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The cube


Mickle

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Tank as of 29/11/08:

 

fts-1.jpg

 

HISTORY:

 

Hi guys,

 

I thought I would let my tank be seen outside the confines of the UK!

Little bit of background info on the tank and myself (then I'll let you see some pics!)

I was always interested in fish. I began working at the LFS as a part time job and started keeping trops, then onto pufferfish. I was complety in love with them and my figure of 8 was introduced into a nice brackish environment.

After much research at home and work I decided that I wanted to branch out into marines.

My very first marine tank started off like this, OLD TANK:

 

FTS.jpg

 

And after a large leraning curve and many trials and tribulations end up like this:

 

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And I was hooked.

The reason the tank was taken down was that I moved to university in London, I decided it was not worth the hassle.

So the tank was taken down and sold off :(

 

I left the LFS and as a leaving pressie my manager gave me a small tank and bits and bobs needed to make up a small planted tank. So I bought some more bits and bobs, made myself a small CO2 reactor and a few months later and I had this:

 

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Very nice, it bored me. I wanted a reef.

 

Soooo I stared looking at various bb's again, more importantly the classifieds!

A small tank and a light came up seperatly and I snapped them up!

The tank was an old STM nano cube, I doubt anyone outside the UK would recognise it!

It's a 14" cube with the rear 4" assigned to a sump, partitioned with black glass.

The light was a haqoos 150w, perfectly suiting the tank!

So off I trundle to collect my goodies.

Set them up on my floor with some fans I had from the last tank along with a hydor nano...

 

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Niiiiice... or so I thought for just a few seconds...

 

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DOH! :o

 

The panel had to go.

Considering last time I removed a panel from a tank I needed a consultation with a plastic surgeon I think this was a big desision!

... I'm not joking

 

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1 year later:

 

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(Have a search for my previous threads and you will see the whole saga!)

 

Anyway!

 

Silicon out:

 

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Glass out (I got a freind in to help with this one (making sure I dont kill myself), here he is with a file lol):

 

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New glass in:

 

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Bish bash bosh.

 

Time for a stand:

 

Basic frame...

 

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Cladding...

 

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Primed...

 

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Painted!

 

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squirrelieygrrrl

holy cow mickle,

 

now thats sick. i wish i was more competent, lol, then i could attempt some diy set up like that.

 

note to self; when working with glass/acrylic always wear rubber dipped work gloves.

 

it looks great! ill be taggin along. thanks for starting such a cool tank thread!

 

~squirrel

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BTW nice scar. That is one of my greatest fears, slicing myself open messing with aquarium stuff. One slip and, well, you know the rest ;)

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Are you kidding me? a 6025 in this small of a tank? And also, where did that 190 degree Eheim elbow come from? Thats very cool.

 

Nope! Think I have sorted the sand movement issues now by adding another piece of rock where the sand was dissapearing from, it also has the bonus of having a 3" across bivalve of some sort! The 190 duckbill is actually a hagen/fluval external filter output, upsidedown :)

Cheers!

 

That's really cool! It's nice to see someone knows what a cube is.

 

Great DIY!

 

lol well I suppose the actual display isn't really a cube though :P

Thanks!

 

Great DIY setup!

 

Thanks, it's taken a while and there has been alot of thinking time which always helps in projects like this!

I'm a product design student so couldn't helpmyself really!

 

now that there is one big-ass scar. :blink: ouch.

 

nice cube and start though. :happy:

 

Cheers Tiny! The scar is alot better than it was and no tendons or nerves where cut, it's just a bit more tender than it was before :)

 

 

holy cow mickle,

 

now thats sick. i wish i was more competent, lol, then i could attempt some diy set up like that.

 

note to self; when working with glass/acrylic always wear rubber dipped work gloves.

 

it looks great! ill be taggin along. thanks for starting such a cool tank thread!

 

~squirrel

 

Hey thanks Squirrel! ALWAYS wear gloves with glass that stuff is sharp! I'm sure if you gave it a go you'd done fine :)

No worries!

 

I luv ur equipment!

 

BTW nice scar. That is one of my greatest fears, slicing myself open messing with aquarium stuff. One slip and, well, you know the rest ;)

 

All to well! It was a bit of a eye (and thumb!) opener when it happend and the level of respect for glass I have now is lol well probably as high as it should of been to start with!

Cheers!

 

cube looks great so far....can't wait to see the progress on this one.

 

Thanks, me either! Taking it nice and slow and enjoying the life that is sprouting from the rock atm, no need to rush when an empty tank interests you! :D

 

clean work, looks nice. I love DIY reef anything!!

 

Thanks lol I've had a go at a few things in the past, you may like this one...

 

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The all in one pico filtration unit! Chaeto chamber, benthic chamber and heater chamber all in one HOB solution! Ended up bigger than I thought it would be so never even used it! Turned out to be handy though as that was the reason I bought the ehiem pump!

:)

Tank is covered in the residue from the phosphate remover at present, even tempted to do a w/c to syphon some of it from the rear chamber. Also the chaeto has degraded a little and bits of it are finding their way through the pump and into the system so I may need to raise it a bit to get it in the light properly for a while at least.

 

Thanks all I'll let you know of any further developments!

B)

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News:

I made some discovery's today, 2 dove snails, woo! The start of coraline growth on the glass... after 1 week :D

They were the good ones... The aiptasia which I kalked, then held a flame to for 30 seconds solid is still alive and I've discovered 2 more! ARGH! I'd like to know how it survived that! One of the new ones may be a hydroid but the other is a sure thing.

Considering a pepermint shrimp for a couple of weeks to completely get rid!

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Cheers!

Test results today;

pH 7.8

Alk 2.8

Calcium 460

Ammonia 0

Nitrite 0

Nitrate ?? (Awaiting test kit)

Phosphate absolute 0 on salifert.

Mag ?? (Awaiting test kit)

 

Spotted an aiptasia in the rear compartment today DOH!

Pepermint shrimp seems inevitable!

Also spotted some little possible hair algae only on the glass though, not sure on the id yet though.

Evapouration seems alot so may need to increase the size of the resivoir.

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Just adding S.G of 1.025

Temp of 27.

Quite important ones that I left out there!

Just added buffer to up the ph and alk a lil, I just tried boiling, lemon calk mix to see if it had an effect on the aips... no effect to at least 2 of em! So the Calcium may of risen a bit aswell.

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Thank you :)

Wish I could think that but at the moment all I'm seeing when I look at the tank is the problems!

Temp moniter is still not here, transformer for ato is still not here, aiptasia is spreading and the thing I wanted least in the tank GHA looks asif it might sprout up :(

Needs a lot of work yet.

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Sounds like the peppermint is a must at this point. Nice cabinet and tank framing build. Gives the whole look some nice clean lines. Maybe some lights out and blanket wrap time to do away with the hair algae before it becomes a problem.

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  • 3 months later...

Few recenterish pics for you all :)

Swapped out the 6025 as it was making to much noise and to much flow.

DSC01531.jpg

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Just to add, caught the crab, killed all aips, hair algae gone :)

Cheers Spanko!

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  • 2 weeks later...

lil update, trying to revive the trumpet coral at the top, it has alot of tissue recession but doesn't look like it's getting worse, hopefully it'll pull though and I'll get a nice cheap coral!

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oohhh new toy!

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Unfortunately the pics won't pic up the colour of the floro :(

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Cheers

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Anyway thought I would give a run down of everything so far so that I can keep track of things as well as you lot!

 

Equipment

 

The Tank

  • STM 14" cube with rear 4" as a sump.
  • Stand and hood DIYed by myself.

The Lights

  • Haqoos 150W Metal halide.
  • 2 USB powered LED actinic spotlights.
  • 11W Blue/White fuge light.

The Filtration and Water Movement

  • Tunze 9002 nano skimmer.
  • TLF phosban reactor, with shut off valves for easy maintenance. (Output returns to first chamber for more movement around the chaeto)
  • Ehiem 600lph pump running reactor and flow between display and sump.
  • Hydor Koralia Nano for water movement.
  • Chaeto in fuge along with a lump of live rock.
  • Occasional use of carbon and filter floss. (Not very often!)

Measurement, Monitoring, Temperature Control and Water Level Control

  • ATC 300 Heater controller for Fluval 50W Tronic heater (Timer function controls fuge light 8 hours per day.)
  • Habistat Cool Control controlling Azoo 2 fan unit.
  • Traditional thermometer hidden in fuge.
  • Refractometer for salinity.
  • Various other test kits mostly Salifert.
  • Tunze 5017 Water Level Controller.

Salt

  • Red Sea Pro

 

Live stock

 

Clean Up Crew

  • 1 Red Legged Hermit.
  • 1 Black Footed Turbo Snail.
  • 1 Bumble Bee Snail.
  • 1 Large Bi-valve.
  • 1 Peppermint Shrimp.

Soft Corals

  • Green/Yellow Zoa's sm polyps.
  • Green/Brown Zoa's lg polyps.
  • Pink/Yellow Zoa's.
  • Orange/Brown Zoa's.
  • Green Mushroom.

LPS Coral

  • Trumpet Coral, Brown/Green.
  • Brain Coral , Red/Green.

SPS Coral

  • Orange Plating Monti.

Live Rock

  • Figi from mixed sources. Laid out for maximum water flow and packed with life!

 

Phew, I think that's everything! :)

 

DSC01562.jpg

 

DSC01565.jpg

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Borrowed my mates camera, my first time using a proper one so forgive the poor results...

FTS :)

fts-1.jpg

Rubbish photo but the orange zoas in the back started off as just 2 stray heads!!

oranges.jpg

 

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The recovering (I hope) trumpet.

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Inflated...

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Deflated...

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This one is with the flash, thought the bristle worm was quite cool :) The colours are pretty acurate as to what it looks like under the halide, I can't get the floro colours to come up properly under actinics though :(

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Some nice life on his shell.

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Thanks for looking :)

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