Up and running...

Ok, so my second deadly-reef-keeping sin was to set up the aquarium with tap-water. Fortunately I happen to live in an area that has excellent tap-water.

The long and short of it is that in a reef-aquarium we need nutrient-poor water. Tap-water is often laden with phosphate, silica, iron and other things that will promote explosive algae growth under the strong lighting typical of a reef tank. My tap-water measures ~ .25 ppm phosphate - very low. I ran Kent phosphate sponge for a day and that was that!

I added roughly 7-Lbs. of live rock, 6 blue-legged hermit crabs and a female coral-banded shrimp. I really lucked out on the rock. It was from a hobbyist's  tank, and while it was covered with dying aptasias, it was also covered with nice coralline algae and a few other hitch-hikers.

Thus far I've only ended up with one aptasia, and I'm going to bury it in the sand soon.  

The tanks parameters several weeks after adding minimal livestock are good. Nitrite and Nitrate = 0, phosphate = 0, pH (mid-day) 8.3, KH ~ 180-300ppm, specific gravity ~ 1.021 and temperate is roughly 76.4 F. The tank is lit for about 14-hours a day (we're making up for intensity with duration, to a certain extent).

So the tank is starting to grow some algae and my hitch hikers are flourishing.

Capnella sp. aka Kenya Tree Coral

There are two zooanthids, one next to the soft-coral and another that has migrated from the aptasia's backyard to it's present location next to what I assume is a sponge, let me know if this isn't a sponge por favor:

Sponge? and mobile zooanthid.

Here are a couple of views of the rock formation, more will be added in the coming weeks but I'm not in a hurry. Nothing good happens fast in a reef tank.

Front view.

And now the side view:

Side view.

Well that's all for now, I'll post again when I have something to report...