Zoo dominated BioCube 8

[norad2]

Started this tank back in March 07 sometime. I didn't really know where I wanted to go with it in terms of livestock. I went with a BioCube 8 because it is nice and small and a good fit for a cubical in an office enviroment.

 

I didnt really make any modifications or do anything special at first other than take out the bioballs. I loaded it up with live sand the same day I got the tank. Added the live rock 2 days later then let it sit for 2 weeks.

 

Conditions seemed pretty stable so I bought a cleaner shrimp, a green ricordia, a small frag with some brown/orange polyps, and a bunch of hermit crabs & nassarius/cerith snails.

 

About a week after that I bought a Black Saddleback Clownfish which was labeled just as "Black Clown". Doing my research after purchase, I discovered this fish was going to get bigger than I thought.

 

This is the first picture I took of the tank.

 

 

 

About 2 weeks later a co-worker who also has a tank at the office gave me one of his xenias. I started getting significant hair algae growth at this point.

 

 

Sometime after this point the following events happened:

 

I bought a dwarf sea hare to eat the hair algae. He did an amazing job.

 

I came in to work one monday and I could not find the clown. He was just completely missing. I checked the back compartments and in the rocks and stirred up the sand but could not find him. Either someone really wierd stole a $10 fish or it died and was eaten by the cleaners very quickly. There was never any ammonia/nitrite/nitrate spike after he went missing.

 

At this point I was a little bummed and didnt add much for a while.

 

After a week or two I got a new false perc clown. I really like this fish compared to the previous one. The old fish was always hiding behind the rocks and didnt come to the front much. The new one swims all over the place and seems to like when people come near the tank. I got a few more frags including one head of a Candy Cane and some zoos from a co-worker as well as a big rock with a bunch of Hambali Xenia from another co-worker's tank

 

At the begining of May this is how the tank looked:

 

 

Two weeks later not too much had changed. Things were looking better and the Xenia seemed very happy.

 

 

After this point some major upgrades happened.

 

Equipment:

 

I added two Micro Pump 104s in the back, one on the bottom back left side facing towards the right, and one on the bottom back right side facing towards the front. This helped to create some extra flow in areas that I dont think were getting much flow.

 

I stuck a Hydor on the return from chamber 3 to add some flow in additional directions.

 

I removed the filter from chamber 1 entirely. I added in some matrix rock in some netting and let it sink to the bottom of chamber 1. Above the matrix rock is a Mini Jet 606 which pulls the water through the matrix rock and sends it into the chiller mentioned below.

 

Heat was becoming a problem as there is no air conditioning at the office during the weekend. Even during the week days the tank was getting to 82+. I bit the bullet and bought a Pacific Coast Imports CL-85 chiller rated for 12 gallons. Although a little loud, this thing works pretty well and has been keeping the tank between 78-80 consistently. The output of the chiller goes to chamber 2 so that the water system still works as intended. I used some wire cutters to cut the plastic in the back to widen the hole above chamber 1 and make a new hole above chamber 2 for the chillers return.

 

I added some filter floss above the removable overflow in chamber 2 to provide some mechanical filtration. The return from the chiller dumps the water onto this floss

 

I removed the sponge from chamber 3.

 

I also bought a plastic gutter guard and cut it to prevent fish from being able to jump into the back chambers (I had an incident with this Ill explain below)

 

 

Livestock:

 

Once I had the new equipment in place I went got a little trigger happy and bought alot of corals, mostly zoanthids.

 

I bought a bunch of different frags from ultimatefrags.com and atlantisaquarium.net. I labeled the ones that were named. The rest I dont really know what they are

 

These are all pics I took directly from the tank.

 

 

I also added a Featherduster, a Green clown goby, two orange ricordia, a few green/purple mushrooms, some green star polyps, some yellow tip clauvias, and a few tricolor acan heads.

 

 

There are also 3 cerith snails I forgot to take a pic of.

 

 

Overall I think the tank is turning out well. I am still having some trouble with hair algae since I lent the sea hare to a co-workers. I am hoping that in 5-6 months everything will have grown out and killed off the hair algae but that might be wishful thinking.

 

I think once everything is fully grown out it is going to be a very colorful tank

 

[eklikewhoa]

The algae is really taking over in there.

[Kirin1]

The algae is really taking over in there.

 

Indeed. What's your freshwater source?

[norad2]

The freshwater I had been using is most likely the cause of the algae. It took a while to find an LFS that sells ro/di water but now I use ro/di for top off

[Diskusting]

Im sure it will slowly go away with water changes now that you are using RO water. Dont ever go back! Love the corals.

[Kirin1]

Love the corals.

 

Me Too. The xenia on the back wall will be awsome once it's filled in.