Kaizen Media Blog

The day after we added our live rock the tank was ready for the livestock. An important thing to note is that we added our superbac (live bacteria) the night before we added the livestock. The bacteria is added to help the nitrogen process start faster and it made things move along much faster. We saw the presence of nitrate within 3 days which is very fast. Usually it will take 3-6 weeks for the nitrate to show up in a new tank.

Our first livestock inhabitants: 1 yellow wrasse, 1 damselfish, 1 serpent starfish and 2 hermit crabs.

The next step to setting up our reef tank was rinsing the coral sand thoroughly, adding it to the tank and mixing up batches of salt water. We used Instant Ocean salt mixed with conditioned tap water and added it pail by pail to the tank.

We decided it was time to fulfill one of our life goals: setting up our first ever salt water reef tank. It all started by setting up the new 38 gallon tank on top of our new aquarium stand.