Fish tank update

It's been almost a month after the tank was set up. The rocks and sand (which we bought from Fay) are in place for now (hopefully no more moving them around to suit personal taste of Hannah or/ and I :P ). Pumps and pre-filer are in as well. Had a scare the other day. I used a cheap made-in-china aluminium kitchen scoop as a mean to capture debris when the water coming down the pre-filter. However, the scoop started leaking as what we speculated - some sort of galvanised metal into the water. It killed almost all the small brittle stars which were hitch-hikers from the live rocks. Did a quick water change, and things are slowly going back to normal. Now the tank is going through it's normal cycling process - with a high nitriate (25ppm) and phosphate (0.5ppm) level. Hopefully these levels will go down soon. The brittle starts are not the only hitch-hickers from the rocks and sand. There are some zoanthids, mushrooms, sponges, and encrusting corals. Hannah even found/ rescued a piece of hard coral (Pavona vernosa) in the sand! At the moment, all the corals looks brownish. I hope they should colored up, and regain their original color once the water parameters are in order. Today, we put in activated carbon to absorb any additional metal in the water. Now, we are just waiting for the rain to pass so that we can go out and collect some natural sea water (NSW) to do a water change.

Pavona vernosa which Hannah rescued

Pink centered zoanthids

Full tank shot

Hairy mushroom and green mushroom