leak test - with all of the cracks I've heard of I made sure it was right next to a rubbermaid tub

Looks great so far!

BTW, thanks for your tips!

tnx oogie - hopefully I'll find some other interesting pieces to help fill it in a little - I thought there would be a lot more flow, so I'm reconsidering what types of corals to start with

Great tank! I love your aquascaping and im sure you will give supernip a run for her money!

Thanks for submitting your entry photo! Good luck!

I like this little guy - I've seen some older ones and know that they get about 1.5-2" - which I think will be a great size for this tank, while the Clav's will give him adequate cover :

You Go Boy! Looks great!!!!! Good Luck!

Just to let you know, my roomate has one in his 12g cube and if you ahve ANY kind of small SPS frags (acro, monti, etc) they (green goby) will absolutely murder them by hosting in them. If you had a huge head of acro it might live but id imagine he would could comletely kill anything small enough to fit in a nc6.. My advice, get him out while you still can, i still have been able to catch the little ###### short of breaking down the tank.

Thanks for the advice - FWIW, if you didn't notice, I don't have any SPS frags in there, although I will probably be adding a montipora or two - I have never heard of a clown goby killing a montipora before - although they do eat acropora. They also eat small crustaceans ('pods), and I supplement this with finely chopped shrimp, mysis, and cyclops-eeze. As it stands now, his little stomach is bulging even when I don't feed for a few days, so I think he is feeding quite well on all of the live food in the tank already.

I transferred this fish from my JBJ 24DX which had 5 different montiporas, and I never had a problem with this fish touching a single polyp in that tank - in fact I saw it perching on those corals quite often and had the best coral growth rates that I have ever had - not a spot of RTN that would be indicative of the gobidon feeding on the corals themselves.

The discription from wetwebmedia.com:


-cheers

Had to do some more research . This thread talks a little more about the Yellow Clown Gobies being more apt to eat live coral, and also that they noticed that they are specifically eat acros, not montiporas

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthre...threadid=397424

update:

FWIW - I've pretty much stopped feeding the tank - if you notice some white flecks on the first full-tank shot, there are tons of 'pods that the clown goby feeds on all day - until I see their population to go down a bit, I'm going to hold off on the feeding to avoid any algae blooms.

uh oh... is that a clam under stock 18w PC?

also, were you trying to attach more pics? I only see the first one

That clam looks pretty open and healthy under those 18w. If it weren't so open, then he should start worrying.

He might have just put it in there.

The clam in the pic is still doing OK IMO. But keep an eye on it. Mantle overextending (reaching out for light), gaping mouth and loss of colors are bad signs to watch out for.
BTW, nice tank. I'd replace that big ol Mag Float with a Super Nimble.

That little fish is awesome! What is it? Goby of some type I guess?

It's a clown goby - there are those, and then small yellow ones - although the yellow ones (from what I have gathered online) seem to like eating acropora polyps, so I went for this little guy - he's fun to watch for sure

I can't believe that you are able to keep a clam under that lighting!!! Looking good so far!

The clam is getting some new shell growth now, after a month - I've started dosing DT's, but not on any fixed schedule (I gave a capfull before I left town for two weeks - now I'm back, and dropped in another capfull )

It was quite nice to leave for two weeks and have everything look better when I came back - I didn't even have to top-off at all.

I'll see if I can get some updated pictures sometime soon, but I'm busy building a stand for my new 65-gallon, so I don't know how much time I'll have to snap some pics...

I've been running this tank on a reverse photo period due to the hot temperatures here and the fact that we don't have any type of AC downstairs - seems to be doing fine though.

-Nick

I don't think I can replace the mag cleaner - I wish I could, I'm in the stock competition, and the mag-float comes with the tank

You're allowed to use a different magnet. The magnet's not really part of the tank, and has no real effect on your inhabitants, other than scrapping some algae into the water now and again...

You could always just take it out between cleanings.

LOL - wow, now I feel pretty lame - but that's good to know - that mag cleaner is so weak I really don't use it anyway - I've just been scraping it by hand

Thanks for the info Crush

hopefully a nimble is in the works - I took some new shots about 2 weeks ago, and I've also transplanted some discosoma mushrooms from my other tank to fill in where the clam was...

Well, the growth rate wasn't quite what I expected it to be, so my tank is looking incredibly weak compared to the competition . I decided to remedy that - hopefully my additions will fill the space between now and December...

-I threw caution to the wind and fragged the mushrooms and spread them around a bit.

-Added some zoos i had in my other tank (my 24DX is all sps anyway, so they really didn't belong there

-Added a yellow polyp rock to get some more color

-And added another rock to add some more dimension to my aquascaping

-Added a very small frag of baby blastos from my other tank and epoxied on a colony of candycane - again, just didn't belong in the other tank - don't need that stinging my M danae

-I also put in a frag of green finger-leather "like" coral

- I think in all that craziness a small frag of Acan slipped in there - don't know how that happened ...

I think that's it - hopefully that will grow over and I won't have to see any more rock in a few months

I've got a FTS - jus need to upload it...

that rock has excellent coralling growth on it, who cares about the corals? j/k...

tnks pro - just keep Mg levels up w/ Epsom salts and then dose w/ b-ionic - stuff grows like crazy.

-

Wow thats better! Love the green kenya tree.

Hmm, that picture looks much darker on my work computer than it did on my computer back home - might have to bump up the brightness in my photo...

Just wanted to add that I have not put any food into the tank in over two months; a 15% waterchange monthly is the only maintenence I have done (other than cleaning the glass).

There are pods crawling all over the glass, so the clown goby always has a meal to eat (I've seen the goby take down pods half it's size ) The Goby's favoite new hiding spot (or should I say hunting spot) is the candycane.

now that everything has settled-in and opened up a little...

Today's Full Frontal



click on the photo in my gallery for a full-screen photo

looks good...affe junge

very nice setup

Didn't see you mention it on here, but what did you end up doing with the clam? If its a sore subject, I'm sorry in advance xo

not sore at all

The clam stayed healthy for the 2 months I had it in the tank, but did not show any shell growth, so I moved it back to my 24-gallon cube and added a halide to that set-up to make sure it had the best conditions.

Click on the images for full-screen photos Gallery

One more

You have a great looking tank! All the corals look in tip top condition, excellent aquascaping too.

Best regards

Ann

Moved things around a bit - the Caulastrea was getting dangerously close to the acan, so it traded spaces with the yellow polyps.

I also moved the sinularia as during the night the longest branch was touching the acan. Moving the Sinularia really helped make more space - the tank looks larger withouth the center being dominated by the spreading branches.

Out of the last three Clavularia only one is still opening as the other two are getting smothered by the blue palythoa - I have already removed two clav polyps after they were getting the same treatment, looks like I'll be removing the last of these - too bad too, I really liked them .

One of the purple mushroom frags has been getting burnt by the acan, but I'm not too worried about that - they seem to have worked out their "space" .

I'll snap some pictures of the changes tonight.

I like the one mush stuck up on the wall.

if you look closely, there's actually the original (the lowest one, streaching over the zooanthids) and 7 "babies" that it has dropped while walking away from it's original mounting spot (the piece of gravel still super-glued to the wall )

Well - I guess that's about it - I'll put up a quick summary.

6-gallon JBJ nano Cube.

Water changes - 3/gallons a month using Reef Crystals (SG 1.024-1.025 via refractometer - temp ~80F via my calibrated finger)

Feeding - first month - mysis, some cyclops eeze, then none for the remaining 5 months. The clown goby's stomache looked "fat" and full, plus I caught him taking down some rather large 'pods when the lights came on a few times - so I was content to leave it that way - in such a small tank, keeping nutrients low was a big concern for me.

A bag of about a cup of activated carbon was exchanged between water-changes.

The beginning - June 11th:



I was gone most of July, but when I returned in August, I re-aquascaped a bit:

August 20th


The two mushrooms in the bottom of the tank were each fragged into four (4) pieces.
you can see all of the green-striped mushroom frags and two of the purple mushroom frags in this next picture, - the other two purple mushroom frags had fallen behind the rocks - I was able to rescue one and put it on the return nozzle - .

Additions - One more piece of rock (originally in the tank in June but removed in July) Yellow polyp rock, Green sinularia (I think), Lepastrea, Blue Ricordia Rock, and the Calustrea (candy cane). I also added some halmedia to help remove nutrients from the water.

September 22nd:


During the next month not much changed; I moved the two frags of green-striped mushroom to the front rock to keep them all togather and replaced them with the small frag of Acanthastrea that I had hanging out in the front of the tank in September.

October 29th:


During November I moved a few things around to avoid agression due to growth - although it was too late for the Clavularia - of the three original stalks that I started with (6 including small starters) this is the only one remaining - the rest were smothered by the rapidly growing palythoa - I'm hoping that I can save them, although it will take some tricky cutting.

November 28th:

tis nice

Sinularia Growth:

September 15th :


October 28th:


Blue Palythoa growth:
August 17:

November 30th:
- yes, they're not very happy as the lights had just come on - and they have lost their bright blue coloring - the original tank they came from had halides and I suspect they need intense lighting for the blue to really show well

Nick,
I just won the same cube in a raffle at THR's post Thanksgiving sale. I'm amazed at the minimal maintenance yours requires. What's your secret?? Did you modify the tank in any way? I was thinking of setting this up in my 4 yr. old sons bedroom. Maybe I can get the little bugger to stay in his room as opposed to squeezing inbetween mom and dad. Where did you get your frags? Your tank looks fantastic....If you recall I came to your house one day to see the 72 bow you were selling. That was 1 37G to 90G upgrade at home and one 20L to 40br upgrade at work ago.....

Hey Bill - lol, yes that 72 bow was a 30-gallon cube, and 24-gallon JBJ ago

No secret here - all the maintenence I did is posted above.

The new splashguard style that JBJ used on this cube really keeps evaporation down - that helps a lot in the way of maintenence.

Other than that - the low bioload meant that if I wasn't putting food in - I didn't have to do water changes to remove the nutrients. I think the key to keeping a tank this size is to be very careful about what fish you add, and then how much you feed them - keep 'em small and make sure you don't feed a lot (maybe a few times a week max if you had a larger fish - but then you should probably be doing a water change every other week) - If it's going into a 4 yr. old's room, you might want to lock the top or something - just to make sure no extra food is going in when you're not looking .

I got the majority of the frags (trumpet, green zooanthids, both mushrooms) from trades with locals in the Northern Delaware and Philly area.

Store bought were the Acanthastrea (from a Newark, DE LFS), the orange zooanthids and green sinularia, and green clown goby came from East Coast Aquatics, and the Lepastrea and blue ricordia came from Northeast aquatics (now under new management).

The Halmedia grew out of some of my rock in my 24-gallon after I added Caribsea's Refugium substrate - I may have to get some more of this stuff b/c every time I add it to a tank I get an incredible amount of biodiversity.

-Nick