Jumpstart My Pump!

In my tinkering with the tank last night, I decided to turn off the main return pump, which is a Sequence 1/8 HP, for a few minutes. To my dismay, when I went to turn it back on, all it did was make a loud, scary humming noise, not turning at all. I tried turning it off and then back on several times, but nothing changed. I also tried turning the motor to a few different positions, in case it had seized or was in a bad starting position magnetically. None of it made any difference.

Then I noticed that there was a screw in the middle of the fan at the back of the motor. I hooked up my drill to a flathead bit and was able to spin the pump enough to open the check valve. So I decided to dry jump starting the pump by spinning it with the drill while the power was on. It worked! It started right up and has been running all night.

Added Some Light

First Light on SpringsReef

This is with the VHO lights only. No halides. I want the coralline algae to survive as much as possible so I’m giving it an hour of light, twice a day.

Nitrite

NO₂ still at .25 ppm.

Started VHO lighting for a few hours/day and place heaters to keep the temp steady at 80°F.

Yesterday, the evaporation was 1.5 gallons/24hours.

Nitrite

NO₂ – .25 ppm

First cycling test.

Nov. 20th 2009, 11pm—Pumps On

Springs Reef Aquarium — Minutes Old

The Fiji rock is in and the pump and skimmer are on. Now for cycling…

Salt Time!

Salt Time!

Ordered a bunch of live rock!

I was just going to buy a small box of live rock to seed the base rock that I have already, but I found a super deal that I couldn’t resist:

http://liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=393+1183&pcatid=1183

So I got a 90 pound box. It ends up to like $4/lb shipped, and it’s supposedly big pieces. So yay fun!

Tank filling. Should be full at 11pm Tuesday night.

Onward!

My goal is to be aquascaping the tank on Wednesday night. That means that I need to get the filter running by tonight in order to have enough water by then. Air Water Ice sent me a useless way of connecting to the supply, and there’s going to be another trip to Lowe’s in my future… more on that later.

The tank is still full of tap water right now. I’m going to drain it and clean it out once more before setting the filter.

New RODI Filter

In other news, I ordered a new Air Water Ice Typhoon III! Dade county water seems to have some phosphate issues, so I decided to get a badass RODI filter. In general, I lean toward trying to make a tank that can process nutrients rather than try to keep them out. Keeping nutrients out of a tank is just a loosing battle. But in this case, so is fighting against bad water, I think.