Another Biocube 8 comes to life

[Osprey]

Hi.

I started a nano on Thursday night, October 12. I've never had a saltwater tank before. Wish me luck.

 

Here's my setup:

 

50W Aquaclear mini heater

Hagen Elite 799 airpump with airstone in chamber 1 behind the filter (no skimmer, just a bubbler)

about 2/3 of a 20 lb. bag of Arag-Alive Indopacific live sand (the black and white stuff)

slightly less than 6 gallons of distilled water from the grocery store + Instant Ocean

cheap glass floaty thermometer

 

When I shut the air pump off and leave the lights on, the temperature seems to stabilize at about 79.5 degrees. With the bubbler, the temperature drops at least to the setpoint of the heater (78 degrees).

 

I plan to add a second circulation pump, maybe replacing the stock pump with something with a little more muscle, but haven't yet.

 

On Friday I went to Premium Aquatics (yes I live near them) and picked out some nice live rock. 7 pounds 10 ounces of Marshall in four large pieces, and 14 ounces of assorted rubble (I weighed it with a postal scale when I got it home). The rubble went into chamber 2 except for a couple of colorful and interesting pieces, the rest I arranged in the main tank. They said that the rock had been in their curing tank "since about yesterday."

 

I've been testing the water several times a day since Friday. The ammonia level went up for about 48 hours, peaked on Sunday, and dropped back down to zero as fast as it went up. The nitrite level peaked yesterday and is down around 1ppm now. The nitrate levels have been trending up, but the readings fluctuate up and down when I would expect them just to go up steadily. Maybe the new algae growth on the rocks is responsible.

 

This live rock has a lot of coralline algae on it and is really pink and purple, with some yellow and orange here and there. But it has faded a lot since I got it, or else the grungy stuff on it needs to get blown off. I hope the color comes back, it was awesome before the cycle-induced ammonia bath.

 

Yesterday and today the copepods and other little critters have had a baby boom. They're all over the place and I can see many of them loaded with eggs. The fuzzy green algae is starting to photosynthesize (I can see what I assume are oxygen bubbles developing).

 

This morning pH was 8.1, SG 1.025 (before I topped it off w/DI water), temp 78.

 

Once I think the rock has cured, I might pull it back out and rearrange it so the most interesting stuff is up front, but the pieces are so large my options for fitting into a 12" glass cube were somewhat limited.

 

I'm not sure yet what I'll stock the tank with, but I am thinking of trying to stay with species indigenous to the Marshalls, or at least the IndoPacific (i.e. no atlantic, red sea or caribbean critters). Cleanup crew will include bumblebee snails and maybe an electric blue hermit crab.

[Osprey]

I added two scarlet hermit crabs yesterday. So much for the plan of sticking with indo-pacific species. None of the local places had electric blues.

 

The shells on these hermit crabs from the LFS are completely encrusted with a thick layer of coralline. In fact they look like little pastel-purple easter candies.

 

I'm going to run out and get some bumblebee snails this afternoon.

[Osprey]

This is cool - a couple of islands (Palau and Christmas Island) have issued stamps with the bumblebee snail shell on them.

 

I got four bumblebee snails and four nassarius snails today and added them to the tank. The nassarius were all over the place immediately; the bumblebee snails sat there for quite a while before they decided to move.

 

I also added a Tunze pump in the left rear corner of the main chamber. I might move it to chamber 3 later, but for now it's just blasting left to right across the back wall at about the middle of the tank.

[Osprey]

FTS, after adding live rock last Friday

FTS a few minutes ago

Scarlet Hermit Crab. Little pink houses for you and me, baby.

[SoCal Reefer]

whoa buddy you got distilled water ?!!!!!

6 gallons of distilled water from the grocery store

Stay away from that and go with R/O water

just be patient with adding livestock. you added thoes hermits IMHO too fast.

Other than taht youre doin fine

_SCR

[Osprey]

Day 10. Last night, after the lights on the tank had been out for a while, I took a penlight and looked around in the nooks and crannies of the rock to see if there was anything moving around that I might not be aware of. Then I noticed something swimming around. I turned on the lights and saw about six or eight little larvae of some kind, maybe 4mm long. They looked like tiny cocktail shrimp. Unfortunately they got sucked into the filter intake one by one and there aren't any visible this morning.

 

I think they must have been hermit crab zoea.

[Osprey]

One of the scarlet hermit crabs and two of the bumblebee snails pose for a group photo. The orange and black crab claw in front is from a crab that came D.O.A. with the live rock.

[Osprey]

This morning I saw something moving around on the substrate. It looked like a snail the size of a grain of rice. I didn't add any snails that small to the tank, so I looked closer. It's a tiny hermit crab!

[Prowland]

The tank seems to be coming along nicely. How are the tests looking?

 

Where do you live? I am in beech grove so I am close to premium aquatics as well!

 

What are your plans for stocking?

[Osprey]

The tank seems to be coming along nicely. How are the tests looking?

 

Where do you live? I am in beech grove so I am close to premium aquatics as well!

 

What are your plans for stocking?

Hi Prowland, nice to meet you. I live on the west side, right by Eagle Creek.

 

This AM the SG was 1.023 (today being 10/23), pH 8.1, ammonia and nitrite flatlined at 0 and nitrates are steady at 5.

 

I haven't figured out my stocking list yet, but I am thinking one small fish (firefish most likely), one or two shrimp, and some zoos. Maybe a xenia.

 

They have some excellent (and pricey) ricordia yuma at P.A. but I haven't gotten down to researching the care req'ts for it yet (other than light).

 

Before I make any decisions I need to get over to Inland Aquatics and see what they have. It won't take much to fill this tank.

[jg7]

They have some excellent (and pricey) ricordia yuma at P.A. but I haven't gotten down to researching the care req'ts for it yet (other than light).

 

From what I've learned, most mushrooms thrive under moderate light and low to medium flow. As long as the water isn't too turbulent and they are placed in an area where the light isn't too intense, then they should be fine.

 

Almost all mushrooms are easy to take care of, and can survive in mediocre water conditions. On the other hand, you should never let your water conditions be any less than pristine. Especially if you're maintaining a reef tank. Even a small amount of nitrates will harm your invertebrates.

 

Good luck with your tank.

[Osprey]

One of my hermit crabs molted on Monday. Seeing the cast-off carapace wiggling in the current was unsettling, like a B horror movie.

[Osprey]

The apparently well-known and dreaded fan noise issue has appeared in my Biocube.

An email to Oceanic customer service about the problem bounced repeatedly. Here is what I found out on my own:

 

There are two fans in the Biocube 8. One blows in and one blows out. They are ordinary computer fans, in an unusual size: 50mm x 50mm x 15mm. The ones in my unit are labelled "JETA ELECTRONIC TECH CO., LTD., MADE IN CHINA, JT5015L12S/GP 12V 0.08A"

 

I did a little googling and I think the code means this:

 

JT is a manufacturer's code

50 is the large dimension of the fan in mm

15 is the thickness of the fan in mm

L is the speed of the fan, low. Other speeds would be M and H (duh)

12 is the voltage

S is the type of bearing (sleeve).

 

Basically, I think these are cheap fans that are not well balanced, so they vibrate when they are running. The vibration loosens the four stainless steel screws that hold each fan to the cover. The fan begins to vibrate more. Pretty soon, the metal glare shield and the plastic parts of the cover are also vibrating, and the rattle becomes really loud and annoying.

 

There are several ways to tackle this problem. One is to tighten the screws. ALthough the fans will still be unbalanced, they won't rattle in place. The downside to this is that the stainless steel screws are threaded directly into the plastic standoffs of the cover, and tightening them down will tend to strip out the threads.

 

Another approach is to replace the fans. Good luck walking into your local computer store and finding 50mmx15mm fans for sale. Actually, I found a $15 'hard drive cooler' for sale locally which was nothing but a piece of aluminum with a pair of 50mmx10mm fans screwed to it. Lucky me. I replaced the stock fans with the ones pirated from the hard drive cooler, and the noise magically went away.

 

However, the fans I put in are really no better quality than the stock ones, so I think I am going to order a pair of ball bearing fans from a casemod or overclocking shop online and have them ready to swap in when these fail.

 

I'll probably try to get ones that move a little more air, too, although they'll be louder, they'll help keep the temps down.

[Osprey]

I put the lights and the second pump on timers today. The actinic and fans are on 12 hours, the 10k is on 10 hours (starting an hour after the actinic), and the pump is on 15 minutes/off 15 minutes during the day and off at night. We'll see how that works out.

 

I have been turning the lights on and off manually when I get up and go to bed, and I'm getting more algae than what the CUC can eat.

[Osprey]

This morning the stock pump in chamber 3 was making a little noise, like a faint rattle. Like a "remember that I am a mechanical device and will fail someday" rattle. I pulled it out, cleaned it, and replaced it, but it still made the same noise.

 

I bought a RIO 180 at the LFS and popped it in there (it took me a few minutes to figure out which of the odd collection of plumbing parts I needed to use). The RIO is nice and quiet and, at least according to the specs, draws a lot less current (ergo, generates less heat) than the stock pump.

 

I can use the stock pump for mixing seawater. I'm not going to listen to it rattle in the tank.

 

So now I've replaced both fans and the pump, and added a second smaller pump. What will fail next? What was I thinking when I invited this frankenstein's monster of a tank into my kitchen anyway?

 

I've got a ton of algae in the tank now. I am hoping that having the lights on a timer will help cut the algae with a shorter photoperiod.

[Osprey]

The hairy green rocks are not getting any hairier in the last few days, but now there's ugly brownish-greenish stuff all over the substrate. I added a bag of Purigen to chamber 2 and changed the filter floss and charcoal. I did a one gallon water change two days ago and mixed up two more gallons of water just now so I can do another partial w/c tomorrow.

 

I think the tank could take another critter or two at this point. I'm pondering whether to add a few different snails. The bumblebee and nassarius snails and the two scarlet hermit crabs just aren't eating enough of the algae to make a dent.

[Osprey]

The algae seems to be diminishing. Yesterday I scrubbed a lot of algae and gunk off of the rocks with a (new) toothbrush, and replaced the filter floss.

 

I got a couple of astrea snails from the LFS today, acclimated them for about 45 minutes and set them on the rocks. It looks like they've gone to work on the green stuff already.

 

I also picked up a test kit for calcium, KH and phosphates. The phosphate test came up zero. The calcium is at 340 ppm (not ideal, but not critically low) and the dKH is 9.

[Osprey]

I did a little more reading last night and decided I need some cerith and nerite snails to tackle the brown gnarliness accumulating on the sand bed. Unfortunately the closest LFS only has astreas.

 

The two astrea snails I added yesterday are doing a good job removing the hairy green algae from the live rock. There really is coralline under all that munge. But I think the job is too big for two of them. They slow down to almost nothing when they come upon a really thick mat of algae; they can only turn green vegetables into snail p00p so fast, no matter how hard they try.

 

Also, I wanted to get some Purple Up, to get my calcium level up in the 400 range, so back I went to the LFS.

 

The LFS was out of Purple Up. There was a shelf eight feet long with a couple dozen different brightly-colored bottles and jars of coral reef supplementation products, and naturally the one I wanted was the only one they were out of. I read a few of the labels on the other products but decided it was futile trying to figure out which supplement to buy by reading the manufacturers' hype.

 

I gave up and went over to pick out another friendly-looking astrea snail. The tank with the astreas also has a couple hundred blue-leg hermits, nearly all of which sported shells that once belonged to cerith snails. I'd bet somebody at the store had the bad judgment to try to keep the blue-leg hermits in the same tank with the ceriths, and the hermits killed them all for their shells.

 

Well, almost all of them. I spotted one lonely cerith snail on the glass. I flagged down an employee and had him bag the cerith and one more astrea up for me.

 

My CUC now consists of:

3 bumblebee snails (was 4, but I found an empty shell, or at least a shell that looked empty and has not moved or stuck out a snorkel for two days. )

4 nassarius snails

3 astrea snails

1 cerith snail

2 scarlet hermits

 

I haven't seen the little hermit crab other than that one time I took his picture. He was either a hitchhiker on the LR or else a stowaway inside the shell of one of the other hermit crabs. I hope he turns up again.

[gsechen]

well good luck little hermit crab....

[schluns]

Welcome to the addiction. I'm over in McCordsville, what lfs do you go to in the area?

[Osprey]

Hi schluns, I PM'ed you.

 

I spotted another scarlet hermit skin today. Between the two of them they've molted at least three times since I brought them home.

 

I tested calcium and carbonate hardness the other day. Calcium was a little low at 340ppm (I think) and carbonates were at 9, so I did a bunch of reading on line to se what to do about it. I ended up getting an 8oz bottle of Seachem Reef Complete and added some to the tank yesterday and again today.

 

I noticed a lot more featherduster worms on the rocks today. There's less algae than yesterday too, with the snails chomping away.

 

I had the heater set at 78 degrees, and the tank was going up to 80 during the day with the lights on, so I bumped the heater up just a tiny bit to try to get it to stay at 80 all the time. Now it seems to go to 81 during the day. So I bumped it back down a tinier bit. I'll see what it does tonight.

[Osprey]

First fish added today. I went to an LFS I haven't visited before, and they had a green banded goby, Gobiosoma multifasciatum. Very small, very suitable for my tank, but it's a Caribbean species. So much for my idea of an indo-pacific theme tank. I got one, along with a skunk cleaner shrimp, Lysmata amboinensis.

The LFS threw in a tennis-ball sized clump of chaeto, too. I'll have to rig a way to retain it so it doesn't bounce around in the tank.

 

I acclimated them for about 45 minutes using the half-a-cup-at-at-time method, then in they went.

[paulnsimon]

Time for a new pic!

[Osprey]

I'm going to cross-post this pic in the ID forum because I don't know what this little thing is. It's roughly round, about 3-4mm across, and fluoresces under the blue LED moonlights.

[Osprey]

The unidentified hitchhiker is now tentatively identified as a cup coral. SCORE!

 

I fed it a little bit of mashed-up fish pellet today, and moved it close to the lights.