Got room for another Newbie???
Greeting to all from Sunny Southwest Florida. I feel lucky to have found this site prior to my first SW setup. There was a poster, Logical, on here who only posted to this thread once. Residing in Florida, he claimed to be able to set-up his 35 gal Hex tank in 72 hours using only Ocean water and live sand.
Exerpt from His thread:
filled the tank 60% fresh ocean salt water $0.50 a gallon its cheep enough we don’t mix salt here or I can drive 10 miles to the beach and get it free.
Added 20 LB live sand (no bed rock or crushed rock) I was told not necessary.
added 20 Lb live rock and toped off the tank with water had to add 3 gallons of bottle water to get the salinity down to 1.023.
Ran the filter for 12 hours before I added 4 Damsels to start my tank cycling, by the way the water was mostly clear in 4 hours and very clear in 24 hours. Tested water before Damsel was added. Test results PH 8.0 Nitrites 0 Nitrates 0 Ammonia
He only posted once and was never heard from again. I'm thinking maybe nitrates got him, lol.
I'm not looking for a shortcut here; but, I love the idea of saving time using a natural resource I obvoulsy have in ready supply.
Would anyone care to support/debunk this method?