DAY SIX

August 30, 2003

Well, its day six of the project and its been about 32 hours since I put on the third and last coat of cement mix...I think the last coat has dried well enough to fill up the tank so I filled her up and added enough Aquarium salt to bring the salinity up to 1.020 this should be enough to cure the cement well and set in the color! I just checked the PH and it is running 9.0. I knew the PH would be high because of the Cement and the water right from my faucet is 9.0.

I will let the saltwater stay in the tank for two or three days and then start changing water.. I will empty the tank completely and refill with fresh water, I will do this probably about five times and keep a watch on the PH and other water parameters.. I really feel that I will be ready for the first test fish in a week or less, we will see! I won't be adding any bottom substrate until the curing process is complete, at that time I will be adding pool filter sand and a few real rocks that pretty close in color to the background..

By the way, the Bio tower is working like a charm, I couldn't see wasting that corner filter, had to make it useful..

Here is the tank as it was being filled! Note the twenty gallon sump underneath...

Filling!

A picture looking up, note the different shades of color coming from the Aquatinic bulb combined with an Actinic 03 blue bulb. The main lights are not even on, they consist of four 55 watt compact fluorescent lights, these were used on my saltwater Coral Reef . For the deep water effect, I probably won't even use the main lights!

Neat Colors!

A shot at the left side of the tank with water!

Left Side!

Shot of the right side! Note the piece I built to cover the corner overflow, it all worked nice!

Right Side!

Well, thats about it for a couple of days until the salt cure is finished.. I will update again in two or three days...

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