Pictures of Ninong's tank in progress.

[Ninong]

Lookin' SCCHNNNAZZZZZY! Awesome work in progress Ninong!

I'm starting a new 10 gallon nano at this moment also, about as far as you are....except I haven't seeded the 1 inch sandbed.

Keep us posted!

- Elmo

Thanks, and good luck with your nano.

[Ninong]

Looking great..I agree that it looked way crowded before. I love the rock and that cave and flat surface will make it easier to posistion the corals I think..Kepp us posted on this work of art!

Thanks!

[Ninong]

Man, that is VERY nice.

Thanks! Did you notice all the nice spots for maximas and croceas on the flat surfaces? ;)

[Minh Nguyen]

Hi Ninong!

Well it has been a couple of days since a report ........

Scott,
He just reported yesterday, including pictures.
Minh

[Reefland]

Scott,
He just reported yesterday, including pictures.
Minh

Technically it's been about 1.5 days.
Pictures of Ninong's tank in progress.

July 24th, ~10pm.

P.S. Ooppps, It was actaully after 11pm.

[Ninong]

Hi Ninong!

Well it has been a couple of days since a report and I was curious if you have noticed any diatom or algae starting to pop up yet? I am also curious if you are noticing any more activity in the sand bed (i.e. gas bubbles forming against the tank glass).

Scott,

So far I have not seen any gas bubbles forming against the tank glass at all. I have seen bubbles rising up from the sand bed but none against the glass so far.

There might be a very slight dusting of diatoms on the surface of the sand bed in a few spots but it is so light that it may be just my imagination. (P.S. -- There are definitely some diatoms on the sand bed now, especially at the right side of the tank up against the front glass. I can see them clearly now that the metal halides are on. They came on at 2 p.m.) There is no cyanobacteria yet but I expect I will be seeing some within the next week or two. It is difficult for me to determine if I have decent current in all areas at the bottom of the tank but I suspect that I probably do not with just 900-1000 gph total flow coming out of three outlets. I had to partially close the ball valve to the right side Sea-Swirl so that I could balance out the flow between the left and right sides of the tank. The Sea-Swirls do an excellent job of covering the entire surface of the tank but I have been careful to keep them pointed as close to the surface as possible to avoid stirring up the sand bed. I may lower them a little later on today.

There is a little movement at the surface of the sand bed but nothing compared to what I had when the Tunze Stream was in the tank. There is still a spot open for the Tunze Stream and I may try to put it back in the tank in another few weeks before I get any corals. I have a feeling that it won't work out in this size tank with the sand bed that I have, but we will see.

I have a slight greenish glow to the rear sides of two pieces of Buna Spiney that is definitely algae and there is a very fine, very short velvety growth of algae in some spots on the flat pieces of Kaelini at the top of the tank. The six Trochus snails that I put in the tank Thursday afternoon seem to be eating it round the clock. When do these guys sleep? I have checked the tank at weird hours during the night and usually I find that they are all active. One of them keeps falling to the sand bed on his back and I'm not sure if he knows how to get up on his own, so I flip him over myself. That has happened twice so far and both times it was the same snail. These are not Astraea snails. Maybe next time I will leave him alone for a couple of hours to see if he gets up on his own. There are no hermit crabs in the tank and only about a dozen bristleworms, all less than 1" long. At least those are the ones I added, no telling if any came in on the live rock.

I will probably get my Neptune Systems AquaController hooked up today or tomorrow even if I don't drill the side of the cabinet to install the controller unit on the outside. So far I have been using a floating thermometer if I want a water temperature reading and I have had a water sample probed at the LFS for a pH reading twice. I'm not too concerned about pH fluctuations right now but I am very concerned about the water temperature. I'm running between 83-87 degrees Fahrenheit. The Little Giant pumps run hot!! They are probably adding at least three degrees to the water all by themselves and the temperature starts climbing once the metal halides come on. There is a 200w E-J heater in the sump set at 79 degrees F.

I am aware of all the possible things that I can do about the water temperature situation and will begin working on that in the next few days. We are running the central A/C at 74 degrees round the clock but that is pretty close to where we have always kept it, so that's not really an adjustment for the tank. The cabinet under the tank has to be vented in some fashion and I am trying to decide on that as part of the overall picture that includes ventilation of the air above the tank. My brother-in-law asked me if I wanted him to have ventilation to the outside of the house cut into the wall and I told him to let me think about it first. If I do that, I need to somehow be able to draw hot air out of the lower cabinet AND from the aquarium's surface. I may need to install two small fans in the left side of the stand: One in the lower cabinet blowing in and another in the hutch woodwork blowing in at the aquarium's surface. Then I would need one or two fans blowing out -- really OUT, as in outside the house.

I don't know if doing all that will be enough to take care of the problem or not. I may still need a chiller. If I get a chiller, I will have to "hide" it on the front porch just on the other side of the wall from the stand and run the plumbing through the wall. Would this make a big difference in the operation of the chiller? What I'm asking is what happens when you put a chiller outside where the temperature and the humidity are both in the 90's on a regular basis?

Obviously the temperature problem has to be solved before I add fish or corals but for the time being I am just adding sand bed critters. I can't delay that or my sand bed could start clumping on me. In the meantime I have cut down on the metal halides to only four hours a day until I get a handle on the water temperature problem. The two 55w PC actinics are 11" above the surface (with the metal halides) and add nothing to the temperature problem.

I haven't started using DT's phytoplankton in the tank yet because I hate to have to drive 90 miles roundtrip to get it. Right now I am using crushed spirulina flakes and some sinking pellets. I am not as concerned about overfeeding as I am about underfeeding right now. I have been testing NO2 and NO3 on a daily basis. I still think I am getting a very slight reading with the NO2 test, so I call that 0.1 ppm. The NO3 test can be read as either 25 or 50 ppm, or something inbetween, but it is definitely not over 50 ppm. Before I added the detritivore kit from Inland Aquatics it was looking more like 25 ppm but the day after adding the kit it looked more like 50 ppm, which is to be expected. I had to add the shipping water from all of the bags except the bag with the 6 Trochus snails but I think I let that water slip into the tank, too. Most of it anyway.

I did a 17 gallon water change Thursday morning before receiving my detritivore kit. I wish I had tested the ASW before using it for calcium and alkalinity. I will do that with this next batch. Also, that batch had only been aging for about 50 hours when I used it. The initial tank water had been aging for 3-1/2 days before I used it. I am using Crystal Sea Bioassay Formula and it is cloudy when you first mix it up. I ran the first batch through a hang-on filter with a Polyfilter and kept a Maxi-jet running in it for three days but I didn't bother to do that with the second batch. By second batch, I mean this last water change water. The first batch was actually several batches if you count all three Rubbermaid containers that were going at the same time. But with this last batch (20-gal Rubbermaid container), all I did was run an airstone for a couple of days. No hang-on filter, no Polyfilter, etc. The water seems to have cleared up a lot within two or three hours with the airstone alone and it was just about crystal clear the next day. I am hoping that I will be able to age the prepared saltwater for at least four or five days before using it once I have corals and fish in the tank.

My first calcium and alkalinity readings, which I took yesterday morning, were disappointing but nothing to get all worked up about. This is another reason why I need the AquaController hooked up and running, I need the pH readings!! Both previous pH readings from water samples were 8.1. Anyway, in case anybody is keeping score, the initial calcium reading was 289 ppm Ca++ (LaMotte) and initial alkalinity reading was 192 ppm CaCO3 (3.84 meq/L, 10.75 dKH). I had started to dose C-Balance (I got it at an 80% discount, remember -- Petopia!) only two days before. Starting yesterday I am dosing only Part A (calcium chloride) until my calcium readings improve. I figured I would use a two-part additive to get the levels up before switching over to Kalkwasser. But now I am very interested in testing my saltwater about 24 hours after it is mixed to see what readings I get on calcium. I guess I will have to order a magnesium test kit, too!! My whole attitude towards this salt mix could change if I am not happy with the initial calcium and magnesium readings. Stay tuned! ;)

Observations: The six Trochus snails are out and about doing their thing pretty much round the clock. I guess they take naps when I'm not looking. I have spotted two or three of the tiny peppermint snails on the glass at night and I have seen a few of the bristleworms on the sand bed at night. The spaghetti worms are clearly visible all the time because they took up residence within about three inches of where I placed them on the sand bed. Their buccal tentacles are the only things that you see swaying in the current at the surface of the sand bed. The tentacles are red and very, very thin, ranging from 0.5" to 1.25" long. I haven't bothered to look up anything on these guys yet to see what their adult size is or what their method of reproduction is but I believe it is direct. I wish they would start reproducing like crazy because I have a lot of sand bed that needs their TLC.

I don't have any aiptasia yet but I do have a few tiny (about 1/2" max) things that look like they might be anemones. Will have to look them up, too. They have three concentric white rings. Not sure if they are anemones or not, but they are not aiptasia. Maybe they're just some sort of feather duster? I wish my eyesight was better. It's hard to see things in the tank compared to looking at pictures of the same thing on the computer monitor or in a book.

The top white layer of sand where oxygenated respiration is taking place is now 1.25" deep compared to 1.75" deep only a week ago, so I guess that's a good sign. The sand bed is 6.5"-7" deep at the front glass, 6" deep under the rocks and 7"-8" deep at the rear of the tank. The RDL (redox discontinuity layer) begins about 1.25" below the surface where the sand changes color from white to tan. The tan color is even all the way down to the bottom of the sand bed because no sulfate reduction has taken place yet.

There is a total of 300 pounds of sand in the tank: 200-lbs of Southdown, 60-lbs of Carib-Sea Aragamax, 30-lbs of Florida Keys live sand and 10-lbs of blended live sand from Palmetto Reefs.com. The 30-lbs of Florida Keys live sand was added at the same time as the live rock. It was mixed into the top 1" or so of the existing Southdown/Carib-Sea Aragamax sand bed. This is not the best way to do this as the Florida sand is about 1 mm particle size. It would have been better if it had been mixed in more thoroughly. I don't think the 10-lbs of live sand from Palmetto Reefs is a problem because it was a finer particle mixture than the Florida sand but right now it is obvious from looking at the sand bed against the glass that the top 2" contains a larger particle blend than the lower part of the sand bed. Hopefully this won't come back to haunt me in the future. There is nothing wrong with having 30-lbs of 1 mm particle size sand in a 300-lb sand bed but it should have been blended better.

[Ninong]

Day 18 since sand bed was started, day 8 since live rock was put in the tank and I finally have bubbles visible against the glass in the sand bed. Hundreds and hundreds of them. The sand bed is now three distinct shades: White layer, light gray layer and darker gray layer. The top white layer appears 1.25" deep with just PC actinics on but 1.5"-1.75" deep with metal halides on. Hmmm... interesting. The light gray layer is about 1.5" deep and the darker gray zone is beneath that. All of these changes happened within the past 8 hours!! At noon today there were virtually no bubbles visible against the glass and now there are hundreds of them. Also, the color of the lower sand bed is changing from light tan to light gray and slightly darker gray.

If I can get ahold of the camera later on this evening, I will try to take some pics of the sand bed.

One new little minor problem popped up within the past couple of days and that is that I am getting tiny micro-bubbles from all three outlets periodically. Nothing to get too worked up over, I'll try to correct it in the next few days but it really isn't bothering me all that much right now. I guess I have a tiny air leak between the sump and the return pump inlet that is taking in air and releasing it as a swarm of very tiny bubbles every few minutes. The connection between the sump and the return pump is 1" vinyl tubing clamped onto barb fittings. I may have to just reapply the clamps or something to stop the air from getting in. Right now it looks like I have a surge tank, so it's pretty cool.

Tested for nitrite and nitrate this evening, will test calcium and alkalinity tomorrow. I stopped testing for ammonia.

NO2 = 0.1 ppm
NO3 = 25 ppm

Both with Salifert tests.

[Ninong]

"If I can get ahold of the camera later on this evening, I will try to take some pics of the sand bed." -- Ninong

And here they are:



Bubbles starting to form in top layer of sand bed.




Close-up of sand bed. There are three distinct layers now. The dark black at the bottom of the picture is the tank's frame; it is 3.5" tall. The sand area that you can see in the picture is about 5" deep plus there is a little over 2" below that hidden by the tank's bottom frame. This picture was taken with the 5" tall black acrylic shield removed.




Picture of tank with black acrylic shield in place at bottom concealing about 4" of the sand bed from view. Check out how I used the black acrylic shield piece from the right side of the tank to increase the height on the left side of the tank in order to block the left side metal halide when I am seated at my desk.




Algae starting to show up on some of the Kaelini pieces.




Two of my Trochus snails on the Kaelini at the right side of this picture. So far they have not ventured out onto any of the Buna Spiney.

[zhenya]

The sand bed looks great, Ninong and the tank looks... great!

[organicreefer]

yep -its lookin good...so what kind of livestock are you planning-what kind of fish and what kind of corals-sps dominated right?c'mon no copout answers either-like "whatevers available"(i thnk you answered something like that previously) -inquiring minds want to know

[schrocat]

Looking good man!
Looking good!

[Ninong]

yep -its lookin good...so what kind of livestock are you planning-what kind of fish and what kind of corals-sps dominated right?c'mon no copout answers either-like "whatevers available"(i thnk you answered something like that previously) -inquiring minds want to know

Whatever I told you now would probably change by the time I am ready for some fish anyway, so we will both have to wait to see what happens.

[Reefland]

In the 9 months that our tank has been set up, we have never seen bubbles like that from our sand bed. We do see a few like you displayed but mostly we see one larger pocket here and there. Any thoughts on that?

[Ninong]

salinity = 34 ppt
Calcium = 330 ppm Ca++ (LaMotte)
Alkalinity = 188 ppm CaCO3, 3.76 meq/L, 10.5 dKH (LaMotte)

I have been replacing evaporated water with saltwater instead of freshwater for the past couple of days to raise my salinity. I started the tank with salinity around 32 ppt, then I raised it to 33 ppt just before receiving my detritivore kit from Inland Aquatics and now I have it up to 34 ppt. I think I will keep it at 34 ppt until I am ready for fish and/or corals and then raise it to 35 ppt.

Because my initial calcium test two days ago was only 289 ppm, I have been dosing just Part A (calcium chloride) of the C-Balance two-part stuff. Originally I was dosing 2 Tbs (30 ml) of Part A and 2 Tbs of Part B daily but after my first test of calcium and alkalinity, I switched to 4 Tbs (60 ml) daily of Part A (2 Tbs in the morning and 2 Tbs in the afternoon). I will have to re-test my calcium and alkalinity in another two days to see if I need to adjust my dosing. I think I will stay on this C-Balance stuff until I get my numbers up to 400 ppm Calcium and 10 dKH alkalinity, at which point I may start dripping Kalkwasser. My goal once corals are introduced would be to maintain calcium between 425-450 ppm and alkalinity between 10-12 dKH. Naturally a calcium reactor would be a big help in this area.

I started a new batch of of saltwater with Crystal Sea Bioassy Formula salt mix this morning. It is being aerated with an airstone in a white 20-gal Rubbermaid Brute container inside the house in the bar area. I measured exactly 18 gallons of D.I. water into the Rubbermaid container and then I added exactly 9 cups of CS-Bio salt mix. I stirred vigorously with a large plastic spoon for about 30 seconds and then dropped an airstone in there to aerate it. I didn't bother putting a heater in there yet since I am not planning on using it anytime soon, so the water temp is somewhere in the low 70's right now. I checked the salinity with my automatic temperature compensation refractometer about 4 hours after starting it up and got a reading of 33 ppt, so I added another 1/2 cup of salt mix. Tomorrow I plan on putting a thermometer in there to raise the temperature to 82 degrees Fahrenheit (which is where I wish my tank water would stay ) and then later on tomorrow afternoon, I will recheck the salinity before testing for calcium and alkalinity. I'm thinking about ordering a magnesium test kit, too.

I want to explain something that I said yesterday about the color of the sand bed. It appears white, light gray and darker gray with the metal halides on. It appears light beige, tan and slightly darker tan with just ambient room daylight and no aquarium lights on. And the appearance with just actinics on is somewhere in between those two.

My order from IPSF will be shipped Tuesday for delivery Thursday, 7/31. I will need to allow the tank to absorb that order before I will be able to place an order for some Nassarius vibex snails. These little guys are good at stirring the sand bed but they don't eat algae, so I will have to feed them initially until the tank gets going full force. The tricky part about this is that if you overdo it you will gets lots of Derbesia and Bryopsis nuisance algae, but if you don't feed them enough, they will die off. And you will get lots of nuisance algae!

You're going to get algae with a new tank no matter what you do, the object is to survive the initial algae battles with as little negative impact as possible while gradually building a balanced stable environment where nutrients are in check. And this takes time. I don't expect to be ready for the first fish until mid-August at the earliest. That would be five weeks after initial start-up of the tank.

Observations: Diatoms are now clearly visible on the sand bed and on the live rock. The spaghetti worms are still visible in the sand bed where I first placed them. All six Trochus snails are still going strong. The three Stomatella varia must be nocturnal because I see them moving around on the rocks at night but not when the tank lights are on. The little tiny peppermint snails are still in there because I see one of two of them every now and then. They are very small and hard to spot. I haven't seen any of the 12+ bristleworms since the first night after I placed them in the tank. They're probably hiding inside the rockwork growing into monster size before they come back out. :eek3:

I have spotted at least six or seven different white feeding nets at night but they just seem to come out of the rocks. None of them is close enough for me to see if they are vermetid snails or not. Lots of little reddish-purplish worms about 1/16" in diameter by 5/16" long sticking out of some of the Kaelini. Quite a few red foraminiferans (Homotrema rubrum) on all of the rocks including the Buna Spiney, which shows very little life otherwise. Lots of extremely tiny air bubbles trapped in the surface of the velvety green algae that is now growing on the Kaelini flat pieces that you can see by turning your head sideways and glancing at the surface of the rock.

Nighttime is definitely more interesting if you want to see tiny critters scurrying about. There seems to be movement everywhere, especially on the Kaelini. I need to get the 25w blue incandescent moonlight on the Neptune Systems Aquacontroller so that I can dim it because right now it is full moon every night over the tank. The moonlight is so dim that you hardly notice it at all if you have any lights on in the room, but after the room lights are all off, the tank looks like a reef under a full moon.

[Ninong]

A fellow reefer asked me to use his Lux Meter to take measurements in my tank. This is the lux meter I used:


http://www.aquariuminstruments.com/en-us/dept_63.html

150,000 lux 6" below center of AB 250w 10,000K HQI DE lamp
49,000 lux 11" below lamp (surface of water)
27,500 lux 1" below surface
22,800 lux 4" below surface
16,000 lux 8" below surface

All of those readings were taken directly beneath a 250w 10,000K HQI DE lamp.

For the following readings, I think it would be helpful if I posted a picture of the tank and explained where each measurement was taken.



12,500 lux taken on forward part of Y-shaped greenish piece of Kaelini directly above upright Tonga Branch piece, right side of tank, 11" below surface and 8" forward of center of lamp.

10,500 lux taken on Kaelini shell-shaped piece to right of center cave, 15" below surface, 8" forward and 7" left of lamp.

17,500 lux taken on highest surface on right side of tank just behind Y-shaped Kaelini piece, 8" below surface. I did not take any measurements on the far right side upright support piece because it is too close to the surface.

16,500 lux taken about 3" to the left of the above reading.

15,000 lux taken about 5" farther left and about 9" below surface.

13,500 lux taken dead center of tank on the small Buna Spiney piece between the two shell-shaped pieces of Kaelini over the center cave.

15,500 lux taken on large piece of Buna Spiney under the Lockline return about 9" below surface.

23,400 lux taken on top of upright support at left side of tank about 4" in front of corner overflow compartment and only 4" below surface.

12,500 lux taken on shell-shaped piece of Kaelini to the left of center cave 13" below surface.

7,800 lux taken on sand bed at far left front corner of tank.

6,600 lux taken on sand bed in front of center cave.

8,400 lux taken on sand bed at far right front corner of tank.


The following readings were taken with just the two 55w PC actinics on. Remember that they are 11" above the surface, same as the metal halides.

2,600 lux 5" beneath center of PC actinic tube.

1,500 lux 11" beneath PC actinic tube (surface).

1,100 lux 1" below surface.

580 lux 6" below surface.

440 lux 10" below surface and 10" forward of actinic tube.


This was a nice little instrument to use but just about impossible to keep under water unless you held it in your hand. So I held the submersible probe in one hand and the digital readout meter in the other. Thanks to the coiled up cord linking the probe to the meter, if you let it slip from your grasp, it has a tendency to shoot out of the water like a missile from a submarine. More water on the hardwood floor. I can see where this would be useful for making comparisons of the relative intensity of different locations in your tank and for measuring the degradation of a lamp as it ages, but I wouldn't want to use it to make comparisons between something like a 20,000K Radium and a 6500K Iwasaki because it is weighted towards "visible" light. For that you would need an expensive PAR meter.

[Reefland]

150,000 lux 6" below center of AB 250w 10,000K HQI DE lamp
49,000 lux 11" below lamp (surface of water)
27,500 lux 1" below surface
22,800 lux 4" below surface
16,000 lux 8" below surface

I think it is interesting that you lost 101,000 lux over a 5" span above water (-20,200 lux per inch) but only 33,000 over a 7" span below water (-4,714 lux per inch). From your post I understand that the meter takes a measurement of "visible" light but it would seem to me that the visible light would decrease more as you went lower in the water than it would out of water. How does the water add more "visible intesity" to the light?

If I am thinking correctly and we could add our AB 250w 10k lights just below the water surface, the measurement that you took 8" below the water surface would be around 238,200 lux (based on my above figures and the lux reading directly below the bulb being 271,200 lux).

Just an observation.

[Ninong]

I think it is interesting that you lost 101,000 lux over a 5" span above water (-20,200 lux per inch) but only 33,000 over a 7" span below water (-4,714 lux per inch). From your post I understand that the meter takes a measurement of "visible" light but it would seem to me that the visible light would decrease more as you went lower in the water than it would out of water. How does the water add more "visible intesity" to the light?

If I am thinking correctly and we could add our AB 250w 10k lights just below the water surface, the measurement that you took 8" below the water surface would be around 238,200 lux (based on my above figures and the lux reading directly below the bulb being 271,200 lux).

Just an observation.

Well, the short answer is you are NOT thinking correctly.

Intensity of light falls off as the inverse square of the distance from the source. The mathematically predicted reading would be that the intensity 11" from the source should be exactly 1/4 the measurement 5.5" from the source. I'm not going to get into a discussion of light measurements underwater because I would have to look that up first and I'm not in the mood to do that right now.

In any case, the measurements in the tank were higher than I expected with my fixture 11" above the surface. I was quite pleased with the results.



BTW, there are too many misconceptions in your reply for me to tackle right now without getting a headache, but I can't resist pointing out that my water column was only 25" tall BEFORE I added a 6"-7" DSB. Not even red falls off in 18" of water.

[Ninong]

27,500 lux 1" below surface
22,800 lux 4" below surface
16,000 lux 8" below surface



Those are the only readings that were taken in a direct line beneath one of the metal halide lamps with all three readings being taken below water. While not completely inline with mathematically predicted values, they are close enough given the quality of the instrument and the fact that the readings bounced around considerably due to the turbulence at the water's surface. I would have gotten more accurate measurements had I turned off the pumps but I didn't feel like doing that.

[organicreefer]

wellll god ninong-you been "planning" this tank for the last three years or so..i thought youd have youre fish pre-named by now j/k

[Ninong]

All this talk on another board about problems with Crystal Sea Bioassay Formula salt mix has me on edge so I decided to run a calcium test on my batch of saltwater that I started mixing about 14 hours ago. Not that calcium has anything to do with the problems they are talking about but some people are claiming that it mixes up to a very low calcium level and others say that it is very low in magnesium and then today someone said that it has twice NSW levels of Boron and that maybe that is part of the problem that they are having with it.

BTW, I looked up Bingman and Atkinson's salt mix study from a few years back and Reef Crystals has 1.5 times NSW levels of Boron, Coralife has 3 times NSW levels of Boron and SeaChem has 12 times NSW levels of Boron.

Anyway, I figured I may as well test the saltwater before it goes into the tank to see what I'm starting out with. I planned to run calcium and alkalinity tests tomorrow but I got antsy and decided to run the calcium test tonight. I raised the salinity in this 18-gal batch earlier today and re-tested it again just now with my automatic temperature compensation refractometer and it measures exactly 35 ppt.

Calcium measured 392 ppm on a LaMotte test that I was extremely careful in administering. I learned my lesson this morning testing my tank water. It took me three tries to get my alkalinity test right because twice in a row I failed to notice that I had a small air bubble in the Direct Reading Titrator until after I had already started dispensing drops into the beaker.

So at least the calcium in the freshly mixed CS-Bio is good. I will probably test alkalinity tomorrow just for the heck of it. Interesting that my tank water should have tested so low on my first test but then I was keeping my salinity down around 32 ppt before I raised it to 33 ppt when I got my detritivore kit. Right now it's at 34 ppt and I think I'll go ahead and bring it up to 35 ppt within the next couple of days since that's where I intend to keep it. There is nothing in the tank now consuming calcium except a lot of coralline algae on the Kaelini rock that has been in there for the past 9 days.

I might take some pictures tomorrow. You wouldn't believe how much the diatoms have bloomed in the past 12 hours or so. Everything is turning brown. Oh, well, c'est la vie!