my 2.5g journal, advice appreciated :)

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Hi all,

I've been into FW planted tanks for a long time and now I decided to
start my own 2.5g pico tank. I am a student at the U and live in
student housing, so a pico keeps me within the rules and also since the
initial investment isnt too great (I think cost/gallon is more but its
a few years till I can own a 300g anyway :) ), a pico wouldnt hurt my
already piddly student-type financial situation :).

 I hope to use this thread to document its progress and to learn
from the gurus here. I would greatly appreciate all the help and
guidance I receive along the way.

My initial plans for the pico was something like this:

However, I realized with such a large self-contained fuge area as
indicated, I would be out of real estate. Moreover, the piece of
acrylic I found was too small to make that anyway :D 

So I cut down on the size of the fuge area and I couldnt fit the 10W
screw in bulb without destroying my already crappy diy hood, so I just
went with the 2 13W lamps. I put together a remote enclosed ballast
box, so I could keep excess heat away from inside the hood, and since
it is remote, I can keep it far away from the hood itself, moreover, a
ballast box allowed me to run one grounding wire to the box.

SUMMARY OF THE TANK:

Yesterday, I bought a pound and a half of live sand, 4 pounds of live
rock and some rubble and set my tank up. As of today, some of the
tested parameters are:

1) Specific gravity : 1.022-1.023

2) pH: 8.13

3) Temperature: ART, ~79F

and here is a FTS:

As you can see, the main display area overflows into the fuge area,
which has just some rubble and coral skeletons as of now, I plan to add
some cheato in there. The water from the fuge area is returned to the
display area by a AC mini, the AC mini only contains a polyfilter pad.
That stuff rocks, it cleared the haziness of the water within minutes.
I initially planned on a heater, but I think I will monitor the tanks
temperature first, I dont think it will get too cold anyway.

LIGHTS:

The lights are:

1) 1 13w Hellolights 10,000k

2) 1 13w Helios 50-50 (12,000k/7,100k)

in a DIY wooden hood with a polished aluminium reflector. Both lights
are on from 7am to 8pm. Here is a shot of the inside of the hood with
the lights on:

Since the lights are mounted at the end, the live rock pile is well
light, and diffuse reflected light gets into the fuge area and the area
beneath the powerhead. Here is a closeup of the live rock pile:

CIRCULATION:

Water circulation is through a rio 50 powerhead, this comes on an hour
before lights on and go off an hour after lights off. Remaining
circulation is through the AC mini, I've observed the outflow water to
gently tumble around the rock pile. As far as I can tell, there are two
low flow areas in the tank, one is at the rear right of the rock pile
(sort off where the acrylic meets the glass behind the rocks) and the
second is the area below the powerhead.

Here is a shot of the side of the tank:

and here is a shot from the top of the tank:

Here is a shot of the tank without any post processing for levels etc:

PLANS FOR THE TANK:

I plan to stock the tank with 2 blue damsels, 2 chromis, 2 powder blue
tangs and 1 moray eel (obligatory and irritating newbie joke). Ok, I
want to mainly keep softies, I love zooanthids. The sand has a bunch of
drag-racing critters, I also found a small seastar crawling about.

Now for some questions, once again, I would greatly appreciate any help, advice and opinions:

1) Do the two low flow areas mentioned above pose a problem?

2) Is my live sand bed enough, do I need to double what I already have?

3) What do you think about my live rock scape, I placed it that way so
I could get at least two shelves for placing zooanthids on.

4) With the lights that I have, will I be able to keep SPS? :) 

5) Since the light in the fuge is not direct, but reflected, I am
planning on adding either a 11" T5 from commodityaxis or a 18w PC lamp.
Is this necessary, or would it be overkill (not!)?

6) I only have polyfilter in the AC mini. The idea behind this
configuration of overflow and AC mini was so I could keep chemical
stuff in the AC mini. Do I need anything else, like carbon, phosban etc?

7) Do i need to raise the SG to1.024-1.026 if I were to keep corals and inverts only (someone said I should)?

8) I think I will need more rubble in the fuge area, right now its
filled with 1" sized pieces and there is a pile about an inch thick, I
plan on filling at least half the fuge area with rubble, then place a
plastic mesh and keep cheato in the top half. Does this sound ok?

9) My plans for the next few days are to test the water for ammonia,
nitrites and nitrates and check for a cycle (the rock is fully cured
and transit time was about 3 hours from LFS tank to my tank).

I plan to do a water change at the end of the 2nd week, do these sound right?

Once again thanks in advance for any help and advice. 

A plug in for the great folks at Bird World and Pet Village, Bountiful.
They were very helpful  and even gave me live sand from their own
tanks when they didnt have any specifically for selling.