7.5 Cubical Cube

[RoseFishWatcher]

Yo.

 

I read a lot more than I post, but since I'm starting a new tank I thought I'd try to keep a "build" thread.

 

Here's the plan:

 

7.5 Mr Aqua Cube (obtained)

Marco dry rock seeded with Florida LR (obtained)

Evil's PAR 38 light (ordered - waiting for restock)

Aquaclear filter (have a spare 30 sitting around. I'll start with that, but might bump it up to a 70)

 

Planning on stocking with green banded gobies (I'd like to keep several, can I get away with a few in this size tank, or bad idea?), blue clove polyps and pocillapora.

 

The tank is sitting empty on my desk. The LR is in a bucket with an airstone. Just trying to get my aquascaping done before I fill it with water and get it running.

 

 

 

New tanks are so much fun!

 

My other tank is a 10g reef with T5s, mostly zoas, and a mantis shrimp pet that's been up for almost 2.5 years.

 

Once I get my rock structure decided on there'll be something worth taking pictures of (I'm pretty sure you've all seen empty tanks before, so as exciting as they are I'll leave out the photo).

[JamesReef]

Good luck with your setup! Since this is your office, you'll want to check if the A/C is ran during the weekends. At my office it isn't, so those of us with small tanks have to run chillers. Also a weekend power outage or unscheduled power test or recycle could leave you with alot of dead livestock if pumps/heater/chiller/etc don't kick back on in time. Try to formulate a good disaster recovery plan since there will be alot of factors outside of your control (even moreso than a home setup). If you already know all of this, then you're good to go.

 

We spend so much time at the office during the week (or at least I do), I think having a small tank at your side is really enjoyable and a great idea if you can get everything planned out properly for success, post some pics when you have it up and running.

[fly_boer]

Most people would advice to keep a few gobies in a 10 gallon tank, but there's a TOTM here that keeps a pair of green banded gobies in her 5 gallon tank, they seem to be fairly healthy seeing that they keep spawning.

 

Hope to see lots of pics in this thread.

[RoseFishWatcher]

So, I mixed up the salt water in 1 gallon jugs and have it sitting on my office floor. I'm still trying to get my dry rocks in a nice arrangment before filling it.

 

On a much more interesting note, check out what showed up on my LR:

 

 

Both pictures are the same urchin, but there are at least 3. They're about the size of a #2 pencil eraser. Not sure I've got enough detail to ID them yet, but if it helps it's Florida LR.

 

 

I need to check if the office runs AC on weekends (I'm glad you brought it up James!).

[ender wiggin]

I got my live rock from Florida and I had 3 pretty good sized urchins tag along! 1 Longspine Urchin and 2 pencil urchins! so fun!

[RoseFishWatcher]

Finally got water in it!

 

I was going to drill the rocks and add acrylic rock for support, but it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. The holes in the rocks made it too hard to drill where I wanted to. So out about $5 for the rod and drill bit, I scrapped that idea.

 

Then I tried that aquarium bonding stuff that you have to mix (the green and white gooey gunk). It was old, and worked poorly. I think it would have worked poorly even if it was brand new. I don't like that gunk.

 

Finally, I just used super glue gel. Worked like a charm. Will be adding my bucketed LR and urchins and such tomorrow.

[RoseFishWatcher]

So, urchins (LR) are in! I have no less than FIVE urchins, a bi-valve, and all sorts of other stuff.

 

Also, I had to cut super glue out of my hair.

 

I hope it cycles fast. My old filter is noisy, and pretty low on water flow, so I think I'm gonna go pick up a bigger one this weekend.

[RoseFishWatcher]

So, things seem to be settling in well. I'm starting to see signs of diatoms and coraline on the dry rock, and there's tiny pods all over the glass.

 

Moreover, I have an octet of urchins. Yup, 8.

 

Here's a pic of the biggest one ('bout the size of a quarter) taken with my iPhone and magnified with a paperweight magnifier. They've been growing quick, initially they were about the size of my pinky nail.

 

 

I'm not sure what they are, rock boring urchins maybe? Their spines have a slightly red hue when not under the blue LED, and they're black/dark grey. You can't see it too well in the picture, but there's a five-point star pattern around the white ring on their backs.

 

The bivalve seems to be doing fine so far. He found a spot and stopped moving around and is usually open, although when I get close to try and get a better look he snaps shut.

 

The office does get hot on the weekends, but everything has been doing so well so far that I'm not sure I need to worry about the temp too much. There's surface movement from the filter (still using the smallish one). I also don't heat the tank at all (in fact, I don't rightly know what temp it's at right now, to be honest). I imagine in winter I will need a heater, but since it's the hight of summer and everything is thriving despite hot weekend temps, I'm inclined to leave it alone.

 

It's my first open top tank, and wow does it have a lot of evap though.

 

Also, the light (still a temp blue LED - where oh where is my real light bulb?) is on a timer, so I don't have to worry about that at all.

 

So far having an office tank is really fun. Since I have a "keep your hands out" mentality I'm not TOO tempted to play with it all the time.

[Chrismck97]

update/ pics