Let there be life!

My tank is now "Alive!"

I have been a bad blogger so I have a few things to catch you up on. The first being the tank now has life! In the main display and to a lesser extent in the sump I now have "Live rock" this rock is alive as it has a multitude of bacteria living inside it not to mention algae, and the possibility for other life to be packed inside nooks and crannies (such as crabs and sponges.)
The other life that was added chaeto otherwise known as chaetomorpha, It is a macro algae and is good for a tank because it competes with other algae and therefore reduces phosphates and nitrates (nutrients if you will.) It's also a great place for critters to live.

I managed to get 2 balls of chaeto 1 shipped from Toronto (priority overnight mail.) and 1 from the same guy I got most of my rock from. This helps promote biodiversity in my aquarium. In the chaeto itself I ended up with a few different critters, and have noticed some very small things swimming around as well as what I can only guess is a bristleworm (looked like a centipede!)

View of the refugium, with my chaeto (on the left under the light)

I have the live rock sitting in the aquarium now for 2 weeks, you need to give the tank time to grow the bacteria needed to process the bio load. The rock has a certain amount of die off and it starts the “cycle” ammonia ->nitrate->nitrite. A bacteria processes ammonia creating nitrate, anther consumes nitrate and produces nitrite, and yet another consumes nitrite and produces nitrogen gas which floats away. Each kind of bacteria needs to grow till the levels of each in the water undetectable. When this is done then the cycle is done and I can add fish (ETA 1 week.)

View of the display tank with the new live rock.

Bday Party!

I want to thank everyone who came to my Bday party. I truly had a great time, as did everyone else from what I could tell.

This birthday I decided to let out my Asian side, I booked a room at "The music box" which is downtown at 486 Ste Catherine st W (2nd floor,) for some kareoke. I think my friends and I were the only non Asians in the whole place, so you know it was "authentic." Not only that but I was also wearing my most Asian Astro boy t-shirt(see below.)

The party ended at 2AM and we all crawled to bed with what voice we had left. The next morning some of us managed to get to Eggspectations for some yummy breakfast.

Birthday suprise!

For those that dont know my Bday is this Sat the 15! Last night I got a call form 250 area code, and knew it was my Grandfather, it turns out he is in Ottawa with his GF and he asked what I am up to Sat cause SURPRISE guess whos coming? I am really happy to have him come its been almost a year since I last saw him and I have never met his GF from NZ. Of course this makes the Bday itself a bit more hectic as not only do I have to prepare a plan for that evening but now I will spend the afternoon with family.

More work ahead

After I found some moisture on the inside of the cabinet I did some conferring with the experts at reefcentral.com and it was decided that I need to get some ventilation insode there to cut down on the moisture level. For the moment I am leaving the cabinet doors open which allows ample ventilation.

I spoke to my hookup for the remaing items I need for the tank and I am meeting him on Friday night to get my hands on 2 new powerheads (in tank pumps,) 20 pounds or so of Live rock, bulbs for my lights, and some live sand (its live with bacteria, worms, etc.) so as of saturday I will be testing my water daily till the the amonia, nitrate and nitrite levels are at zero. Once they are then I can get a fish! It is possible I may cave earlier and get a shrimp, crab, snails, or some such.

Salty water!

This morning with the aquarium finally full of freshly filtered water it came time to add the Instant Ocean brand salt I had purchased weeks before. After adding 18 Cups of salt the salinity was at the desired level.
It was a HOT day in Montreal today, it seems taking out the AC last weekend was a tad over zealous. Summer it seems has some spunk left in her and is trying to melt all the nay sayers.
I left my apt with Melanie around noon to partly escape the heat.
We did a tour of the Aquarium stores looking for inspiration and I ended up purchasing a light timer. Its pretty cool as it is a power bar with 2 sockets on "day" 2 on "night" and 4 constantly on. This allows me to plug the aquarium lights into it and alternate the 2 main lights in the display for the day and the light in the sump and the moon lights (seen above!)

I should be getting a batch of live rock soon, I am just waiting on a guy to get back to me.
Oh I also ordered some "chaeto" which is a macro algae, I should have it arrive at work on Tuesday. Will explain about that then!

Water ho!

Water is finally going into the tank!
Last night I siliconed the square around the bulkhead (hole in the side of the tank) which then allowed me to start adding water. I managed to filter about 15 gallons of water yesterday and I put it in this morning.

Here is as it looked before I left for work:


The water is a little murky from the stirred up sand, but should clear up soon. you can see on the right corner of the tank the new box I siliconed in, and the rock formation I created this morning!

More pics whent he tank is full.

RO / DI problems!

So I started up my fancy pants RO/DI filter this past weekend in the hopes that I could start filling the aquarium with good "pure" water. I let it run for a bit then go test the water with my trusty TDI meter (see previous post if you are wondering what that is) and find out the water coming out of the tap and the water coming out of the filter are about the same! I had heard that some of these need to be "broken in" so let it run for a while but to no avail.

Thanks to the people at the reef central forums, (http://www.reefcentral.com/forums) it seems my filter came plumbed incorrectly. I will try again when I get home and hope to get water flowing into the aquarium!

On a bright note I did drain all the fresh water out from testing all the plumbing on the tank, and I added all the sand and the base (read not live) rock.

Only a few minor things remain.
1) Silicone a water trap around the bulkhead, so that surface water falls in and then out the bulkhead and into the sump. Most proteins and other non desirable stuff floats on the surface of the water.
2) Add the water, and mix the salt.
3) wait a few days then buy live rock.
4) let the rock aquarium "cycle" what this really means is let the life cycle get underway and give the bacteria time to grow so that it can handle the waste from the inhabitants to come.