Turbosek

The family and I took a drive down to Seattle yesterday...she went shopping for the kids, and I took Serene, my 8 year old daughter, to Salt Water City. I ahd read some good reviews on the web. When I got there, I was impressed with their coral selection. They only do saltwater, which is noce as well.

One cool thing, was they have a section where you can buy from $10, $20, $30, $40, and $50 frags tanks. This is a good way for beginners to try differnet corals w/o breaking the bank.

They also had some of the most expensive corals I have ever seen. One was like 4" diameter and it was $1500!

Another interesting thisng about this store, was the complete lack of san or substrate. Yes, they preach bare bottom. when I asked him about this, he of course said there are always opossing opnnions. In his 15 years of business, he feels that unless you know how to take care of s DSB, you should not have one. He said there are too many other ways to lower nitrates. He agreed that you loose the ability to keep natural reef sand sifters and such, but he also feels more people are interested in seeing corals and fish...he has coral display tanks rather than reef tanks:-)

I also noticed he was using all 20,000K bulbs. He said "blue sells and we are here to sell product". He was also very helpful and spent 2 hours giving me advice. The best advice he gave me was to send my return line outside up the back and down into the tank, and use my 2nd hole in the overflow for a back up drain in case the main drain gets clogged. He said to just make a standard stand pipe that is just below the top of the tank, so it will drain if the water gets that high for some reason.

So, I am planing on using a DSB of 6". I will put 3" of dry sand down, throw in a shrimps until the amonia cycles, then add my base and live rock and another 3" of live sand, and lights on 6 hours/day, for the rest of the cycle, doing plenty of water changes to keep the nitrite levels low until they are gone. I know I will have a horrid algae bloom, but that is part of establishing a tank right? From my experieince, the algae will eventually go away and it will be crystal clear:-)

What are the top 3 things I should do with a DSB to make sure it stays healthy?