Luke's 20 tall mixed reef

Looking good! Its so much easier to call it your own when you build it all from the ground up. Cheers my friend!

Looks great Luke!

Thanks for checking out my thread. Ammonia 0.5 ppm and my first aqua scape. It's clearing up this morning so I need to adjust some stuff.




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It was clearing up this morning and I made minor adjustments to the rock formations.

Kicked up but you get the idea.


I'm waiting on my reefbreeders value LED and I might pick up a couple small pieces of rock today to make the formation on the left taller.


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Cool. Make sure you post a picture up when the scaping is finished and the sand clears up. I would like to see what you came up with compared to mine.

T.W. said:

Cool. Make sure you post a picture up when the scaping is finished and the sand clears up. I would like to see what you came up with compared to mine.

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Will do. I'm heading to the LFS today to grab a couple small pieces if I can sneak them past my wife.


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LukeG said:

Will do. I'm heading to the LFS today to grab a couple small pieces if I can sneak them past my wife.


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Isn't it tough when you always have to deal with the rationale side of the relationship? lol Thank God for the ladies in our lives that keep us in check and our wallets a little bit thinker

mayday610 said:

Isn't it tough when you always have to deal with the rationale side of the relationship? lol Thank God for the ladies in our lives that keep us in check and our wallets a little bit thinker

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Agreed.

On that note I did some testing here are the results using API and a cheap hydrometer.

Temp 78
Salinity 1.021 (bought it salted from the LFS I'm not sure if its the hydrometer)
9 dKH
Ammonia 0.5 ppm
Nitrates 0 ppm
Phosphates 0.25 ppm
Calcium 340 ppm

Hard scape






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You should be proud! I can tell you thought it through and have had past experience to guide you. Yep, and add more live rock or dry rock as the wallet boss allows it... LOL.

I'm sure your hydrometer is fine. Even the cheap ones are pretty accurate when they are new. Doesn't hurt to ask the LFS what they keep their salinity at to cross reference. Some LFS just keep a lower salinity. I once dealt with a place that had different parameters with every purchase i made. I talked to one of the employees about it and she said they didn't have a great setup for water mixing and when they made alot of sales they had a hard time keeping up with topping the tanks off, thus creating fluxuations. Just a thought, be weary of your suppliers. If they don't take pride in their own tanks, they may not have your best interests in mind. Its easier to pinch pennies when you cut down on salt mix if the LFS mixes their own water.

mayday610 said:

I'm sure your hydrometer is fine. Even the cheap ones are pretty accurate when they are new. Doesn't hurt to ask the LFS what they keep their salinity at to cross reference. Some LFS just keep a lower salinity. I once dealt with a place that had different parameters with every purchase i made. I talked to one of the employees about it and she said they didn't have a great setup for water mixing and when they made alot of sales they had a hard time keeping up with topping the tanks off, thus creating fluxuations. Just a thought, be weary of your suppliers. If they don't take pride in their own tanks, they may not have your best interests in mind. Its easier to pinch pennies when you cut down on salt mix if the LFS mixes their own water.

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I was thinking the same thing. I'm going to let the salinity come up via evaporation. My RO/DI should be here Tuesday. I haven't ordered 2 part dosing yet but I have work on my calcium an pick up a magnesium yet kit.


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seems like you are headed on an excellent direction. ( just the one i want to head as im planning a 20G in the near future). so ill tag along to learn a bit

Sounds good LukeG. Not sure if you have one or are getting one, but you are probably going to want to buy a TDS meter along the way. It will help you to know when you need to replace your filters in your RO/DI unit. Something over looked at times because its one of those things that sometimes you just don't think about. Next thing you know you are having issues in your tank and you are scratching your head... and long and behold, your filters are spent and no longer working properly, allowing dissolved solids by and into your make up water. You can get an inline meter that measures your TDS going in from your water source and out of your RO/DI unit so you can keep an eye on things. Some people prefer a hand held meter so you can check in other places as well. I wouldn't worry about setting yourself up with 2 part dosing yet either. Your salt mix should be more than efficient until you start loading your system and the elements are used up at a faster rate. Time will tell after you get your test kits and measure your elements how well your salt mix is.

TDS meter is on it's way with the RO. Thanks for the advice. The rock has a good amount of coralline algae on it already. I bought it from someone who had it 6 years. I wasn't sure if I should dose during the cycle or not. I've left my
Skimmer turned off. I was thinking of adding cheato now to help boost the pod population.


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Oh, nice! Glad you were able to get your hands on some good Live Rock. That will really help with your cycle and cut down the time for sure. I still wouldn't worry about dosing yet as water changes should be plenty to keep enough elements in there for your coralline. I would be more focused on getting your salinity up where you want it. Low salinity means lower salt content, which means lower element concentrations. You won't know about dosing until you measure and watch your elements and see how fast they are being used up. Last thing you want to do is over do the dosing and crash the balance. Whats your reasoning as to why you left your skimmer off? I would have mine running if i had seasoned live rock in there, but thats my opinion. You adding the macro to your tank or are you setting up a refugium in your sump?

I'm going to add the cheato to my fuge/sump. Would you add it now?

Hopefully evaporation will take care of my salt content. I'll retest in the morning.

To kick start the cycle, I added a bunch of flake food. I left the skimmer offline because I wanted the ammonia levels to climb. Do you think I should start the skimmer?



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I don't see a problem with adding the macro now.

I'm thinking about your Live rock. If its a nice seasoned rock, its going to have life growing on it other than bacteria. I think you should be treating it as if you had livestock in the tank, because you do. Trying to spring an ammonia spike is not the best for the life in the rock. You might be doing more harm than good. The fact that you have a well seasoned rock already puts you ahead of the game because you are starting with a good lvl of bacteria. This already reduces your cycle time. I'm a believer that a natural cycle is the way to go if you are starting with already cycled LR. You can speed up a cycle but only so much. Don't want to over do it. Its really up to you but if you are not worried about killing off any life that may be in/on your live rock, no big deal. Its a learning process and everyone deserves to try things and find out what works and doesn't work for them.

Like the pics Looking good!