[Biocube 29] RedStang's Build Thread

[GravyReef]

Reefcleaners.org order should come tomorrow. It will probably multiply my snail population by 10-15x what I have now.

 

What did you order?

 

My order had:

 

Dwarf Ceriths (20) - though he sent me literally 100's, they are in every nook and cranny.

Florida Ceriths (8) - These guys are great, very busy, all over the tank eating/cleaning.

Nassarius (2) - buried most of the time, but they pop out remarkably quick when food is available

Large/Medium/Small Nerites - Lazy! They huddle in one corner of the tank, and eventually crawl over the wall and fall into the back chambers where they stay (and have the chance to block a pump / stick an ato switch / or various other evils.

 

-Gravy

[RedStang]

What did you order?

 

My order had:

 

Dwarf Ceriths (20) - though he sent me literally 100's, they are in every nook and cranny.

Florida Ceriths (8) - These guys are great, very busy, all over the tank eating/cleaning.

Nassarius (2) - buried most of the time, but they pop out remarkably quick when food is available

Large/Medium/Small Nerites - Lazy! They huddle in one corner of the tank, and eventually crawl over the wall and fall into the back chambers where they stay (and have the chance to block a pump / stick an ato switch / or various other evils.

 

-Gravy

 

Did their quick crew for a 29gal. Just worried about how many are going to die... Seems like overkill to me but many people seem to swear by reef cleaners.

[RedStang]

Got my reef cleaners order in. Holy snails! No idea how many there are. Especially the dwarf ceriths. There must have been 40-50 of those. Several hermits came in though I didn't order any. Even saw one scurrying around without a shell for a bit. He found one before he got eaten. It will be interesting to see what a full clean up crew can do.

[msscha]

I wasn't sure if my YWG would pair up as it's been in the tank for 6 months but it only took 1.5 days for them to find each other. Pistol has been digging like mad since and the YWG hangs out with him a lot. Very cool to watch in action. Worth a shot! Do you know what kind of pistol?

Is there a "mutt" pistol? It's some smallish, semi-transparent thing, probably with faint striping. I cleared one out of my tank earlier, and felt bad about it after, even though it was making a mess of the tank. This one survived the other's outing. I didn't know there were two . The rain goby pretty much has the tank under control where shifting sand is concerned, so I don't even worry about the pistol. But I don't think it's a blind one -- isn't that the point of the ywg pairing? Just your run of the mill shrimp with a clack that's bigger than its back (ooh, that was bad!).

[RedStang]

So I started Vodka dosing Wednesday. I'm very surprised at the results. I've been dosing the recommended start dose of .1ml each day. By the end of the 2nd day I was seeing a drastic reduction in the amount of algae on my back wall. Today, the 5th day, I've noticed an explosion of coralline growth. I'm getting purple spots everywhere. I'm beginning to think that most of my $20-some dollar order of snails will be for naught given the algae reduction prior to their arrival.

 

I am starting to feed heavier given the vodka dosing and larger CUC. I am seeing great results from all corals except one new batch of zoa's that haven't fully opened in the week or so I've had them. I'll try relocating them to a more shaded area and see if that helps. Everything else, zoa's, paly's, hammer, frogspawn, kenya tree, acan's, blasto's, bird's nest, monti cap, chalice, and ricordea's look better. Not that they were doing bad but colors look improved and better polyp extension.

 

I did change the chemi-pure elite a week or so ago so that may have helped as well. Time will tell.

[indyjaco]

I did the same CUC with my tank. I have had mine running for about 40 days now and i've seen quite a bit of coraline coming through on the rocks. I do not have any algae problems at all either. The Nassarius are fun to watch when it becomes feeding time.

[pme]

RedStang,

How do you like your rapid led lights? I am thinking of replacing mh jbj lights with the rapid led 24 dimmable retrofit led's. Which color led's are you using?

Thanks,

Pme

[RedStang]

RedStang,

How do you like your rapid led lights? I am thinking of replacing mh jbj lights with the rapid led 24 dimmable retrofit led's. Which color led's are you using?

Thanks,

Pme

 

I do like the lights. I bought the kit when they had 20 LED's. I went with 12RB and 8CW but think I should have gone with 4NW, 4CW, 8RB, and maybe 2 Red and 2 Green or Violet. Dropped my temps a good bit and the whole family loves the RB colors.

[thejtl]

RedStang,

 

Wow, you're stuff is looking great. I'm right behind you time-wise, but you're crushing me. I'm slowly getting my tank looking sharper. I'm considering either a skimmer or the CUC you just got. Which do you think would help more? I continue to fight with intermittent GHA and my substrate could use a little fluffing.

[RedStang]

RedStang,

 

Wow, you're stuff is looking great. I'm right behind you time-wise, but you're crushing me. I'm slowly getting my tank looking sharper. I'm considering either a skimmer or the CUC you just got. Which do you think would help more? I continue to fight with intermittent GHA and my substrate could use a little fluffing.

 

I'd say skimmer first. Reason being that it's easier to pick up a few snails every trip t a lfs than to come up with $ for a skimmer. You could always go with a quick crew order for a smaller tank to save some $ and get both.

 

As for my tank it's still a struggle. I'm doing my best to catch problems right as they come up rather than ignoring it and hoping it goes away. I have some small tufts of GHA that's been around for a month or two now. Hence the CUC order and vodka dosing. I need to get better at changing my filter pad too. Once a week isn't enough. I should be doing it every 3-4 days. I'll get better.

[RedStang]

Sooooo.....

 

Local reef club's annual frag swap is this weekend! I've been hearing that it's going to be great. Going to talk to my 9yo daughter today to see if she wants to join the club at the swap for $10 so we can get more frags. Really looking forward to this as it'll be my first frag swap and might see if my wife will trust me with some extra $ in case there are some great deals on some choice corals. I'm volunteering to be a CUC member. There will also be raffle items too. Should be fun!

[pbjelly]

I just finished reading through this whole thread. I'm so glad I found it.

Great tank - isn't it time for another FTS? The last one you posted was so colorful.

 

Have fun at the frag swap. I went to my first one this fall and it's spoiled me forever for buying corals in person instead of online. Check with someone who has done your specific swap before, but at my local one, the corals all go on sale at the end of the day when the vendors are getting ready to clear out. There were lots and lots of mini-reefers at the one I went to and they all seemed to be having a great time, so I hope your daughter agrees to go with you.

 

Not counting your upcoming tank expansion, if you had to do it again, would you still get the Apex Jr? I've been eying it for months. The full on package is total overkill for me, but I've been pondering the Apex Jr. vs. the Apex Lite, and I was wondering what your experience has been?

[RedStang]

I just finished reading through this whole thread. I'm so glad I found it.

Great tank - isn't it time for another FTS? The last one you posted was so colorful.

 

Have fun at the frag swap. I went to my first one this fall and it's spoiled me forever for buying corals in person instead of online. Check with someone who has done your specific swap before, but at my local one, the corals all go on sale at the end of the day when the vendors are getting ready to clear out. There were lots and lots of mini-reefers at the one I went to and they all seemed to be having a great time, so I hope your daughter agrees to go with you.

 

Not counting your upcoming tank expansion, if you had to do it again, would you still get the Apex Jr? I've been eying it for months. The full on package is total overkill for me, but I've been pondering the Apex Jr. vs. the Apex Lite, and I was wondering what your experience has been?

 

Thanks! Maybe after the frag swap I can get a FTS up. Not much has changed besides the addition of a massive CUC that seems to be doint its job. I've scraped the glass only a couple times since the new CUC arrived. Well, that and vodka dosing. Who knows which is responsible.

 

My daughter will be going with me. She's really getting into it. We were at Sea World in Orlando again last weekend at the aquarium section under their Manta ride. One of their education staff was next to their massive reef aquarium and he got so excited that she and her brother were genuinely interested, and knowledgable, about the fish and corals. Se spent a good 20 minutes going over the types of fish, coral, and then some stuff he had in a cabinet for education. Less and less doubt that she'll be getting the BC when I upgrade. She'll need to show me that she can do most of the work but I'll help with WC's. No way her 55lb(soaking wet wearing clothes) body can cary 4-5gal buckets of water!

 

The club will be handing out free frags of a couple flavors of favias, some acan lords, and maybe others to members. We'll probably by a raffle ticket each just for fun but I won't spend much past that. My tank is fairly full and I've over spent on this hobby lately anyway. Plus, I need to start putting some money away for the upgrade!

 

As for the apex jr I don't regret the purchase at all. However, at this point I've spent more than what a full blown apex costs and I think the only extra functionality I have is the WXM module. It was the right decision for me as there's no way I would have dropped the $ on the full apex in the hopes that I'd like it. The apex jr entry price was much easier to swallow and the ability to add as you needed was nice. The apex lite is probably a better way to go though as it doesn't limit you on modules like the jr does.

 

Absolutely love the apex though. The ability to monitor and control remotely is what sold me on it over the RKL. It's nice to be able to remotely program as well since that saved me once. Let me know if you need any programming help when you get yours. I'm no expert but I've made about every mistake there is and managed to figure it out in the end!

[RedStang]

Frag swap was awesome!

 

My daughter picked out some really colorful zoas that have yellow skirts with green centers and other have yellow skirts with green and orange centers. Very bright and very colorful additions. She also picked out some candy cane coral.

 

Nor for the freebies. We got a great piece of favia that has a yellow edge and pink center. Two different frags of zoas that I haven't had a chance to ID yet. My daughters look like pink zippers but time will tell.

 

We have what looks to be another favia with green edge that is in very bad shape. The rock pieces under the coral are all bashed up. Tomorrow I'll see about gluing those pieces together to provide some stability and get it on a frag plug.

 

I was a volunteer CUC member so as the vendors were taking their stuff down I told my daughter to head over to the one that still had corals in their tank and see if they had anything for free. She cam back with a nice little frag of pineapple brain coral! I guess none of us could really refuse a sweet little reefer.

 

Acro heaven. I have 7 frags of acro's. No idea what type and if they weren't going to be tossed I wouldn't have taken that many. I'm not sure how they'll do. 2 have some polyp extension while I'm unsure of the others. A couple that don't have polyp extension still have some color on their skeleton. If any of these pan out I'll be so excited.

 

And finally, a two eye piece of what looks to be pink eye chalice! Had to save it from my pistol shrimp though as he was trying to drag it away for his cave!!!! Have it on the rock now and will glue it to a frag plug tomorrow as well.

 

But wait, there's more!!!!! There were only 3 or 4 of us left when we found a bucket with a large rock that was used for the free zoa frags. This rock still had at least 100 polyps on it! You can guess who's tank it's sitting in now!!! At least half of the polyps have opened so far and I fully expect the rest to make it. The rock spent the better part of a day in a ziploc bag with barely enough water in it to keep it covered so there's certainly some stress. I've had to rearrange a bunch of stuff to get it to fit but it's definitely worth it.

 

A FTS is in order but it'll be a bit most likely until I can get to it. It's going to take me a fair amount of time to get everything mounted to frag plugs, courtesy of Thrive Aquatics, and then find suitable mount points for the plugs.

 

Best of all, my daughter had an absolute blast. She actually enjoyed a rockscaping demonstration that Mark Levenson and another gentleman, who's name I sadly forgot but who was a great presenter as well, put on for the swap. She's officially been promised the biocube when the 135 is up and running. She also joined the Atlanta Reef Club. She's digging reef keeping big time and I'm loving it!

[RedStang]

SPS frags seem to be doing well. Looks like I got 7 acropora frags and 1 millipora frag. Hard to tell right now though. All 8 are showing some polyp extension though and showing some hints of color in the skeleton.

 

What I thought was a green favia looks like it might actually be a green acan. Sweet if it holds out as I've been wanting some more acans. It's in very rough shape but it looks like the polyps are swelling up a tiny bit tonight.

 

I'm basically fully stocked on corals now. Maybe an acan frag to add to my acan rock but that will be about it. I may do some rework of the rock scape this week if time allows. I want to reduce the height in the center to allow for coral placement and growth.

[tinkerer]

nice! you past 10k views on your thread. i have not jumped into the acans yet. now that the led is ready to be put in i am as excited as a kid with a new toy. next week i want to put a birdsnest i found at my LFS in.

[RedStang]

nice! you past 10k views on your thread. i have not jumped into the acans yet. now that the led is ready to be put in i am as excited as a kid with a new toy. next week i want to put a birdsnest i found at my LFS in.

 

Sweet! Hadn't realized that.

 

LED's are nice due to the options it opens up. It's a ton of fun. Expensive, but fun. It's given my daughter and I something to bond with as well. It's wonderful to share your hobby with your kids. They get as excited as we do.

[tinkerer]

my daughter loves the tank, she follows me into the room any time i go in just to look at the tank. i got the leds installed today and am giddy as hell, looks great, my corals are finally the color they were when i bought them... or was given them by my benefactor.

[RedStang]

So it's been a while since I updated this thread. Been very busy with work, school, and vacations. Went about 3 weeks without doing a water change. I also moved the location of my Aquatic Life 115 skimmer. I do believe that vodka dosing allowed me to go as long as I did without a water change with, so far, no ill effects. I moved the skimmer because once I cleaned it the skimmer couldn't ever get dialed in right.

 

I moved it to chamber 2 since having a skimmer kind of precludes the need for a fuge. I'm now getting some of the darkest skim I've ever had. For the vodka dosing I'm up to about .6ml per day. Water is very clear and the CUC cleans off any residual algae at night. I've scraped my glass maybe 3 times in the last three weeks and I don't see build up along the sand anymore.

 

Next purchases will be calcium and magnesium kits and, pending their results, some dosing supplies. I now have enough SPS that I probably need to start worrying about calc and mag levels. I'm also considering some coral food. The only corals I've fed directly are some acans and massive green palys. They both eat pellets.

 

The die off from my rescued zoa rock has finished and what's left is healthy. There are several very nicely colored zoas on the rock that I'd love to propagate. The green acan I got for free seems to be doing well and all the SPS frags I got are coloring up.

 

All in all this is still the coolest hobby I've ever had. The fact that my daughter thinks it's cool is just icing on the cake!

[RedStang]

Ok, so almost a month since my last update. Still no pics either! I know, I'll get around to them eventually.

 

I had to taper off the vodka since we were going on vacation and I had nobody to dose it. I'll stay off until after our June vacation. Lost the ricordea over vacation because the pistol buried it. Almost lost a pink eye chalice for the same reason but remembered it sooner and it's getting color back. The pistol is now 3/4's the size of the goby. Hope he doesn't eat her at some point....

 

SPS are coloring up well for the most part. My nicest one is pink and purple with bright green polyps. It's encrusting quite well over the frag plug which is a great sign. I have another pink and blue sps that is doing well too. A green setosa(I think) is growing well as is another greenish acro. Zoa's are growing but slowly. Picked up some Marine Snow as coral food. No idea if it's a help or hindrance.

 

Surpisingly, to me at least, it appears the vast majority of CUC has survived this long. I was sure the mass of snails would have died off quickly given their number but they've hung in there. My turbo is even still going strong.

 

 

As for problems, I'm trying to find a way to mount all of my apex equipment in the "open" are directly under the tank on my open stand. I was mounting all of the equipment to a board and apparently unplugged the breakout box. This in turn started the ATO pump. Thankfully, I caught it before the tank overflowed. Took 3 days for enough to evaporate and get it down to a normal level.

 

I lied on my next purchases . I pick up a Vertex IN-280 skimmer this afternoon for my 135 upgrade and ordered 2 50 LED dimmable fixtures for it yesterday! Hoping to get a return pump and sump by July leaving me with powerheads and plumbing left before rock, sand, and water in the 135!

[RedStang]

FTS

 

Goober

 

Marlin

 

Some SPS

 

Cool Zoas. No names but some of the nicest I've seen

 

Zoa rock. Free!

 

Goober again

 

Zoa garden taking shape

 

Hammer time!

 

Front of tank

 

Free favia in the background!

 

Free sps. Turning a cool metallic green

 

 

Marlin and Nemo. Yes, the kids named them.

 

Marlin and Spot with some chalice in the bottom right

 

Red monti that has tripled in size over the last 9 months

 

Frogspawn

[Rrudo74901]

How are you maintaining your calcium levels? I just lost a hammer and cannot keep the calcium up at all even with WC.

[RedStang]

How are you maintaining your calcium levels? I just lost a hammer and cannot keep the calcium up at all even with WC.

 

 

I just use WC's. What kind of salt are you using? I use IO reef crystals. I think I could get better growth but at least I have some.

[Rrudo74901]

I just use WC's. What kind of salt are you using? I use IO reef crystals. I think I could get better growth but at least I have some.

 

Using Instant Ocean purple top bucket. I think that is the same as you are using. Tested calcium last week for the first time and it was under 250. I think that is why the hammer coral died. Just wondering how you were handling it.

[RedStang]

Using Instant Ocean purple top bucket. I think that is the same as you are using. Tested calcium last week for the first time and it was under 250. I think that is why the hammer coral died. Just wondering how you were handling it.

 

Purple top is regular IO. Reef Crystals has an orange top and does have higher calcium levels.