DJ Bacon's new and improved 14g biocube with 72 watt nanocustoms upgrade

[Djbacon]

You have to lose the filter/carbon pack - its ok, just put filter floss over chamber 2, take out the bioballs in Chamber 2 and fill with live rock for NATURAL filtration with less aerobic bacteria build up. Bioballs are not so good for reef tanks.

 

No way to have both the skimmer and the filter in chamber 1

[qbical]

Does anybody here know what to do about the fact that you cannot have a protein skimmer in the biocube 14 while the filter is in... How do you guys work around this?

 

yea i just pulled my carbon filter out all together since i too have the skimmer. does yours even work?

 

You have to lose the filter/carbon pack - its ok, just put filter floss over chamber 2, take out the bioballs in Chamber 2 and fill with live rock for NATURAL filtration with less aerobic bacteria build up. Bioballs are not so good for reef tanks.

 

No way to have both the skimmer and the filter in chamber 1

 

how long was it till u introduced your hammer? (tank looks great)

i am creeping into my 3rd week but i think mine cycled fairly quickly since i used bio-spira and had [re cured live rock. my only parameter i need to tweak is the salinity.

i want to get a hammer with 2 Oc. clowns

how do u like the 14g so far?

[Djbacon]

I love the 14g - its already too small though.

 

The skimmer works fine - you just have to adjust it right - see this thread - http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?...view=getnewpost

 

I would wait another couple weeks to be safe - I know it sucks waiting If you are going to have alot of coral, add that first and let the tank get established before adding too many fish. 3 weeks is pretty quick.

 

I think i added the hammer at about 5 weeks - was my first coral. Take a sample of your water to you LFS and have them double check all your parameters too.

[stratosphere]

Regarding the zoas, The Furan dip did not help. It is intended for disease and pests and what not. I think once the zoas go inside out its over. I have had the "melting outward" issue with 2 colonies now, the one set of watermelons and a small colony of orange bam bams. .

 

Pics would help.

Do you have a link to your tank? How old is it now? Fully cycled?

 

 

I ended up tossing the watermelon frag as a bunch more came as a bonu s frag with a ricordia I ordered.

Other stock that came in the same shipment is doing fine. Im surprised to hear that stuff you bought local had the same issue. I use our LFS's pre mix and have had no trouble with anything I have purchased there. Many folks say you dont really need to acclimate corals but Id say give them a good hour floating to acclimate to temp and then another good hour adding water from your own tank to be safe. The stuff I have had shipped has responded very well when following those simple steps. The ones that melted , in both cases, were less carefully acclimated.

 

That's too bad that the two colonies didn't pull through, but from what I've read it happens quite a bit. And you've got some gorgeous zoas to make up for it.

 

I don't have a tank thread set up yet--I have been taking pics though along the way and hope to set up a thread when I get a chance. Need to get a photobucket account set up.

 

Tank is almost a month old, set up with 10 lbs livesand and 19 lbs totally cured LR from LFS, cycled it with two damsels (on advice of LFS plus that's what we always did back in the 90s when I last kept SW tanks before going off to college--next time I'll do the cocktail shrimp thing) and experienced only a small cycle that was over in a week, damsels were fine throughout and I took them back to LFS after their job was done and got a cleanup crew of 2 astreas, 1 cerith, 3 nassarius, 2 scarlet reef hermits, 1 TINY blue leg hermit and 1 zebra hermit to take care of the algae that had started to grow. A few days later I got a skunk cleaner shrimp and he's the life of the party, as expected, and doing awesome.

 

Since the cycle was over my params have all been steady for past three weeks, testing them every 2/3 days with SeaChem and Salifert tests (undetectable ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/phosphate; ph 8.1; alk 4.5 meq/L; s.g. 1.025; temp 78.2F-78.8F). Got my first coral, a single red mushroom after my params had been steady for a week or two, and it's already got two babies. Got a ball of chaeto in the display until I can get a fuge light rigged up, tons of pods, lots of life on LR (including those digitate hydroids...lol) and everything doing well. Coralline starting to pop up everywhere after turning white in a few places on the LR. Added a yellow watchman goby last week and he's doing great, eating well, digging around.

 

The zoa colony was about 60 polyps total, and has two really healthy sections of about 25 polyps on either side of the "stripe" of polyps that were skinny with big black heads/closed/covered in some black slime patches when I got them--I noticed this not in the store but 5 minutes later back home while I was floating/acclimating them. Go figure. I guess you should really look closely at this stuff BEFORE you bring them home, right? I'm new to coral, though. Fish are where I'm more comfortable looking for behavior/signs of disease. I acclimated the zoas for about 30 minutes, I live so close that there was really no need to temp match since it didn't change much at all in the five minutes between the store and my place, and I get my water from same LFS and testing shows same params, but I slowly added tank water to bag just in case.

 

In any case, about 5 of the polyps that looked the worst (already dark, shrivelled, melting and covered in some sort of slimy gunk with black patches) when I got the coral on Saturday basically came off and fell to bits when I swished the colony in the iodine dip yesterday. Another five are still looking like goners now (24 hours after the dip) with black stuff hanging out of the shrivelled polyps of a few of them. The rest of the colony opened up within an hour after the dip and still looked healthy, so I'm just hoping whatever it is that was wrong with the middle stripe doesn't spread to the healthy portions of the colony...don't want to lose these guys if there's something I can do about it.

 

I know pics would help--I'll work on getting some on here (I'm on my husband's Mac right now and it is not cooperating--thought these things were supposed to be easier to use?). But in the meantime just wondering if another SW iodine dip may help things. Ordered some Furan 2 from Marine Depot so should get here tomorrow in case that will help as a dip, but I don't want to stress the zoas out so am watching and waiting for now. It doesn't look like zoa pox at all--not like anything I've seen actually after searching for a few hours on zoa diseases/pests, so I'm kind of at a loss. Sounds most like what I've read about as a fungus, though haven't seen any photos that match up to what I'm seeing.

 

Maybe when I've managed to get my pics uploaded I'll post to the coral forum?

 

In any case, glad to hear you're having better luck with most of your zoas. And I'm interested in the skimmer discussion--was planning on picking up that little Oceanic one just to give it a try in Ch. 1 as I really don't have room for a HOB behind my tank and don't want to deal with cutting the hood, etc. Glad to hear it's doing something for quite a few folks with a little tinkering.

[Djbacon]

Weird about that black stripe -

 

Regarding your fuge - someone Iknow saved themselves the hassle of scraping the paint off the back and all that to make a fuge by getting a submersible light for chamber 2 - try it out - !! I havent considered it yet myself.. My parameters are fine. although my nitrates are detectable < .10.

 

Anyway, nice to see a fellow SF reefer on here ! Sounds like you are off toa great start !

[Djbacon]

New full tank shots coming up - Centered, left and right + an actinic for good measure

 

 

 

 

[Djbacon]

new side shot with pom pom xenia

 

 

[c est ma]

Looking great! Nice & colorful & clean. Wonderful collection of zoas you have there, and some pretty rics as well.

 

--Diane

[Djbacon]

Thanks !

 

I think I am runnning out of space already...might be time to upgrade

[HoomHow]

Looking good ... I can remember when you were just starting out ... lol

 

Yeah, I hear ya on the space thing ... time for a bigger tank!

[Djbacon]

Ya know sometimes you walk innocently into your LFS to get salt mix or some new filter floss and they have just received an amazing NEW selection of specimens. What's a guy to do? They gave me this gorgeous green purple Ricordea Yuma for $20 !

 

 

It was a no brainer...

[houssic]

I have a Biocube 8 and I wanted to ask you guys how much you clean the pumps intake. I have some algae in the second chamber that the water drips over but some of that algae ends up getting sucked from the second chamber and into the third where it then clogs my water pump. Any suggestions?

[Djbacon]

I jus cleaned out my pump yesterday - It was due, Id say every 3-4 months its good to check it. Id also re-arrange your chambers so the algae (is it chaeto or something?) so it CANT get sucked in there. Or add a screen or something. I had some pinneaple sponge growing berzerk in mine. Did a mjor cleaning last night, rinsed all the LR in the rear chamber, removed all loose detritus and sediment from the back too. Replaced the airstone on my skimmer. Everything seems very happy today.

[c est ma]

Ya know sometimes you walk innocently into your LFS to get salt mix or some new filter floss and they have just received an amazing NEW selection of specimens. What's a guy to do? They gave me this gorgeous green purple Ricordea Yuma for $20 !

 

 

It was a no brainer...

 

Uh...April fool, right? You actually dropped a digit, didn't you?

 

J/K--wow, what a score!! I'm green/purple with envy...

 

--Diane

[Djbacon]

I know! right? I've seen these go for much more online - Im quite happy about this one!

[Djbacon]

picked up some new blue shrooms today - needed something blue :-) New full tank shot for posterity. Had to move the orange ricordea down to the inside right as well. It was geting too much flow on thr other side

 

 

 

Been playing with top down shots as well but the lighting is a real pain to get em to come out good.

[cfeist]

Man, thats a sweet looking tank. I'm jealous of those Orange bam bams, those are insane! Also that Yuma for $20? Man, that's a nice find lol. Nice work...

[Djbacon]

Thanks ! I cant wait for the Yuma to grow and split !! - I think the tank is getting pretty well seeded at this point. Looking forward to watching it grow, think i might need a couple more mushrooms and some gorgoniam branches to put along the back wall.

[Djbacon]

I may have gone off of the deep end....I am so in love with how those blue mushrooms have filled out in the back of the tank that yesterday I bought a large rock of green and red ones as well. I know these grow very fast. I moved the zoas at the rear of the tank forward to prevent them from being overrun and spent the evening seeding the back corners of the tank with very small mushroom frags in blue green and red in all the low light and flow areas. The tank looked positively pissed off after when I was through but, I cant wait to get home tonight and see how it all fills out !!

 

Stay tuned for pics.

[Djbacon]

Well, here are the results of the shroom fraggin festival I had a few nights ago...I did a 50% WC yesterday so I will wait til tomorrow to post new full tank shots with everything all fluffed back up.

 

FINALLY with the last change and the addition of the purigen bag my Nitrates are down to 0

I did a simialr shroom seeding on the other side but it was disturbed by a sleeping snail durin the photo shoot so that side will get posted tomorrow too.

 

enjoy

 

[Djbacon]

OK - new full tanks with shrooms flush :-)

 

 

 

[c est ma]

Very, very nice! A different, captivating view from each side. I love the way your shrooms are so full and happy looking. In fact all your corals look wonderfully healthy and brilliant.

 

--Diane

[DogfoodEnforcer]

the tank is looking great djbacon!

 

as others have said, im REALLY digging all your zoas!

 

cant wait to see those shrooms grow in as well. it'll look awesome!

[Djbacon]

Thanks guys, i gotta say, Im in love with this hobby - had a near catastrophe this morning. When cleaning out the tanks pump 2 days ago, I fogot to power it back on and this morning the temp had dropped to 72 degrees over night. I nuked a couple cups of salt water and got it in the tank and now the pump is moving all the hot water from the back to the DT again, but that was close. everything seems ok so far

[Lalani]

Beautiful tank!