Hand Me Down Nano Cube 6G - Rehabilitation

[charnelhouse]

Hi all, just joined and first post. I got into this hobby by accident this week, a roommate left a Nano Cube 6 when they moved out. I didn't touch it for about a month and he had neglected it pretty bad prior to that. My 7 year old really wanted to keep it, there was 1 hermit crab (a mexican red leg I'm pretty sure) still alive in it, so here I am.

 

I moved the tank into my living room on wednesday and started trying to get it into better condition. Fortunately I have been on a staycation for the last week, I used a big chunk of it trying to get this tank cleaned up. It is still a work in progress.

 

I'm posting this more for sharing the experience than anything else.

 

Here's the current FTS after spending a lot of time trying to get water parameters under control:

 

 

There was a lot of algae but the water cleaned up pretty nicely once I did a change - PH 8.2/Ammonia 0/Nitrites 0/SG 1.025. The one problem I did have was NitrAtes. After a lot of research on this and other forums I figured out that the ceramic rings and bio-balls that came with the tank and were still in there were holding a TON of detritus. I didn't realize until today that the bio-balls were still there.

 

I had taken the rings out a few days ago and then today decided to attempt a refugium in the middle chamber. I stripped the plastic film off the back of the middle chamber (I was happy to discover that it was a film that just peeled off rather than paint that would need scraping) and that was when I noticed the balls in there.

 

I went to the LFS today and picked up some chaeto (the guy threw in a little piece of some red stuff too) and got a cheap 4200K fluorescent. The light on the fuge in the pic is what it's getting from the fluor, no flash in the pic. Here's what it looks like:

 

 

 

I've seen that chaeto likes 5100K, but I'm going to see how this works for a week or two. If it looks like it isn't happy I'll find a replacement bulb at a better color temp. Anybody have any input on this refugium attempt?

 

First chamber is the stock sponge. The fuge also has a chunk of Poly Filter at the outlet to the pump (third) chamber at the recommendation of the LFS guy. At some point I may ditch the sponge and go to floss, but I'm going to stop changing things for a week or so.

 

On Thursday I added 1 scarlet reef hermit, 1 emerald crab, 3 bumble bee snails and 3 cerith snails and they are going to town on the algae that had built up. I feel a little guilty about putting them through all the changes of trying to figure out where the nitrates were coming from, but they seem to be hanging in there alright. Hopefully it is now under control and this tank will start to thrive. I'm really looking forward to some soft corals and maybe a Citron Goby.

 

For something that I got into by "accident" I'm really enjoying it.

[Lawnman]

Looks like you are off to a great start. Welcome to NR plenty of good people here to help you out.

[FlyingHigh85]

Adding chaeto and a fuge light to the back should help reduce nitrates. You probably already know this, but the biggest difficulty with a tank this size will be keeping the water params stable. It will likely require almost daily maintenance whereas a larger tank with more gadgets (eg a 40g tank with a 20g sump/fuge, a skimmer, an ATO, etc.) could be left alone for weeks. A few things to minimize fluctuations in water params would be to keep the bio-load low (ie a goby as your only fish), ensure a stable ambient temp (ie not beside any air vents), and using the "drip method" when adding any liquids to the display tank to ensure changes in salinity, temp, etc. are minimal. You might even try using two small heaters instead of one big one to minimize temp swings. And if you aren't already, I'd use RO/DI water.

 

BTW, what are you using for water movement and lighting?

[charnelhouse]

The pump & lighting setup are the stock stuff that came with the tank I'm pretty sure. The light is an 18W CFL with a 10K half and an actinic blue half. The pump and flow head seem to move water very well, there is turbulence in all parts of the tank, but not excessively so.

 

I have read that the smaller the tank the harder water quality is to maintain. I definitely would not have purchased this tank myself. I'd have gone with something bigger for sure if I had planned on taking this up as a hobby

 

Any links to discussion on the "drip method" for adding liquids? I've just been pouring water in carefully when I change it.

 

Definitely won't do more than 1 fish, if any. I'm going to see how stable I can keep it as it sits right now for a few weeks then maybe try some cheaper soft corals. If I can keep those alive I may add a Citrinis Clown Goby.

 

Edit: Oh, and I did pick up a good refractometer today to better keep track of the salinity. There was a hydrometer with the tank but I didn't feel like it was telling me precisely enough what was going on.

[FlyingHigh85]

Drip method: when I add any liquids to my tank, I use a bucket and knotted airline to slowly drip the liquid into the tank. I shoot for about 3 drips per second.

 

18W CFL isn't very much. I'd consider LEDs. As for water flow, I'd shoot for a turnover rate of 15x tank volume, so a 90ishGPH pump might be enough.

 

You'll find plenty of people to offer advice here, but when I first got into the hobby, the articles and people at www.wetwebmedia.com were very helpful. Robert Fenner gives advice there and he's a genius when it comes to aquarium keeping. If you can find a copy of Fenner's The Conscientious Marine Aquarist, I'd recommend reading it.

[charnelhouse]

Cool, thanks for the tips. I'll see if i can find the book.

 

18W is 3 W/Gal which from what I've seen is reasonable for soft corals that don't have high light requirements, no? Anyway, I may convert to LED at some point prior to getting crazy with the corals. Trying to take this one step at a time though. Water quality first .

 

The stock pump claims to be 120GPH so I guess that is plenty. Like I said, the flow seems very good in all parts of the tank.

 

On the bright side, nitrAtes were half of what they have been on previous tests this morning. I was getting ~40ppm and now am getting 20ppm. Hopefully the refugium setup keeps bringing it down.

 

One of my cerith snails laid an egg trail this morning too! Not super long, only about a half inch, but I would assume that means they are reasonably happy in there...

 

Edit: typos

[aviator300]

Drip method: when I add any liquids to my tank, I use a bucket and knotted airline to slowly drip the liquid into the tank. I shoot for about 3 drips per second.

dripped

18W CFL isn't very much. I'd consider LEDs. As for water flow, I'd shoot for a turnover rate of 15x tank volume, so a 90ishGPH pump might be enough.

 

You'll find plenty of people to offer advice here, but when I first got into the hobby, the articles and people at www.wetwebmedia.com were very helpful. Robert Fenner gives advice there and he's a genius when it comes to aquarium keeping. If you can find a copy of Fenner's The Conscientious Marine Aquari

When this poster talks about the drip method of adding liquids, i'm sure he was not referring to water changes but rather to adding any liquid supplements, etc..

If you dripped in a water change it would take about 2 weeks.

[Tamberav]

Tank looks really good, I think you did a wonderful job cleaning it up! No more bumble bee snails though, they eat the micro-fauna in your sand bed that makes it "live".

 

I think a goby would be a wonderful idea. Porcelain crabs, petersons shrimp, pom pom crabs, sexy shrimp, ect also would fit nicely in such a small tank and your 7 year old would probably love watching them.

 

The lighting is probably fine for softy's. My 1st tank was a 12g cube and the stock CFL I had worked fine. I replaced it with 12 watts of LED's (many years ago before we had a lot of options) and that was totally fine for softy's and zoa's too.

[charnelhouse]

Thanks Tamberav

 

General question - if I were to replace the stock sponge in chamber 1 what would be a good replacement? Floss and something? All floss?

[Daveluce]

Get some polyfill from Walmart. It's like 3.50 for a big bag. Make sure it's not the flame retardant stuff though. Under that, you can run your chemical filtration, like carbon and purigen.

[charnelhouse]

Thanks Dave.

[evo_2679]

May want to get an ATO to keep the evaporation down and parameters stable. Here a quick and cheap DIY hamster bottle ATO.

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/276913-help-w-gravity-ato-solved/

[FlyingHigh85]

I had a 10g reef for a couple of years when I first started. I used the "drip method" for water changes, but I guess it was more like 15 drops per second or something like that. Point is, I didn't just dump all the water into the tank at once. It took an hour-or-so to drip 1-2 gallons into the tank. I did the water changes while I was doing something else (like cooking dinner or whatever). I still do this, but now it's more like the "slow stream method" (can't see individual drops) since my tank's total volume is 60ish-gallons. I still use airline and a 5g bucket.

If you knew the water params of your freshly-mixed saltwater were nearly identical to the display tank's water params, I guess there'd be no problems just dumping it all in at once. I've just never done it that way. Maybe I've been wasting my time.

 

I'd put more chaeto in the first chamber, or maybe some more live rock (light and porous rock, not dense). I've never used chemical filtration, just biological and mechanical (ie skimmers, water changes, and occasionally "vacuuming" the top of the sandbed).

 

I think an ATO would be a good idea, but probably not a necessity if your tank has a lid (so evap should be low compared to an open-top tank).

[charnelhouse]

Update:

 

Yesterday I changed out chamber 1 from the stock sponge to carbon/purigen/floss.

 

Current parameters are:

 

SG - 1.025

Amm - 0

NO2 - 0

NO3 - 10

Temp - 82-84 (Depending on if the tank light is on or not)

 

Nitrates have come down a lot, they were running at like 40 ppm before changing chamber 1 & 2 out. I think I might need to vacuum the sand bed. That's the only thing I can think of that is keeping them up at 10 (unless it's my feeding the crabs pellets. See below).

 

FTS from today:

 

 

I think I have baby ceriths. The egg trail is gone (very very faint anyway, where it was white before) and I have all these new tiny white creatures on my glass (you can kind of see them on the right in the FTS too):

 

 

It's strange though because there appear to be two different sets of the tiny white critters. One set that show up in the pics (which are about a tenth of a grain of rice in size) and one set that is even tinier (the size of a pinpoint, any smaller and you probably wouldn't be able to see them). The bigger ones are slower moving. The smaller ones are a lot faster and move in spurts.

 

Anybody have any idea what these are?

 

I also have what I think might be the beginning of cyano? Purple spots on the coral skeleton (part of the live rock I inherited) and a couple of little spots on the glass:

 

 

 

And even though this tank has been operating for quite some time, It was basically nuked and I started over. I think I'm getting diatoms:

 

 

On the plus side, whatever that brown haze on the glass is, it's what the new tiny white guys are eating, or at least it's where they are staying on.

 

I've been giving the crabs some pellets (New Life Spectrum A+A, about 5-10 pellets) once a day, they act like they are starving to death otherwise. Here they all are in one shot:

 

[jservedio]

Since you inherited this tank and it was neglected for a while, you might want to give the sandbed and rocks a thorough cleaning. If there is a good amount of detritus trapped in the sand and in crevices in the rock, it'll cause you lots of grief down the road.

 

A gravel vac can be used to vacuume the sand bed, using your free hand to pinch or kink the hose to control flow so you don't just suck the sand out of the tank and a turkey baster can be used to clean any detritus off your rock (this should be regular maintenance right before water changes). Having clean rock and sand makes having a pico-sized tank a thousand times easier.

 

My 2g pico is about 10 months old now and every 3 or 4 months I pull the rock out, thoroughly clean the sandbed, and do a big 75% or more water change. If you are doing big weekly water changes, the freshly mixed saltwater and your tank water should have exactly matching parameters - so as long as you temperature match your water, you can do 100% water changes, dumping it all in at once, with absolutely no negative effects. Some members here have been doing that for close to a decade in their picos with absolutely no problems. No need for "dripping" your water change.

[charnelhouse]

Since you inherited this tank and it was neglected for a while, you might want to give the sandbed and rocks a thorough cleaning. If there is a good amount of detritus trapped in the sand and in crevices in the rock, it'll cause you lots of grief down the road.

 

A gravel vac can be used to vacuume the sand bed, using your free hand to pinch or kink the hose to control flow so you don't just suck the sand out of the tank and a turkey baster can be used to clean any detritus off your rock (this should be regular maintenance right before water changes). Having clean rock and sand makes having a pico-sized tank a thousand times easier.

 

My 2g pico is about 10 months old now and every 3 or 4 months I pull the rock out, thoroughly clean the sandbed, and do a big 75% or more water change. If you are doing big weekly water changes, the freshly mixed saltwater and your tank water should have exactly matching parameters - so as long as you temperature match your water, you can do 100% water changes, dumping it all in at once, with absolutely no negative effects. Some members here have been doing that for close to a decade in their picos with absolutely no problems. No need for "dripping" your water change.

 

Thanks for the tips. I've been cleaning the rock off using a long bulb syringe that was with the tank (basically a skinny turkey baster ). I have also done some vacuuming of the sand but didn't really know what I was doing, didn't know to kink the hose. I have stirred it around quite a bit and the ceriths have been burrowing in it a lot. I'll do a real vacuum at my next water change though.

[charnelhouse]

Another update:

 

Nitrates are steadily coming down. Last test (yesterday morning) was ~5 ppm.

 

Found a new LFS (Vet's Pets in El Cajon CA, if you are in the San Diego area, highly recommended. Great selection of livestock all in very good condition) and saw this amazing specimen of Citron Goby:

 

 

 

 

Had to change my game plan in regards to corals first then fish and get him. He is too perfect and I didn't want to risk someone else buying him. He's been in the tank since yesterday and has settled in very nicely. Being very active and had a good feeding this morning. He ate 6-7 pieces of brine shrimp (spirulina fed, recommended by the LFS and what he has been eating for the month he was in the store.)

 

I'm going to get his feeding routine down and make sure I can keep water parameters under control before I add some corals. I'm going to wait at least a couple of weeks, probably more like a month.

 

I know this isn't the ID forum, but does anybody have an idea what kind of algae this is specifically:

 

 

My CUC, especially the ceriths have been mowing through the algae in the tank, the entire back wall of the tank is clean (which was an algae forest 2 weeks ago), but nobody seems to want to touch this stuff. I'm inclined to just leave it since it doesn't seem to be spreading or even really growing much. Just curious what it is.

[Mariaface]

Looks like hair algae. It can be pretty difficult to get anything that'll eat it, and if you're not careful about removal you may spread it via tiny loose fibers. I'm sure you can find something that'll eat it, but I'm not sure if you'd want to add more to the tank. Maybe try removing the rock, pulling the chunk of algae off, dripping hydrogen peroxide (3%) over the area (or dipping that part of the rock in for a minute, if it isn't too much rock), then scrubbing it in and rinsing in separate tank water? Any leftover strands would've been burned by the peroxide and would basically melt over the next couple of days, which might encourage your CUC to finally go after it. Your coralline algae would turn white for a couple of days, but I've always found that it recovers pretty darn well.

[charnelhouse]

Thanks Mariaface, if it gets to be a problem I'll try that. If it stays as is I'm just going to leave it alone I think.

[charnelhouse]

Took me a long time to get them to sit still for this, but I like it:

 

 

Tank is doing great. Going to add some corals in a couple of weeks.

[Tamberav]

Beautiful goby!!! The specs on the glass were probably copepods.

[charnelhouse]

Yeah, after watching them for a bit & consulting with the LFS folks I think pods was what they were/are.

 

Details (the goby's name, given by my daughter) is a gorgeous fish for sure. I wasn't going to add fish yet but saw him at the store and had to do it.

[charnelhouse]

I had been noticing microbubbles (well at least I noticed them as microbubbles after doing some reading) pretty bad in the JBJ Nano Cube 6. I finally got sick enough of looking at them today to do something about it

 

I checked the powerhead and it was sitting square in the sump and this was putting the inlet basically right against the wall of the box.

 

I pulled everything apart and cleaned up the powerhead and compartment (it was pretty dirty under the pump, hope this helps a little with nitrates).

 

I put the powerhead back in and twisted it so that it was at an angle to the box and the inlet is facing into the corner, gaining about half an inch of clearance from the inlet to the wall.

 

Voila, no more microbubbles. I was getting cavitation because of the very narrow gap from the inlet to the wall of the box. It's been running for an hour and haven't seen a single one whereas they were pretty much constant before.

 

There seems to be an added bonus of increased flow in the tank. When I powered it back on it kicked up a bunch of detritus and the water generally seems to be moving better.

 

Good aquarium day. Everybody is happy and healthy looking too.

 

I also think I have mt first corals picked out. Going to try a Devil's Hand, Yellow Fiji Leather and Pulsing Xenia for starters. Anybody think thats too much?

[charnelhouse]

Update:

 

Changed the stock return pump out (it was getting very loud, I was concerned it was going to fail) to a Tunze 1073.008. It fit with no modification into the third chamber. Greatly increased flow and is a lot quieter.

 

Found this little guy today, hope it isn't the bad kind of Asterina star:

 

 

I'm going to add a few soft corals this weekend.

 

 

[charnelhouse]

My Scarlet Hermit Crab has molted. It's been sluggish and acting odd for the last few days. I was a little concerned at first but after doing some reading figured it was getting ready to molt. Sure enough, I woke up this morning to this: