A Reef!

I am convinced that my cycle is done. Now the battle is to get my Nitrates down to a much more acceptable level. For the last several tests the Nitrates have been testing as 50 (verified by the LFS). This is too high so the battle is on. I read at About.com for saltwater aquaria that a rapid water change program can rapidly lower Nitrates. Well I don't currently have the capability to mix a large volume of saltwater at once (or the funds to go buy it premixed) so I will do this over the course of a week.

The first water change (and maintenance day) was yesterday and based on testing my Nitrates are down by nearly half. Today's test read 20 (well literally somewhere between 20 and 50 but I am going low since its not as dark as it normally is). So this may actually work. My next water change should drop them to 10 then to 5 by midweek.

My Ammonia and Nitrate are also running steady on so I don't think I have enough of a bioload to kick the bacteria upward from where I have it. Even with feeding the tank. So the current plan is (presuming Nitrates follow plan) to get my shrimp, some scarlet and blue leg hermits and at least one more emerald crab in place with 5 Turbo snails to help with algae. That will bring my stock list to:

1 Cleaner Shrimp
1 Fire Shrimp
4 Peppermint Shrimp
2 Emerald Crabs
9 Hermit crabs (non specific)
2 Scarlet Hermits (for color)
2 Blue Leg Hermits (for color)
5 Nassarius snails
5 Astra Snails
5 Turbo Snails

Then I'll let this run for a couple of weeks to see how the parameters go. I'm anticipating that by the end of September I'll be ready to begin the slow introduction of fish into the tank.

Hopefully by early fall the tank stocking will be complete and I can sit back and just veg out even more than I do now watching my mini Reef (and plan for the bigger one to come).