Najay343 Posted September 15, 2015 Share Posted September 15, 2015 Hi All, Starting my 2nd custom build. This will not be an additional tank, it will be a replacement tank for my marine life in my 3 foot Mr. Aqua shallow. Things are just too cramped in that long tight tank. I do want to stay small and keep it shallow so I found the perfect replacement. The Build Tank: Mr. Aqua 30g Shallow 24"x 24"x 12" Filtration: CPR AquaFuge2 Hang-On Refugium - Small (Bio-sponge, filter sock, filter floss and Media reactor) Heater: ViaAqua 100-Watt Quartz Glass Heater Flow: (2)two Jaebo RW-4 Lighting: Kessil A150w Ocean Blue Reactor: Innovative Marine Minimax Desktop Reactor (Carbon/Phosban Combo) ATO: Hydor Smart Level Controller, Automatic Top Off Stand: Custom 24"x 24"x 30" square steel tube frame, powder coated to be rust resistant I will not be using a sump. I intend to use the AquaFuge2 as a hang-on filtration system. I will be adding an internal overflow box to my tank. I will have a Rio200 pump that will sit inside the overflow box and pump water out of the tank and into my hang-on filtration system. Within the hang-on box, I will have a small filter sock, heater, media reactor and bio-sponges from my current system. I will cut a plastic grate to size to fit in my overflow box in the main tank and sit above the pump with filter floss on top as the primary filtration source before the water is pumped directly into my Hang-on filtration filter sock. I will be moving my LR and Sand from my old tank and adding 10lbs of additional sand. The total gallons of this tank will be 32g, up 10g from my current system. I intend to move every thing over including the 22g of water from my current system and hopefully we have no tank cycle... The main goal is a soundless tank with no overflow issues and no draining issues as those are the three biggest problems in my first tank. Link to comment
BRN Posted September 17, 2015 Share Posted September 17, 2015 Nice tank, I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out Link to comment
Najay343 Posted September 21, 2015 Author Share Posted September 21, 2015 All my equipment has arrived. Just finished Installing the overflow box last night. Today I am going to finish grinding my used metal stand down to bare metal and give it a metallic black finish. I am also going to paint two sides of my tank completely black with plasti dip as it is going to be in a corner. I would like to say tank will be up and running tonight but I prolly shouldn't rush the paint drying. We will see... Some detailed pictures of my overflow/primary filtration: found a rigid grate to cut to size to fit in the overflow box above my Rio200 pump. I will use it as a stencil to cut out filter floss to sit on top of it and replace as needed. The hang-on box was exactly what I wanted. It will fit my Media reactor and Heater perfectly. Not planning on bringing my UV sterilizer to this tank, but, it would fit if I decide too. I plan on getting a Yellow tang this week to fix the algae problem that I have the UV light for as the 12-Long was just way too small for a yellow tang. Although a 30gal isn't ideal either, but, it should be ok. Thanks for Looking! Link to comment
Marc.The.Shark Posted September 21, 2015 Share Posted September 21, 2015 Wow! Nice! What are you going to do with all that space?! Lol Link to comment
Najay343 Posted September 21, 2015 Author Share Posted September 21, 2015 Wow! Nice! What are you going to do with all that space?! Lol swimming room for happy fish! Link to comment
HarryPotter Posted September 21, 2015 Share Posted September 21, 2015 Wow Ive never seen that Aquafuge and really like it! Looks like it'd be an amazing refugium Link to comment
RollaJase Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 Really digging that overflow into the aqua fuge setup, very nice . Link to comment
Najay343 Posted September 23, 2015 Author Share Posted September 23, 2015 Well it was a stressful task of moving everything across the basement from one side to another two nights ago. I ended up getting the wrong kind of sand that does not match the same stuff I already have which I really liked. The new stuff is a mix of everything, gravel, fine sand, LR and shells. Looks fine now that it is in the tank just not what I was hoping for. The Clowns are finally getting comfortable after 36 hours. The first day they would not leave the back corner. My lawnmower blenny on the other hand loves the new set up. Bolting end to end non-stop. As far as what to do now, I plan on adding 3 more fish to the tank over time. Yellow Tang, Purple Dottyback and a Green Mandarin Goby. My corals are doing great. I have a pulsing Xenia that has propagated 3x its original size. I have a bunch of Zoas that have also propagated a bunch and in the next week or so I am going to try fragging them. Thanks for looking! Link to comment
Najay343 Posted September 23, 2015 Author Share Posted September 23, 2015 Wow Ive never seen that Aquafuge and really like it! Looks like it'd be an amazing refugium yea idk when it came out, It is the new version. I came across it looking for "hang-on sumps" and it's doing just exactly that I got the smallest version they have. I was nervous the Large one would be just a tad too long plus I couldn't find a corner overflow. and the medium would have meant the overflow has to be offset from the center. The small one lined up with the tank perfectly so my overflow is dead middle. Link to comment
Marc.The.Shark Posted September 23, 2015 Share Posted September 23, 2015 That came out nice! Next time I'm up sailing the San Juans I'll have to come get some frags!! lol Link to comment
Najay343 Posted January 27, 2016 Author Share Posted January 27, 2016 Update: Little over 3 month since I made the switch from my 3' to this shallow cube. Everything is going. Having a bit of algae trouble. Use to have really bad hair algae, now its small hair algae, diatoms, red slime. This month I added the IM midsize Skimmer. It is working great. I am emptying it 1-2 times every day with some thick nasty stuff. I have been crunched on time with job seeking and such so the tank has been neglected a bit which may explain part of the algae issue and why the corals aren't thriving and populating as much. As of today I started some serious cleaning. Got a large diameter siphon hose and sucked out 1/3 of the sand bed. Man was it nasty. I used a cat litter scoop to clear out any of the large shells and debris and there was so much waste in the substrate its not a surprise my tank looks so bad. Looking to get the other 2/3 of the substrate cleaned out by friday. Have a fresh CUC on the way. Cut the light back to 6hr/days. Hoping to upload some pics and get it looking good again. Fish are well. 1 Yellow tang, 2 Clowns, 1 Lawnmower blenny and 1 purple dottyback. Link to comment
Najay343 Posted February 14, 2016 Author Share Posted February 14, 2016 Well I am ashamed to say I messed up. Ultimately algae got the best of me and overcame the tank. I tried to slowly clean all the algae off without shocking the tank. That didn't go as planned. Shocked the whole tank with a nitrate spike and the water changes could not keep up. Therefore I decided to downgrade back down to my 14 gal Biocube. I lost a yellow tang, Purple Dottyback and my beloved Lawnmower Blenny in the nitrate incident. Surprisingly my clowns survived to my amaze as I have had bad luck with clowns. I was unable to move most my LR over as it was way too overcome with algae and retreating them with acid didnt even take the algae off, I was able to move my concrete hollow cylenders and a few smaller LR and all my frags and struggling anemones to the BC14. Since moving to the 14BC, everything is thriving. I have my hangon CPR AquaFuge2 sump attached to my biocube. I have since purchased a 50GPD RO system as well as the ATO. Preforming water changes weekly and keeping my Nitrates below 3ppm, phosphate undetectable and pH at a nice 8.2-8.3 at 77.8F. The plan is to grow everything in my biocube and keep it running as a hospital tank in the future. I will be re-setting my 30Gal Shallow Lagoon in the future and stocking with everything I grow in my 14BC. I feel dumb for my mistake but ultimately I learn best from mistakes and I finally have my GF on board helping me my days or weeks away from home and educated her on how to manage the system. Link to comment
masssnapz Posted February 14, 2016 Share Posted February 14, 2016 Well I am ashamed to say I messed up. Ultimately algae got the best of me and overcame the tank. I tried to slowly clean all the algae off without shocking the tank. That didn't go as planned. Shocked the whole tank with a nitrate spike and the water changes could not keep up. Therefore I decided to downgrade back down to my 14 gal Biocube. I lost a yellow tang, Purple Dottyback and my beloved Lawnmower Blenny in the nitrate incident. Surprisingly my clowns survived to my amaze as I have had bad luck with clowns. I was unable to move most my LR over as it was way too overcome with algae and retreating them with acid didnt even take the algae off, I was able to move my concrete hollow cylenders and a few smaller LR and all my frags and struggling anemones to the BC14. Since moving to the 14BC, everything is thriving. I have my hangon CPR AquaFuge2 sump attached to my biocube. I have since purchased a 50GPD RO system as well as the ATO. Preforming water changes weekly and keeping my Nitrates below 3ppm, phosphate undetectable and pH at a nice 8.2-8.3 at 77.8F. The plan is to grow everything in my biocube and keep it running as a hospital tank in the future. I will be re-setting my 30Gal Shallow Lagoon in the future and stocking with everything I grow in my 14BC. I feel dumb for my mistake but ultimately I learn best from mistakes and I finally have my GF on board helping me my days or weeks away from home and educated her on how to manage the system. Hey take it as a lesson learned and move forward. View as an opportunity to do something different next time around. Different rock work, corals, fish, everything. Link to comment
Themerchant Posted February 14, 2016 Share Posted February 14, 2016 Thanks for sharing you victories and failures. Link to comment
Najay343 Posted March 20, 2016 Author Share Posted March 20, 2016 My new Build can be found here. Would be happy to get everyones input who has followed previous builds. Najay's IM 25 - Man Cave Lagoon v2.0 Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.