the next!!!! (I also killed my first aipsia this weekend and I actually enjoyed it, boiling water, it worked perfectly)
My 125 has been cycling for over two months. I started it with about 120lbs of live sand, probably 80lbs live rock (that I cycled in another tank) and about 30 dry. My parameters have been good to go for several weeks and I've just been taking extra caution and giving it more time just for good measure. Only residents have been a CUC from my other tank I set up just for rock. I've been dropping a third of a cube or so of mysis every 4 days or so to keeps the few crabs and snails happy, as well as the massive amount of brittle stars that have shown up as well as brittle worms, sponges, and dare I say it, amphipods that have seemed to appear out of nowhere.
Got my first corals this weekend by attending a local club meeting/swap. I figured it was time to finally start my skimmer. Got it running on Sunday and tuned it the best I could with ZERO experience, no manual except what I found on the internet, and barely enough space in my sump for it. Skimmer is a used Reef Octo otcx160 bought from here.
It was making good foam, but not really any skimmate. I figured maybe it needed some breaking in, although it was used, I did clean the holy livin **** out of it when I got it.
It created microbubbles in my display. Like LOTS. Cloudy water. I didn't know what it was because my water had always been a bit cloudy, I figured new tank issues. So I went to LFS yesterday and bought a filter sock. 24 hours with that and adding floss to the sump where the skimmer goes from its space to the return pump made crystal clear water!!!
Bubble problem taken care of, newly acquired frags open and happy, water clear as I could imagine. Has been at least a week since I ghost fed anything. Turned off the return, dropped a half a cube in the tank and let the crab and nassarius frenzy commence. Let that go for about a half an hour, started the return pump and skimmer back up, walked away.
Two hours pass by.
Check the sump for any changes because I'm paranoid, theres 1/2" of green nasty crap in my skimmer cup!!!!!!!!! IT WORKS!!!!! I am amazed at how fast it happened! even with a filter sock grabbing all the solid left over mysis that the overflow sucked up!! I am in awe to see how fast that worked. I was skeptical before, but now I see that I am going to oin the camp of "a skimmer is a requirement". Just wow.
That's it. Just a rave about how patience has paid off greatly and I've been working on this tank being finally ready to go since about the end of October last year. QT will be running this week as well and the first fish residents will finally be purchased this weekend (I'm thinking the quintecential clown pair).
Thanks to ReefCentral for all the info, and all the horror stories as well!!!!! I'm finally past the first bumps in the road and looking forward to the next!!!! (I also killed my first aipsia this weekend and I actually enjoyed it, boiling water, it worked perfectly)
