[DACJ]

Yay! I just did my first water test, day 6 , it was taken 1.5 hr after the floursent light went off, 30 min after the actinic light went off (actinic stays on an hour after flourscent light for me), the test result seems to be perfect,

PH 8.4
NH3/4 0 ppm
NO2 0 ppm
NO3 0 ppm

I am gonna do another test tomorrow 1 hour after the flourscent light.

According to the chart I have, I should also measure the Alkalinity, Calcium, Magnesium, Strontium, Iron, Iodine, Phosphate, Silicate.....but when I asked my LFS for a test kit, he gave me " API salt water test master kit" and said that is all I need...does that mean I don't really need to worry about all that mentioned in the chart? like as long as I keep that 4 things under control, rest will be fine? or did he mean that at this point it doesn't matter, I just need to test it after I get the corals and fish?

BTW, the Diatom, or hair algae...I can't tell which is which, but anyways...brown-looking algae is starting to take over my precious white sand...it looked only a little before I left home for work, came home from work it still look okay, 1 hour after all the light went off, I looked again, it's like massive army just marched in the tank =.=" (maybe I just miss-looked when I came home) if I didn't miss-look, it's as it they were alive and all came out from their hide out in the night..... I am thinking maybe I will drop by the LFS on thursday to get my inverts instead of saturday, just incase if the diatom outgrows the tank.....

I've seen on other threads where some people's skimmer actually gets some real nasty stuff....would I be needing it for a 29g sized tank? LFS said water change bi-weekly will be good enough, a skimmer so small like CPR SR3 isn't gonna really do much in BC29...