Curing the Rock

3/10/04
The smell is way better, and I’m much better at getting the salt level to stay more or less stable. I have a new overflow box coming, that will hopefully reduce the noise (actually, it already arrived, but I didn’t notice you had to order the hose separately, so I had to return to the web site and order that....sometimes doing things in person would be way easier). The rocks look like things may be growing on it, but it is at that stage where you look hard and ask yourself, “was that there yesterday?” and you think it wasn’t, but you aren’t sure. Nothing amazing has happened yet, in other words. More rock is due tomorrow, which will probably reintroduce the smell problem, make the ammonia climb again, etc. But it turns out 90 lbs of rock was not enough, so I ordered 22 lbs more. On the whole it is running smoothly and I no longer feel like it is a disaster waiting to happen. The ammonia is dropping, nitrite is climbing, as expected. Diatom algae has appeared as a brown coating on the glass, which is entirely normal at this stage.