110 Progressing!

Again, thanks to all here who have helped the wife and I in getting back into the marine aquarium hobby. According to my previous experience, things are progressing rather rapidly in our new tank, and we couldn't be happier so far. I know it's still very early in the game, but I think all is well at this point. Any further advice will be greatly appreciated. The plans for this tank are a few fish, anemones, and corals, but not an abundance of any. We have spent lots of hours re-aquainting ourselves with this hobby, and are trying to do everything right, without getting too carried away with too much "voo-doo". The water is stabilized at 77.4 to 78.6 F, and Nitrites/Ammonia have been un-detectable for the last week and a half. The Chaeto in the sump, and the Caleurpa in the tank are doing very well, and staying nice and green (good, yes?) We cycled this (110 gal) with about 45 lbs live rock, a dozen damsels, the macro algaes, and 8 large turbo snails. As of today there are no traces of Nitrates or Phosphates. I did add a Nitrate coil about a week ago, so we'll see if it makes any difference in the future. Today I added a make-up water dripper with Kalk, so I'm going to be learning more about that too. Our only problem has been getting the PH up (been around 7.9 to 8.0), and we're hoping that the Kalk will help with that. There are lots of life popping up every day, and that is always exciting. There's some mushrooms, tube worms, bristle worms, and some unidentified encrusting sponges that already seem to be proliferating. A lot of red and purple coralines are also starting to cover areas of the rock. We had a bacterial bloom, and a lot of brown diatoms that took over early on, but they are all completely gone as of now. There is some bright green micro algae showing up, but not much to speak of. Sorry for the crappy photography, but this is the aquarium today. If you compare it to the pic we posted a month ago, there's a huge difference! Thanks again to everyone here for your help!

 

Nice job and it seems like things are coming along rather well thus far!
As for your pH being to low, dosing with Kalkwasser will definitely help as kal creates a rise in alkalinity(as well as calcium). This rise in alkalinity will help to increase your pH as well! Since kalk has a pH of nearly 12, you should be able to get that up! You may have too much CO2 in your water...as a result, you got it, a low pH! This can be cause from too much CO2 in the room housing your fish tank(respiration from pets and humans as well as gas appliances, or little air exchange to the outside can also contribute to too much CO2. Your caulerpa and Chaeto should help, however, with photosynthesis and having a refugium with a reverse daylight lighting scheme will alleviate a drop in (DO)Dissolved oxygen and an increase in CO2 at night due to your main lights being off. Dosing your kalk at night will only help as well. Just be careful when dosing kalk so that your calcium level doesn't become too high, or your alkalinity level can become depleted!

 

Thanks for that! I have no way to check calcium, so I guess I'll be shopping again this weekend! Does it ever end??? (I already know that answer). Suggestions for a good Alk and calcium test? The only related test we have is an Aquarium Pharmaceuticals liquid KH test, and it was 23 as of yesterday. I'm not sure of the accuracy of those though. Advice?
I might also add that I'm really not extremely happy with all the plumbing and crap in the tank, but for this one I'll learn to live with it. I wish we'd found a drilled tank so we could have everything external, but oh well.
Also, the fuge light have been on 24/7 per advice from our LFS. There's so many opinions about that we are just plain confused. The fuge is a "hang-on" type, so at night the light spills over into the main tank, so it never gets totally dark. I'm open to suggestions on that. Yes, I know we just need to get a sump in the cabinet and be done, but that probably won't happen for a while.

 

Is that a plate coral on the upper left hand side of the picture or a skeleton of one? They have been known to move. Mine moved about 3 inches on the sand bed.

 

That's just a skeleton. All of the coral skeletons in there have been in storage for over 17 years. That one, especially, looks very nice with some coraline growth.