ok , stopped adding salt that night .
It was late and was not the right way to do it .
So the next day i turned off the pumps and removed 1 gal at a time and mixed in about 2 cups of salt mix , then added that to the tank . Kept doing this until SG came up .
I let that circulate for an hour or so , then added my rinsed sand.
which apparently could have been rinsed more .
looks like in the end all i added to my tank was around 30lbs . I am happy with the look , its just under an inch thick .
Does anyone see a problem with a sandbed that thin ?
my next concern was my .5 micron first stage sediment filter of my RODI .
My pressure gauge on my maxcap new read about 62 psi . now after passing around 400 gallons through it was down to about 57 and the fist stage looked like this
so i panicked and removed it and added a 1 micron that i picked up as some spares.
So i took it too the kitchen sink to investigate , and It is only just the outside layer . literally just 1 millimeter in and its pure white filter again .. o well
How much pressure drop is common before you decide to change out your filters ?
Will after the dust settled , and i cleaned the clay mud out of the neck of my skimmer the tank looks like this .. no light on
Then finally came the start of my cycle
some for me , 1 for tank lol