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It will get used to you. Don't worry. It might have been on a different time schedule and thus was in sleep-mode when you expected it to be out swimming.

I love my Durso Standpipes. My new tank has 5 of them.

I also saw the coris wrasse out yesterday and picking at rocks and glass, which makes me feel better. He's shy, and doesn't like a lot of movement around the tank, so I'm going to watch him from a distance for now, or stay very still.

We clean the sponges every couple of days for exactly those reasons. Even so, after 2 days or so, there is a notable difference in flow velocity (okay, notable to us, as we are always looking at the tank--we don't watch much TV). We tried homemade durso fittings and couldn't get them adjusted to quiet them enough, so we went back to the foam sleeves. When we had just the one overflow and we were pushing too much water through one box, the noise was awful, not soothing at all. Two boxes, 4 drain lines, 4 sleeves turned out to be perfect. Thanks for reading!

What I would suggest is buying two more sponges. That way you can have a new clean set always at the ready, and can swap them out quickly when the dirty ones are needing to be pulled.

melev - Today 01:23 AM

What an entry - so many things to read about. It looks like you've got a good handle on the situation.

Be sure to clean those sponges from time to time (bi-weekly would be my choice) to keep them from becoming nitrate sinks.

Plus one on the sponges years ago i learned that trick was going crazy trying to rid my tank of the nitrates.My LFS had told me dont clean those with your style filter just change the felt once a week.'old school drip filter'.well after six months of overfeeding lol i got new sponges in 2 days my corals actually looked like they did when i bought them

What an entry - so many things to read about. It looks like you've got a good handle on the situation.

Be sure to clean those sponges from time to time (bi-weekly would be my choice) to keep them from becoming nitrate sinks.

There is nothing better then seeing just a little bit of life in what can otherwise seem like a sterile tank. Its a sign of good things to come...

8 Feb 2011, 1812 hrs
Ammonia--0.25ppm
Nitrite--NO2--.25ppm
Nitrate--NO3-- 10 ppm

Still cycling.

Tap Water, and a limestone aquifer. We had done okay with the 20 gallon tank on tap water, using GFO to keep phosphates down, but on the larger scale of the 125, it is more economical and entails less FAF to use an RO/DI, so that will be the next major purchase. That will take care of the high dKH. We dosed kalkwasser on the 20 gal as well, and while we still had a high dKH, it wasn't as high as the fresh SW we have mixed recently.
Instant Ocean and Reef Crystals are both good salts IMHO, but I favor the make-up of Kent salt and also got an excellent sale price at PetSolutions.com, at $41.99 per 200 gallon box.

I base my choice partially on this article : http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/pla...Primary-El.htm ,
as well as several threads on Reef Central concerning the consistency of salt mixes, in the Reef Chemistry forum.
Thank you for reading too--composing my answer caused me to re-read the above articles and threads, never a bad thing.

Why not use Reef Crystals by Instant Ocean? Also, why on earth is your alk so high?

Thank you. This is really the boring part, but it all has to be done, and it's much harder when there's livestock in the tank. The pictures make it a little more interesting, but there's no pretty or dazzling corals, or even much in the way of coralline YET. I think this what drives a lot of reef keepers--anticipation of new life.

glad to hear things are going smoothly

I'm wondering how well epoxy sticks to the stock tanks? I was thinking I could coat plywood baffles with fiberglass cloth and epoxy, then epoxy them in place. But acrylic baffles with flanges glued or bent into the edges, then bolted with nylon bolts should work too.

I would say use more than one tank, set the height of the skimmer one using a standpipe at the desired water height that drains to the return/ refugium trough.

I have a couple of pictures in my sump presentation that addresses baffles in a trough like this one. I'll have to try to extract a couple for you. One way is to make an eggcrate container to put macro algae in, floating it in the big sump yet keeping the plants where they belong. Another way was to create an acrylic system that spans the vat, housing the skimmer and other gear, and draining into the main sump.

Another person I know put a baffle using cutting board material (HDPE) and silicone, but that stuff also tries to float. You'd almost need a cross brace of something to keep it down and locked in. Or screwed/bolted through the sides using plastic nuts and bolts.

Thank you! Haven't figured out baffles yet, but I'm wondering if something could be done with expanding foam. Not sure how to overcome the floatation issue with that, so that's still just a thought process. We're both a little claustrophobic, so the idea of having to poke around under the tank in cramped space just didn't appeal, plus we have all this room in the basement that doesn't get used for anything else.
The other reason we put the sump in the basement: 4 very curious cats, and 3 uncoordinated Labrador Retrievers. No point in giving them a swimming pool under the tank...

Nice! I looked at the first couple photo's and wondered "where the heck is his sump?" Very nice clean looking install. Have you found a good way to add baffles to the stock tanks? I'm planning to use a shallow 50 gal stock tank for my 150's sump. If not I may have my return pump sitting in a bucket with slots in it to set the water level for the rest of the sump.

You can have your skimmer's output pour into the Tidy Cat Bubble Tower as well.

Nice to see you using your Photo Gallery section. Here's a link to it for others: http://www.reefaddicts.com/album.php?albumid=119

More pics:
The plumbing below deck,

In my photo albums at my profile, I've given more in-depth descriptions of the photos, and there are a few more photos there as well. Thanks for looking!