Finally made some progress.



The photo above was taken one day after I added 30 pounds (2 fifteen pound bags) of crushed coral. The water is still somewhat cloudy but I anticipate that it will clear in a few more days.

I couldn’t find any 40 pound bags at any local pet shops but they did carry smaller bags. The stores only carried one bag so I had to visit a couple of stores, which I have been doing a lot of anyway.

No change in the ph level after adding the crushed coral. It has been holding steady at around 7 (before and after adding the coral). I seem to recall a few aquarium owners reporting spikes in ph after adding crushed coral but I am definitely not seeing that.

The photos below show the grow bed with 100 - 3” diameter net pots filled with hydroton. I cut the foam into 2’ pieces so they would be easier to handle. On three of the foam pieces the pots are approximately 8” apart. On the foam piece along the wall I decided to put the pots closer together. I was thinking that since it is somewhat hard to reach this area, I will use it for kind of a nursery. I can also space the plants out and just leave a few of the pots empty, if I need the space for adult plants. I see now that I should not have put the grow bed up against the wall, as it is hard to reach some of the net pots. At least a couple of feet in between would have been nice. Oh well.





Yesterday I planted seeds in all of the net pots on one of the foam pieces (the one nearest in the photo above). All of the seeds from one variety (Black Seeded Simpson) have sprouted already (24 hours). However, none of the seeds from the blended salad mix seed pack have sprouted yet. I planted one seed of the Black Seeded Simpson in half of the net pots and two seeds from the salad mix into the other half of the pots.

I found a local source (maybe 1 hour round trip) for yellow perch. Right now they are 95 cents each for 4-6 inch feed trained fingerlings. They said they would sell me as many or as few as I wanted. As this is the first year they are stocking the perch, I may have to find another source in the future.

Hopefully by this weekend, at the latest, I will be able to get some fish. I was thinking I would start with 25. In the meantime, I need to figure out a good way to transport the fish, and then the best way to go about introducing the fish into the tank.

That’s all for now.

Thanks.