Still coming along very nicely :-)
At this point I am comfortable adding fish to the tank without any fear of them stressing. I still conduct daily water tests for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate and will send out my monthly test samples to aquamedicwatertesting.com for the full range.
I did not use an additive to cycle the tank but my start up did not go quite as I had planned either. I somewhat chronicled the tank change, but the initial set up had been running for about a month. The live rock from BRS was curing in a 45 gallon trash can about a month prior to that.
The first week of curing the ammonia stench was harsh to say the least and I conducted several massive water changes. I continued to 10% changes every other day or so for about three weeks from there. Once I broke down the first tank, the rock cured for another month back in the trash can, but there was definitely enough dead matter from the get go to jump start the cycle.
PH is averaging about 7.88 monitored in real time on a freshly calibrated PinPoint probe. At night it dips only slightly to about 7.82, and during the day only slightly higher at 7.92. I attribute the stability to the chaeto in the refugium which I had initially been running on a 24/7 light cycle. The growth was very fast but it seemed to be browning on the outside and very green on the inside. I now have the Kessil H380 on a wifi timer from 7:00 PM (DT goes off at 9:00 PM) and turn off at 9:00 AM (DT turns on at 11:00 AM). The spinning motion has encouraged it to mold into a nice ball shape.
The pod population in the fuge has also been spectacular. I am sure the sixline wrasse is going to be very happy as those puppies overflow into the display.
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