Thanks for the info. This is my first time doing the "high-tech" thing. My other planted setups are generally only lights, no co2 or ferts with the exeception of a small tank I tried growing a monte carpet in.Really bad ass build! You did a great job cleaning the tank up and your equipment is top notch. I can see your building this FW setup like youd build a reef!
One thing I will caution is that you don't have a lot of plant mass, be careful starting right off with c02 injection, daily fert dosing, and high lighting. I have found that unless you already have something like 50% plant density, algae will just explode with all that plant growth equipment and not enough plants to soak it up. Getting the balance of light fert and c02 can be just as intricate and fragile as getting your water stable in a reef, I actually found it more difficult when I tried both setups at once, ended up shutting down the high-tech planted tank and keeping the reef going. Your sterilizer is something I didn't have that might be a big help in that regard.
Keep updating! Coming along very nicely
I'm hoping I don't run into any significant algae problems, but will deal with it if I do. I've been running Phosguard since I added the sand to pull all the silicates and hopefully help keep diatoms at bay. I should probably pull it out now that I'm dosing ferts though.
Time will tell! I'm still trying to get this cerges reactor dialed in. I'm getting a full point drop in PH when running the co2, but it's not dissoving the bubbles well so I've got a nice sprite effect going. I need to mess around with the plumbing of it and swap my ball valve onto the feed line of the reactor instead of the return. Hopefully this solves my problem.