Brown Diatom Bloom

Following most recommendations, I left the light off for the first month to let the live rock cure. Since I've turned them on, the rust brown diatom algae has gone crazy. I took this opportunity to stock a couple of clean up crew and all seem to be doing well except for the cerith snails. I ordered more live rock to finish the system and will be patiently waiting till the diatoms consume all the silicates in the water. Hopefully the saltwater I'm purchasing from the local fish store is high quality and this bloom will pass soon.

Sand Bottom

After using the crushed coral for an African Cichlid tank, I knew how much of a pain it was to keep clean. I was raised with the undergravel filters where you wanted the substrate to collect all the detritus and then vacuum it up. So I didn't really know much different. After much deliberation, I replaced the crushed coral with CaribSea Argamax Fiji Pink sand. I am so much happier with it. All the mess just lays right on top and is easily swept up into the water column to be taken care of by the skimmer. It has larger grains than the sugar sized and doesn't cause a sandstorm when I move it around. I used 30lbs to create a shallow sand bed. Some day, I may convert it to a deep sand bed, but with such a small tank, I want to keep my viewing real-estate.

Auto Top-off

After topping off the water that evaporated every day, I decided that I needed a way to automate this process. I looked into many "do it yourself" ideas before I settled on coughing up the cash and getting one of the most reliable systems. I ordered the Tunze Osmolator with the Kalkwasser Dispenser. With limited space under the stand, I found a 2.5gal glass vase to house reverse-osmosis water. Instead of a float switch that (knowing my luck) will get gunked up and stop working, the Osmolator uses an optical sensor. When the water is too low, the pump forces water through the Kalkwasser Dispenser and into the tank.
Kalkwasseris "lime water" and in this case is calcium hydroxide. The hydroxide reacts with carbon dioxide to produce carbonate and bi-carbonate. The end result is increased calcium and carbonate, the building blocks for coral. The main disadvantage of this system is the pH swing during the day. When it's hotter in the day, there will be more evaporation, so this is when more Kalk would be dosed, increasing the pH. One day, I may use a calcium reactor to help stabilize these levels.

Refugium

 With not much space under my stand, I was limited to a 5gal refugium. Using a 8" deep sand bed of CaribSea Argamax Select sand, I hope to see a tiny bit of nitrate reduction. I installed a 12Watt LED grow lamp (9red, 3blue) over a ball of spaghetti chaetomorpha I purchased online. The idea is that the algae will remove nitrates and phosphates from the water as it grows and can be removed from the system. The lights will be run from midnight to 9am to help stabilize the oxygen and pH levels in the water. I got many "swimmies" and even a bristle worm from the chaeto. The refugium is gravity fed from the overflow and empties into my sump. The 1" PVC plumbing and ball valve added significant noise to the trickle and so I covered all the piping in 0.5" neoprene foam. This made a big difference, but didn't get the noise back to a single vinyl hose.

Nitrogen Cycle

Before you can add any fish to an aquarium, you should get the nitrogen cycle started. All fish expel ammonia waste. In the presence of oxygen, bacteria convert this to nitrite, then to nitrate. More modern reef aquariums want to minimize nitrates and use an anaerobic cycle to convert the wastes to elemental nitrogen which bubbles off.
Since I wasn't seeing any ammonia after having the live rock in for a week, I decided to add a whole raw shrimp to get things moving along. It was completely decomposed within two weeks. I saw a peek ammonia of .5ppm. Levels have since returned to zero. I have yet to detect any nitrites, but have seen my nitrates climb steadily to 20ppm during the shrimp decomposition. Since a whole shrimp is way more than I will be feeding my fish, I believe enough bacteria is ready for whenever I finally get to add my fishies.