Tank has been up almost 6 weeks now, has huge levels of
ammonia/nitrite/nitrate.
I only just bought 22lbs of
LR. I've got 3" of calcium carbonate substrate.
The hagen testkit's I'm well aware of, thanks to the podcast and a few other people. I paid $120 for it and I'm kinda stuck fincancially and won't be able to aford another master kit or even a few of the basic individual ones for a while
I've tested the water I'm collecting, and filtering out any solids with 50um filter paper before it goes into my
QT. Due to my proximity to the Queensland coastline on the mid east coast of Australia, everyone I've talked to locally agree the water is safe when collected on an incoming tide from the end of the longest pier I can find (naturally I test it before it goes in anyway). I'm also using water from the ocean because I cannot yet afford an
RO/DI unit. We've got MASSIVE 1000l units at work but I have no way of getting water back home in lots larger than 20l at a time, which would only be good for top-offs and not 20-25% weekly water changes
I can use it for my 10g tank to make a synthetic salt mix, but every
LFS I've talked to have said the water is fine. (we're not too far from the GBR here...)
I'm currently only using conditioned tap water with my synthetic salt mix for the water changes on the display tank
I've got the Clown in the
QT and have dosed with Melafix in the hope it will help my clowns *problem*.
As quite a few people do, I've rushed into this and now regret doing so. The book I read and based my startup on was from 2000 but I know know how wrong most of it was. If only I'd found TR before getting the tank wet :S
Tank parameters:
PH 8.0
Temp. 27C (80F)
Ammonia 5.0mg/L
Nitrite 3.3mg/L
Nitrate 110mg/L
SG 1.026
