Sorry for not updating for a while, got busy with boring plain work..
so, got some more rocks and cured them in a 100L bucket. after testing the water parameters for a while, the ammonia started to get low but the nitrite was off the chart.
I remember reading somewhere that if the nitrite or ammonia gets too high, it can stall the cycle, so I decided to continue the curing inside the tank where there's much more water and the concentration will be much lower.
so, to the final assembly:
got the back cover film off and the sand in with some rocks and started to check out different aquascaping
after being somewhat happy with the arrangement, I started to fill it up with the RODI water.
notice all the dirt from the sand even after rinsing it 10 times in a bucket prior putting it in the tank
heres what's underneath the tank, stand lights are on. sorry for all the electrical mess, I plane on tidy things up tonight.
the skimmer is the BB A8, VERY happy with it! already skimming like a champ and it seems like it didnt need to be broken in
next, it was time to battle the different noises as the tank is right in my living room.
I found that I had two sources of noise. the first one was the water falling from the DT into the overflow box.
easy fix, I increased the tubes height in the overflow so the water level would not be so low. worked great! (emergency line is still not trimmed)
second source of noise was the water falling from the main chamber to the pump chamber in the sump.
I added a glass panel in an angle so the water could just flow on top of it and gently flow to the water line. it works, but I need to glue it into place.
there are some changes that I would like to investigate, I may be building a new sump in the near future..
So, after running for few days, its time to test the water parameters again.
everything came out low except for the nitrates. so in order to test if my bacteria population is high lengthen, I dosed with Dr tims ammonium chloride at about 2ppm.
i'll check it tonight (after 24H) and see how it goes. anyway, I wont be putting any livestock in for about a month, i'm setting up 3 tanks for TTM and a hospital / observation tank
TIP!
if you decide to fill your new tank directly from your RODI tube and you put some salt in at the same time, DONT leave your tube in the water and shut off the RODI while going to sleep.
I did just that, the salt diffused through the RODI tube and killed my new DI cartridge. I couldn't figure why I get a TDS of 860!
replaced the cartridge with a spare one and it dropped right back to 0. I rerouted the tds sensors, my RO output reads 4, after the DI I get 0. I guess that with RO tds of 4, the DI should last a long time!
I'll keep you updated soon!
