Keeping everything stable the natural way

Also, I've been told that after the nitrate spike it's normal for the brown sand-like algae to be on the sand... wonder how long will it keep reappearing? and what is the thready white algae on the glass? pics added, not the best qt and before the cleaning...

 

Looks like a diatom bloom to me. Just means your tank is maturing and will go away soon if you keep up on maintenance.

 

In that case yei!?

 

If you are not already aware, you might want to make sure you kill off aiptasia in your tank before it gets out of control. Those things spread like wildfire. Some Aiptasia-X is what I use. http://www.marinedepot.com/Red_Sea_...l_Eliminators-Red_Sea-RS7911-FIADAFLC-vi.html

 

The JBJ ATO is almost fail safe, you can have two floats inside the back chambers. If your LOW water float fails then the HIGH WATER float kicks in and stops the pump.

I ran a system like this for almost 8 months in my tank without any overflow.

 

cool thanks! what happened after 8 mos, or are you still using it?

 

One tip with the JBJ ATO, Turn ONE float switch UPSIDE DOWN. I forgot what Setting I used (A,B).

 

I went with Full Apex w/Breakout Box, I now have 5 floats in my BioCube

 

I've seen some posts that Cal around 500 is ok, but I guess it doesn't fall in the "safe" range. I'll start by checking it regularly and will reach out to Steve if I can't get it to stabilize. I'm sure he's a "cool" geek

 

that he is, he's also a param genius. alert him to this thread

if not dosing 500, is rather unreasonable to obtain