What if were this easy???

[haff]

Greeting to all from Sunny Southwest Florida. I feel lucky to have found this site prior to my first SW setup. There was a member on here who only posted 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 the 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?

 

[sinder255248]

reply

I would think that mixing RO water yourself would be better as you know whats in the water, but if collecting it is your prefered way, make sure you do it off-shore. If you want to speed things along slightly you could try using a product called Cycle (by hagen) which contains the bacteria you are trying to create during the cycle.