Red Sea maxE 170 build and questions

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The cycle begins!
 

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I’ve been adding Brightwell aquatics microbacter 7 daily since beginning the cycle. Last night I added 90 drops of Dr Tim’s ammonium chloride, which should have brought the level up to 1ppm per the math on their bottle. Went to bed with 0 ammonia reading. This morning the ammonia badge was dirty yellow, but wasn’t at the alert level, so less than .05 ppm. Tonight, 24 hours later, the badge is back to yellow. I’m checking .05 ppm nitrite and 2.5ppm nitrate. So we’re moving right along! Might add ammonia again tonight.
 
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I knew coming into this the pros and cons of a sand bed, and decided to go with sand for aesthetics and for certain livestock, like the goby/pistol shrimp pair.

Jake Adam’s has since convinced me otherwise. I plan on having this tank for 2-3 years before upgrading to something larger. Tomorrow I’ll be removing the sand and re scaping the rock.
 
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So I ended up getting food poisoning, so didn’t get it don’t the next day. Got it done today though, and I’m quite happy I did it.
 

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@gulf coast reefer i have a question.
I’m setting up a gravity ATO with a float valve. So far I've just been adding RODI water to the return section of the sump.

I have a water line plumbed to under the tank, so the RODI just drips into the sump. Strangely, this changes the water level in the overflow area of the display, not the water level of the sump. Every time, without fail, ill turn the water line on and walk away. when i come back 20 minutes later, the water level hasn't changed in the return section but is near the emergency overflow in the display. Then I have to play with the diaphram valve or return pump flow to get it evened out again.

What an i doing wrong? If I were to add an ATO of any kind right now, it would just empty my reservoir and potentially kill every thing in the tank.
 
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1 month update. Things are looking great.
 

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I’ve been waiting for the uglies to hit but haven’t had anything too bad yet. Actually I’ve had almost no algae yet. I got a put excited when I saw some brown popping up on the rocks, but after a few days these don’t look like the diatoms I remember. These are brown, but growning in chains. They blow off the rock like dust with a coral feeder. There’s associated air bubble with large patches. And they seem to disappear every night when the light goes off.
What did I do, skip right to Dino’s?
 

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tank is doing great after 2 months. Just added a pair of Mochavinchi clowns.
B88DCDB1-2564-431E-A24D-1B6CA88CB3FA.jpeg
 

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Finally got ça/alk/mg test kits. Surprisingly alk is low despite weekly ~10% waterchanges. Cal-390 alk-6.3 mg-1400.
I mixed up some randy 2 part, the alk part, but his dosing calc is not available. I added 12ml to the sump and will recheck tonight.
 
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