New setup: 95 g wave reef tank

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Test the tap for phosphates. Might not need to empty it before you add salt. Besides, I'm wondering if you gotta worry abour phosphates right now since it's gotta go thru a cycle any way - and large water changes afterwards.

Yep, on that sump overflow issue.... mark a "high line" on your sump that accomodates for the return in a power outage. Turn the main pump off, fill the sump up to about an inch below the top. Turn the main pump back on and mark that line in the sump. That's the "high line".

And that powerhead will have to moved higher IMO. Where they are now will now be sand friendly at all. Just the one on the left side.
 
Can't tell in those last pictures if you've done anything to the back of the tank yet. Don't forget if you're going to do something back there that it's waaaaay easier to do it with the tank pulled away from the wall. Something to keep in mind before you refill the tank. (And since you have a RO/DI system already, I wouldn't even consider keeping the tap water in there. Why start off with an unknown when you've got so much invested already.)

Also... don't stress too much about powerhead placement. I remember when I set my tank up I had it all figured out and everything right where I wanted it. Then when I put my rock in, plans changed. Then when I put fish in, plans changed again. Then when I put corals in... well - you get the idea!

Fantastic looking setup, by the way!

PS... just relooked at the back of your stand picture. Make sure before you put the water back in the tank that you can access/service all that stuff on the back, either from the side, or from inside the stand.
 
well... I have a few reasons to empty the tank. I may have to move the tank around the room. Besides, i considered the initial run to be a cleaning cycle for all equipment, so that it is free of oil and whatever else was in those pumps and hoses.
I ended up keeping tap water for a few days. Left the tank running overnight with no lights except for LEDs, odd enough, water temperature went up to 82 degrees overnight... room temperature was around 74 though... Both heaters were off... Not sure yet what caused the spike. I got both pumps submersed in sump, PHs were also running, but not at full speed. When pumps are not running and lights are off, water temp stays at around 72 degrees.
Hmm...
Now I will have to do a few more test runs to figure out what causes water temperature to rise and what I am going to do about it. 82 degrees would be just fine, but with my 500w MHs on it will start boiling...

Picked up a solid blue background last night, will install it soon. There always will be at least 10'' from the wall so that I can get in there and fix things.

Also, I was thinking about partitioning the sump main chamber so that heaters, skimmer and pumps all have their own place there and not run into eachother due to vibration and whatnot. The problem is to keep normal water flow across all partitions. So I picked up one of those large ceiling light egg crates with large square holes. Should be just fine for partitioning.

Still waiting for LR to be shipped, will take at least 10 days I think, may be longer.
 
I am guessing the heat is coming from the phs. My tank was running at 82+ before I added a floor fan to my lighting timer. Now the temp stays steady at 78.

+++EDIT+++
That mag 9 will put off some heat too.
 
well, its been over a month since my last post... All that time I've been experimenting with the setup while waiting for my rock. Marshall rock was and still is not available and I dont know when it will be, so I finally gave up and bought 100lbs of semi cured fiji from my LFS. That was two weeks ago... the tank is cycling now.
I dumped all 5x35lb bags of aragonite sand, which gave me about 6 inches of DSB. Although, the sand was rinsed, it still made my perfect ro/di water cloudy :). And it stayed that way for a week not clearing up even a bit. At that time I was still not aware that the skimmer can do wonders, so I ditched all the cloudy water and added another 100 gallons of ro/di. The water got cloudy again, than I realized I got a skimmer... the water became crystal clear by the morning.
A few trips to lowes later the setup got a lot less loud as I sealed all holes inside the stand and had the skimmer discharge valve piped below the sump water level (yes, I made a big hole at the top of the pipe to let the air in).
Speaking of the skimmer, it took me awhile to figure out how to adjust it for proper operation... If i open the discharge valve all the way, it produces so much foam that it overflows the collection cap and all wastes washed back into the sump. The only way I got it to work is by shutting the valve enough to cause the skimmer to barely produce air bubbles... perhaps this is just for now while it is all new and cycling, may be not. At least it does collect plenty of wastes every day.

Now back to the cycle. So, I put all 100lbs of rock all at once and added two jumbo shrimp. Some rock had few dieoffs as well, so I figured it should be enough to kick in the cycle. In a couple of days I got the ammonia spike, a few days later the ammonia started to go down but nitrites went up alot. In a few more days, nitrates went through the roof while ammonia got down to zero, shrimp was all gone by then. As of tonight, ammonia is at zero, so is nitrite. Nitrates went down alot and are now at 20ppm. It seems that I should be all set for the cleanup crew by the weekend.
The only problem is in pH level... it stays at 7.9 all the time and does not seem to be improving, and I dont expect it to, not without pH buffer anyway. So this is next on the list.

More pics are coming soon.
 
Pictures? Reading through all these posts makes me very curious to see your tank full of lr. Just my opinion but I would wait before i considered trying to increase your PH. I would let the cycle finish and let the tank stabalize and see where it is at that point before i thought about using a buffer, it most likely wont be needed.
 
Sounds like you are ready for a LARGE PWC. Hold off on the pH buffer till after the PWC. Let your tank stabilize first.
 
I agree on holding off on the pH buffer. It can take up to 3 months for your tank to become stable. I tried the buffer and it was a pain. I ended up adding another ph to get more surface ripple and a stable pH.
 
What happened? Its been over a month, wondering how this tank looks today !
 
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