show me the light!!!

kevin said :

show me the light!!!

I don't have it yet!  Trilby is playing mind games with me!!!    Trilby said the delivery truck will be there sometime between 5 - 7pm.  I'll be heading there right after work which will put me there around 7:30pm then I'll run home pound in some extra braces along the bottom of my tank stand legs and then put the lights up and turn it on and take a picture.

excellent!

Good thing Scott is a good sport about all this cause I don't see this thread going away anytime soon!

Fish E said :

Good thing Scott is a good sport about all this cause I don't see this thread going away anytime soon!

I'm just trying to create enough controversy so I can beat Burk's 40 gallon breeder thread as being the longest thread on the TRAC website!

Here are my lights on their different settings.

Dailylight just after a 1 min warm up with the MH.

Day lights off just the Actinics

Now to the Moon

The moment everyone has been waiting for.

Looks Great

Briney Dave said :

Now that Scott has come to his senses lets get back to the question of how long does a tank need to cycle.

The answer is: it depends

Please do not buy into it takes this number of days or other such non sense

I don't expect there to be a universal time for so many gallons + blank lbs LR = tank will be cycled in exactly blank days formula. I just wanted to get an idea of how long it would take him using sea water, LR and LS

Most often tank cycling takes between two and five weeks.  There are far too many variables to explain why the range is so big.  Adding that live sand such as Ocean direct is supposed to cut down on the time since it is alreay well seeded with decomposing bacteria and others.  I have never used the product at a cycling point to comment on it.

sounds like you have a pretty good idea about the process but for the benifit of  anyone thinking about adding live rock but not sure of the process

the critical points are: (and not in any particular order but all should be kept)

Water movement and lots of it.

water changes every time the levels elevate beyond trace.

no lights: this would give the algae too big of a head start

Skim: over sized is better, borrow an extra one even better yet. 

It would be very cool if we as a club had a couple skimmers to loan out during cycles to help boost filtering.  A G-1 for smaller tanks (under 100) and a G-3 for little bigger ones.  They are plastic instead of acyrlic and hundreds cheaper. 

the idea being that you set you your tank like normal then add the extra skimmer while the cycling is going on.  Once done a quick clean up and return.  maybe a small rental fee to go toward covering the cost and replacing pumps as they wear out over the years

Some like to add a big ozone boost during cycling but I am not so sure of it.  it would be hard to monitor the ozone levels with so much going on.  Too much is harmful to the rock. (at least in my opinion) I know some will not agree on that point

Trilby Tropicals said :

The moment everyone has been waiting for.

Looks Great

Thanks Matt.  The light was a bear to assembly the legs on.  Trying to get the side plate off to slide the legs on I stripped a screw because it was like superman tight.  Took me about 30 mins in all to get the legs on and figure out where to place them so it would stand securely on the tank.  That light is heavy.  I thought most of that weight in that box was going to just be the ballast but it was really the light bar.  Much bigger and heavier then what I was use to with my old Coralife PCs.  I'm going to let the lights run through a complete cycle today hoping that everything will work great.  Lights should be on when I get home I set my cycle from 11am - 9pm Total with Blues, and Days.  The moonlights alone on that tank could be almost bright enought to be days on certain spots.  I'm going to have to be careful of that.