[ihrtne]

I'd probably be worried about contaminants from the air getting into the rain - the air quality is not the best and also it rains so rarely that collecting rainwater in the first place is a big of a struggle. Hopefully mixing in the salt will be enough.

[odin]

I hadn't thought of that, the rain water here is so clean and rains near enough everyday. The UK is always wet lol.


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[opae ula related]

Nothing against Bejing. Don't get rain water from that city or similar for the readers from there.

[caine]

DI will be fine. My RO comes in at about 3ppm minerals right now. I don't have any buffering agents at all and rely only on the reef salt mix. I am using Aquavitro Salinity. I guarantee you'll do just fine with the DI.

[ihrtne]

Quick update!

Retrieved all of the supplies and started setting up my tank. I went for a substrate that was mostly sand, with a layer of crushed coral and shells sprinkled on top. My "tank" is a 2.5 gallon glass jar. Also I found a few lava-looking stones from around my neighborhood, boiled them, and then rinsed them with DI water.


This is the tank without the water in it. Not pictured: the mess I made in my room. Sand and crushed shell bits got everywhere.



This is the tank with the water added. It's sitting near a moderately lit window for now but I intend to set up LED lights so I can move it further into my room. I didn't fill it up all the way because I intend to seed my water with water from a developed tank. Now to wait for the water to cycle!

[opae ula related]

Looking good! How's the temperature of the dorm?

[ihrtne]

My roommate hails from a warm humid state so our room is usually a pleasant 80-ish degrees because the heater is always on.

[opae ula related]

Cool. No need for a aquarium heater.

[odin]

That looks great man! You have all your bases covered with PH (crushed coral) etc, the shrimp are going to love it. Be sure to keep updating your thread with photos as your tank matures, thanks for the share!

[ihrtne]

Quick update! (also really strange phenomena - I have no idea what happened)

So it's been about a while since I started cycling. Around a few days ago, I noticed what looked like small green spots growing on the fake plants, so I figured I could add a few snails and see what happened. Needless to say, the snails are absolutely adorable and they took to the tank very well. They spent their day scooting around my aquarium - a few times I thought they were dead because they were motionless (apparently these are really hardy snails so I briefly lamented my inability to keep nearly invincible snails alive), but it turned out they just like to sit in their shells for long periods of time. Overall, I think my tank is progressing along nicely.

One strange thing happened recently, however. A day or so ago my tank started clouding up a bit, which worried me a little but I figured it was a mixture of me turning the tank and stirring up sediment, and apparently bacterial blooms that can occur in new tanks while they're still cycling.

To illustrate the strange thing that happened, here are two images of the tank taken 20 minutes apart. I'm thinking maybe I should change the water and remove that strange cloudy layer of... bacteria? Sediment? Sentient organisms? All the cloudiness sort of just coalesced into one layer, and it's been slowly dissipating completely and leaving my tank clear once more. I am absolutely flabbergasted.




Aside from that, here are some pictures of my really cute snails. Apologies for the bad phone camera quality.

Forbidden snail romance?

One very cute little snoot.