commod0re's UNS R90 Build

[overhead]

I ordered on august 5th, it shipped yesterday, and amazingly made it to me today even though I am deep into the 2-3 day delivery zone

Thanks. I am short about 5 pounds of sand. I am trying to figure out whether to order more live sand or just add some regular old aragonite sand.

 

[commod0re]

Thanks. I am short about 5 pounds of sand. I am trying to figure out whether to order more live sand or just add some regular old aragonite sand.

live sand is pretty fun but I'd bet aragonite is fine too

I have roughly 35-40 lbs of aragonite in my tank and like... 8 lbs of live sand lol

 

[commod0re]

Today I received my pod culturing kit so I’m boiling up a small batch of sterile saltwater to get that going. I’m going to attempt to start a new batch of phyto too, hopefully my holdback from the previous batch is still alive enough for it lol

 

[TheWB]

Today I received my pod culturing kit so I’m boiling up a small batch of sterile saltwater to get that going. I’m going to attempt to start a new batch of phyto too, hopefully my holdback from the previous batch is still alive enough for it lol

Looking forward to seeing your results.

 

[jabberkaycee]

I’m interested in hearing how the culturing kit works out. I was thinking about starting one myself. I have 2 wrasses and a dragonet and I’m constantly ordering pods. I dont have a good source locally and we’ve had too many heat waves this year.

 

[commod0re]

I’m interested in hearing how the culturing kit works out. I was thinking about starting one myself. I have 2 wrasses and a dragonet and I’m constantly ordering pods. I dont have a good source locally and we’ve had too many heat waves this year.

Will do! if it goes anything like my first batch of phyto did it should be a breeze, all I had to do really was check on it briefly every day, the preparation steps are not very involved, and it only took about 10 days. Assuming my phyto holdback culture is still good I should have no trouble keeping this going

I definitely recommend getting standby jars because it allows more timing leeway. My kits are all from Reef by Steele who also happens to be an R2R sponsor, and they are very good quality, with handy fill-lines on the labels! They noticed that my recent order was not my first from them, and hand-wrote a little thank you note on the printed invoice in the box and I thought that was nice. The kits come with basically everything you need to get started except for an air pump and the salt, although I also need to get a couple of sieves for harvest day

If you have the room for it I definitely suggest trying it out at least, I‘m enjoying it enough so far to expand to pods anyway lol.

Oh! Another cool option that you and @TheWB might be interested in is hatching brine shrimp! We got an artemia blender at aquarium co-op and like a planters peanuts jar of eggs for a very reasonable price, you just need an air pump and a small heater and brine shrimp hatch in just like 2 days and both fresh and saltwater fish love it. They don’t stick around in the tank at all like pods do, but, on the other hand, the commitment to hatching them is also substantially smaller than cultivating pods and phyto so I think it’s an option to consider! I believe we have the Ziss artemia blender and it was about $50, my wife uses a little 5W USB heater for it lol