So far, So good

Well, it's been about three weeks since I set up my 125 gal. The ammonia spiked and returned to 0, the trites spiked and returned to 0, but I did not see much movement on the trates at all. Why would this be?

Anyway, here is a few pics of the tank in progress
125 gal.
150 lbs of base rock
40 lbs. of live rock ( yeah I know, I will add more slowly)
Remora Pro skimmer
2 Koralia 3s
Wisper 40 HOB filter for mechanical filtration and flow, for now
72" Nova Extreme Pro T5's 468 watts

 

Looks real good!
How do you like your lights...im looking into getting a 90 gal tank and looking for lights. Also where did you get them?

 

you dont need to add more LR because the LR will seed the base rock and you will eventually have 190lbs of LR. and you need to do a massive water change and that should take care of the rates. other people will give better comments on your lights but i dont think that they are strong enough to keep corals, you only have 3.74 watts per gallon

 

you will be able to keep many low light corals i think with that set up

 

T5s don't follow the wpg "rule of thumb". Those T5s will be fine for almost all corals, you'll just need to put ones that need more light close to the top of the tank. I used to have 4 wpg of T5s over my old 55 gallon tank, and I was able to keep SPS and an anemone successfully.

 

I really have had no time to enjoy them yet, I have kept them mostly off during the cycle. I purchased them at www.thatfishplace.com in Lancaster, Pa. I went there looking to buy a more expensive Orbit system and the salesman told me these were a much better buy because of the T5s. He said Orbit may discontinue the other fixture next year that I was looking at.

 

Thats not what I meant by not much movement. What I meant was that the nitrates have not gone up much at all. Why would that be the case?

 

as long as the trates are low and they have been stable for a week or so then your good to SLOWLY start stocking your tank with about one fish every three weeks to let your bio load catch up

 

Good choice of lights. I shop there also. Staff is very knowledgeable. Their frozen food is pretty cheap also. I just love that store. Tank is looking great. The fun part comes when you get to stock it.

 

Not to worry. your nitrates will show up soon enough. with the size of system you have you can add a couple fish, and then wait and add clean up crew next. it will take your sand bed some time to mature so stock slowly if you start now. good luck and loooooookin good.

 

Hopefully I will get to thatfishplace this week and start out with a pair of clowns:^:

 

Great looking tank! I also do all my shopping at that fish place and bought the nova extreme pros last month for my tank, I really like them a lot!

 

There is no reason for a cycle whuch was started with live rock to produce high levels of nitrates during a cycle unless you had excessive levels of organics producing ammonia starting your cycle. That means unless you did something foolish like jump start your cycle with a dead shrimp or bought live rock with a lot of dieing life forms on or in it. jhnrb is a smart and reef experienced man and he is right on target when he says go slow that things take times to mature. New biological systems should not be expected to go from zero to a hundred miles per hour in two seconds flat, or even in weeks or months they mature slowly or crash easily. Start slow and grow slow and you will enjoy reefing with much fewer hassles than those trying to speed up every process and rush to overstock their fragile systems as quickly as they can convince someone to agree with them that their tank is ready.

 

Any update?