After 4 weeks of operation, the water quality of the tank has improved enough to consider addition of a cleanup crew. As of today, thhe DT parameters are:
Specific Gravity: 1.026
Temperature: 79.9 oF
pH: 7.92
Ammonia: 0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 0 ppm
Carbonate alkalinity 7.5 dKH (134 ppm)
Calcium: 460 ppm
Magnesium: 1470 ppm
Silicate: 0.03 ppm
Phosphate: 0 ppm (Salifert)
Strontium: 0 ppm
Iron: 0 ppm
I toyed with the idea of adding some soium carbonate to increase my pH and hardness but both of these parameters seem to be increasing over the past 4 weeks so I will just let hte buffer set up naturally with CO2 from the air and increased circulation.
Speaking of increasing circulation, I added a Tunze 6095 Turbelle nanostream to augment circulation from my Vortech MP20 powerhead. I interfaced the Tunze with an APC module on my Reefkeeper Elite system and after a number of small glitches, has it circulating at 60%/30% flow at 2 minute intervals. The glitch is that the APC module cannot be programmed through the RKE head module. Instead, I have to connect up using a borrowed laptop and program the pump with MyReef Software. They say it will be fixed in some future software update.
As far as the tank itse;f is concerned, I passed through a diatom bloom and have seen lots of green hair algae which we've been cleaning off. It seems to be coming back slower and I've decided to order some cleanup snails to keep it under control. Hopefully, these will be in the tank by the end of this week.
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