Day 12 update:
Still buffering PH, but it has been much better. Algae is starting to bloom, and more importantly the sandbed is starting to bubble, so it is doing its job. I will test parameters again this evening. I am getting microbubbles, but I have the white and black sponges in to catch bits as I go through the cycle, so hopefully they will go away when I can remove the sponges. A few pictures have been updated on
my site. I am not rally cleaning the glass right now since I am in and out of the tank a fair bit, so the pics are not the greatest.
Thanks for all of the kind comments.
Reefmack: That 70 was a horrible tank, but turned out really well. I upgraded it to a 140 with 2 400W MH, ETSS 600 skimmer and sump, calc reactor, drop in chiller, ATO, the works and ran it for a considerable amount of time, but then the center brace disconnected on one side, the glass was bowing quite a bit, and we recently had our first child, so instead of finding a replacement tank and working out a migration there, it was taken down. Oddly enough, I cannot find the folder with the livestock in that tank, which is sad because we took a lot of pics over the time it was up. We built the stand ourselves and have a few pics of that. Some day I will find the others and add a page for that tank as well.