Brooklyngal's 29g biocube thread

[Brooklyngal]

the BC has undergone some dramatic changes since my last post, after we moved it into the living room, I had to re-scape completely. I also removed a bunch of the larger corals, and added a few that were previously in my other tank. The algae has receded a bit, but I still need to order a CUC (my old one has died, since most of it was astrea snails which were flipped over and killed, and the hermits must have killed eachother off or something, all I have in there now are two very LARGE electric blue hermit crabs) and some more corals and fish. going to place the order when we get back from mexico on saturday (we leave weds morning).

 

will update with pics when I get home tomorrow (Im in the country, and my camera is in the city).

[Brooklyngal]

ok, so, starting from the big move and my final effort to cure the Great Algae Plague of '09-'10

 

on march 1 I moved my two tanks, swapping their places. the last FTS I have of the BC before the event

 

it was pretty (ok, really really really) bad. I had several goals with the move

- get the caked on green coralline off the glass

- remove as much algae from the rock as possible

- get rid of the cyano that was covering everything

- remove the sandbed, of wihch about 1/2 was comprised of detritus

 

I started by making 30g of fresh saltwater and getting a scrubbing station ready for the rock. in one bucket, I dipped them and blasted detritus off with a PH, then I srubbed the algae off in another, then repeated the first step in the first bucket. I emptied the tank, put the coral into an old 20L with the coral from my other tank, so that a mini cycle didnt kill anything off, added my two fish (clown and YWG) into the 20L, and then added a new sandbed and filled it back up.

 

I took these pics on march 5th when I added the corals back into the tank

 

I received a (much needed) cleanup crew on april 21 (6 each of nerite, hermits, cerith, and nass. snails to go with my 2 huge electric blue striped hermits and harlequen serpent star I already had), along with some macro algae (chaeto, Ulva/sea lettuce and some gracillaria that I tried to glue to rocks but which later died and had to be thrown away along with the sea lettuce, which also died)

 

"WTF are you looking at, pipsqueak, this is MAH snail!"

 

"MINE, MINE, MINE, MINE, gimme here, you giant sasquatch!"

 

and, finally, today. last night I spread a thin layer of large grain rubble over my sand, which gave the tank a much-needed established feel (Ive always loved the way it looks in other tanks, so I thought, why not mine too?) and then today I received an order from reef hot spot containing a second percula clown to add with my first, a banggai cardinal, a toadstool leather with 2 stalks/heads, and a big pipe organ colony.

 

current FTS's

 

the new banggai (this is my second try, the first was in my first nano reef, a 20L about four years ago. the fish ended up dying of some HITH looking thing)

 

the new perc

 

the new and the old, the old has less black

 

and you can see the two new corals in the background of this pic

 

the percs were bickering when I left for the weekend, and I didnt have any way to seperate them so had to leave them together, hopefully I wont come home to any dead fish... crossing fingers

[Paul&Ash]

wow your tank has had quite a life so far... looks good so far after the revitalization

[Zoafreak]

hey fyi electric blue striped hermits are quite agressive buggers

and you may be putting too much bioload into your tank.

good luck with your algae and yano problems