Cool... I love to see a CAD12g progress...

Your stand should always equal or exceed the base foot print of your tank... Yours will be top heavy and thus
easy to tip over... JMO

I'm seeing so many of these CAD 12g's lately that we may soon need our own forum section .

Looks like a good start!

Thanks for the info. I think I'll be adding a base similar to the top... 18x18" plywood, topped with some 3" matching tiles.

Same here

I'm using the stock lighting for now, but might build an led in the near future.

Are you planning on using a Hydor oscillator?

No, I don't plan on it. I'm sure the Koralia will do fine for adding flow. Speaking of, which should I go with? I ordered both... Nano or 1?

time to get water and sand in huh

Yep! A big box from Marine Depot just arrived.

*Update!*

Well, my box from Marine Depot arrived containing D-D H2Ocean, a Koralia Nano, API test kits, Chemipure, and CaribSea AragAlive Oolite sand.

I went ahead and heated the water in a couple of 5 gallon buckets and mixed in the salt with the powerhead. When ready, I then added a couple of inches of water to the tank in order to add the sand. After that, I slowly added the rest of the water. However, I still managed to get a lot of particulate floating around (see picture). The pump and powerhead is on and circulating.


30 minutes after this picture was taken, the tank cleared!

I built a shelf for the skimmer chamber out of egg crate, placed a bunch of filter floss and an included filter sponge (from Cadlights) on top of the shelf. Illustration below.



Also, according to an Instant Ocean hydrometer, specific gravity is 1.030. A little high, no?

*Bonus*
I ordered rock from SeaLifeInc. But I got an email from Ken and it wont be shipped until Nov. 30(!!!!)
So, question: Is it fine to let my tank sit how it is for a week until the rock comes in?

my hydrometer reads 1.0225 and actual s.g. is 1.0265. there are correction pages all over the web for these things. following this thread. those are neat tanks.

Cool! Nice rock!
Sealife is good stuff from what I have read here on N-R

Smells fresh from the ocean.

By the way, I think you'd be interested to know I've placed an order for a few things:
- 5.375" x 8" Heatsink
- 2 dimmable 1000ma buckpucks
- 2 MPJA 24v @ 6.5A power supplies
- 6 Cree XR-E Q5 White
- 6 Cree XR-E Royal Blue
- Arctic Silver thermal adhesive
- 60W solder gun

I plan on retrofitting this into the cadlights lamp.

That souds really odd Spencers,
Where on the other side did you put the Koraila? I have my MP10 right underneath the surface skimmer and i have never had any issues like the one you describe.

*Edit*
I thought about this some more. I did have a similar issue but not as extreeme as you describe. How much filter floss/pad do you have packed into chamber 1? also how pack down is your chemipure? At first i had my chemipure on the bottum of chamber one, it was packed up against the outflow to chamber 2 and was making the water table in the display rise to a higher level then expected. also maybe point the return locline twords the surface to help "push" the water through the surface skimmer? you could also just turn off the Koralia for a while and see if you still have the issue. good luck and let us know

You need to remove the Sponge... Build a media rack... Use only the floss... I use a big ball of it on top of my
rack with Purigen on one stage and Chemipure Elite on the the other stage...

Well, luckily when I came home, the display wasn't flooded again. However, I still removed the sponge. I already have half a rack going, might as well finish it off! Thanks for the suggestions.
Also added some chaeto to the middle chamber.

Starting to receive pieces for the LED build... But the LEDs aren't labeled. I have no clue how to tell them apart!

Teaser:

Cool... Bags were not labeled?
The cool whites usually have a sticker on the the back with 107 on it... Other than that you will have to fire one up to get the colors... They usually dont have any markings on the star or LED

Yellow dies are white, silver dies are blue.

looken good so far.. although.. that is a hella-sick ammonia reading. lol should make for a healthy cycle

Yep. It's a wicked heavy cycle. I had these small green hair-like algae growing on the glass. Took the mag-clean to them. Also, the sand is starting to get a little brown... Here's todays readings:

pH: 7.8
Ammonia: 8 ppm (maxed out!)
Nitrite: 5 ppm (maxed out!)
Nitrate: 160 ppm (maxed out!)
SG: 1.028
Temp: 78.7 F

Guess I'll keep letting the tank do its thing. These maxed out test results really scare me though. Water change?? I have water ready.