Aaron's 29 Gallon Biocube

[AaronMyers]

OK, time for more pictures because I know how much everyone loves pictures!

Here's my Duncan coral. When I first got it, it had 6 heads, now it has over 30 heads:

 

Here you can see a few of the nubs where new heads were growing.

 

When I first got this coral I was feeding each head a piece of mysis 3 or 4 times a week and it just exploded in growth and I was seeing a couple of new heads sprouting each week. Then I cut back on the feedings for a while and was maybe feeding once a week and now I have stopped feeding the individual heads altogether and I just let it catch whatever it can naturally when I feed the fish. I was also feeding some of those bottled coral foods like Kent Marine Phytoplex and Zooplex and Chromaplex but I don’t think those products did much. I then switched to Reef Nutrition Phyto Feast and I noticed a little more growth from my corals. Now I am using Feeder Feast by Radiant Reef which is a frozen cube food and it has a lot more variety in particle size and my corals really seem to like this. I see more polyp extension and growth from my SPS corals and I recently noticed I have 2 new heads growing on my duncan coral which seemed like it had stopped growing for a while.

In this picture you can see 4 new heads growing in and there are other new heads growing on the other side that you can’t see in this picture.

 

Here it is starting to fill in and look bushier. You can also see where the outer “skin” on the stalk of the coral is starting to grow down over the ball of epoxy putty I used to glue it to the rock.

 

Here’s some nice close up shots:

[AaronMyers]

man your tanks is beautiful love the scape. cant believe i hadnt seen it before i thought i had looked through all the biocube 29 threads lol. and sorry for the loss of the hermit he looked really nice never seen them before.

 

Thanks man, I appreciate it! I just checked yours out and I like it a lot, especially the latest coral additions, I'd like to get a superman monti. I really like the NanoTuners 5.6 LED retro also. If I were to do mine over I would do LED. I love my metal halide but I don't think you get the intense colors out of the corals like you do with LED. I'm actually thinking about replaceing the 2 PC bulbs I have in there now with 2 Ecoxotic Panorama Pro LED modules.

[roly01]

thanks man and, adding a panorama or two would definitely and nice colors, one of the LFS in my a area has and biocube hqi and they modded a panorama the the MH fixture and it makes the one of differnce made the colors pop allot more.

[AaronMyers]

Today I added some chaeto algae to my media rack in chamber 2. I removed the Chemi Pure that was on the bottom rack and put the chaeto there. I figure I don’t need the Chemi Pure anymore since I am running carbon in the media reactor along with the GFO. I am using one of those submersible fuge lights from InTank to supply light for the chaeto. I will be running the fuge light 24/7. Just one more step in the green hair algae battle, which I think I have won. It has now been a month since I installed the BRS media reactor and the green hair algae growth has definitely slowed. I started out with 4.5 teaspoons of GFO in the media reactor and I increase this amount by 1 teaspoon every 2 weeks when I change the media in the reactor so I am now running 6.5 teaspoons. I will continue to do this until I am running 9 teaspoons or 3 tablespoons of GFO. Here’s a few pictures.

 

Here are a few pictures of the back of the tank when I had it moved away from the wall to install the media reactor.

 

I have my chiller in the stand, which I know is a no-no because of the heat they generate, which is why I drilled all the holes in the back panel of the stand for ventilation. I also leave one door open during the day and I have a small fan in there as well, it probably does not do much but I figure every little bit of ventilation for the chiller helps. Under the ballasts you can see the plumbing for the BRS media reactor and to the right of the ballasts you can see the plumbing for the chiller.

 

Here you can see the various cutouts I have had to dremel in the hood for the plumbing and electrical cords.

 

Here is a view inside the stand:

 

Here’s the media reactor. I installed all those extra valves on the right side/return side of the reactor for water changes when I replace the media. This is to flush out the fines from the new media so it doesn’t end up in the tank. I have another length of tubing that I attach to the T. Then I close the bottom valve and open the top valve and the T valve and turn on the pump and drain it into a bucket.

 

Here is the power/timer center. As you can see I am real big on wire management and keeping everything tied up and tidy.

[AaronMyers]

Here’s more coral pictures. This is my frogspawn. When I first got this coral it had 6 heads, now it has around 14 to 16 heads.

 

Here it is a few days after I got it.

 

This is actually one of the brightest corals in my tank at night when the moon lights are on. This picture does not quite do it justice, it really glows at night.

 

Here you can see one of the mouths on one of the heads.

 

This is after moving from my QT tank to the 29 gallon tank. It really started to grow fast after moving it.

 

Here is a top down picture. I had just purchased the torch coral that you see to the right. I had always heard it was OK to place any kind of euphyllia next to each other and they would not sting each other, but I found out the hard way that only applies to frogspawns and hammers. The frogspawn stung the torch pretty bad and 3 of the heads were not looking good. I later removed the torch because all that euphyllia in this tank was taking up too much room.

 

Here I moved the frogspawn from the sand bed to its final location on the live rock. You can also see where the torch coral got stung.

 

It’s hard to get a good picture of this coral from the right side of the tank but this is a pretty good one. You can also see the 2 new pieces of live rock I added to the front left side of the tank that forms an arch to the rock where the frogspawn is.

 

About 4 or 5 months ago the tentacles started to swell and extend longer than normal and the mouths were gaping. Someone told me they do this when they are looking for food, the tentacles swell to create more mass to catch food. At the time I was feeding my tank with various Kent marine coral foods but then I switched to Reef Nutrition Phyto Feast and now I am using Feeder Feast by Radiant Reef and the tentacles have returned to their normal size and the mouths are not gaping anymore, and all my other corals are doing really well and I am seeing great growth from all, so I think I have found a food that my corals really seem to like. Here are pictures of the swollen tentacles.

 

This picture was taken last month.

[JDK]

We need another FTS pic post arch addition. Looks GREAT

[roly01]

nice setup in the stand man! i wish i could get that organized lol , love the way you where able to get everything inside nice and neat. hows the chiller doing in there?

[AaronMyers]

We need another FTS pic post arch addition. Looks GREAT

 

Thanks JDK! Just for you, I will post some FTS pics and better pics of the arch tomorrow. Unfortunately I don't have time tonight so you'll just have to wait

[AaronMyers]

nice setup in the stand man! i wish i could get that organized lol , love the way you where able to get everything inside nice and neat. hows the chiller doing in there?

 

Thanks Roly! The chiller does fine in there as long as I leave one of the doors open. When we have company over I will close the doors but other than that the door in front of the chiller gets left open and with the holes in the back panel it gets plenty of ventilation. I have noticed that if the chiller is on when the doors are closed I can feel a lot of heat coming out of the ventilation holes in the back and it will stay on longer than normal because of the heat in the cabinet, but as soon as I open the doors it usually shust off shortly afterwards.

[Edelmango]

You said you moved your tank to install the reactor......how did you move it full? Did you install casters or something else to slide it?

[Stuginski]

Hi Aaron....

 

Your hedgehog shell crab is awesome!!!!

 

Hails from Brazil

 

D.

[AaronMyers]

You said you moved your tank to install the reactor......how did you move it full? Did you install casters or something else to slide it?

 

I moved it very carefully! The stand is on a tile floor so I just grabbed a corner and started pushing very slowly.

 

Hi Aaron....

 

Your hedgehog shell crab is awesome!!!!

 

Hails from Brazil

 

D.

 

Thanks man! I'm really bummed that he died, he was really cool.

[AaronMyers]

Here those pictures I promised. I just took these today.

 

FTS

 

FTS zoomed in a little more

 

RFTS

 

LFTS

 

On the right side you can see I made a little arch from the rock that the Duncan coral is on, although you can’t see it from the other side because it is overgrown with mushrooms and my pistol shrimp has piled up a bunch of sand on that side also.

 

Here’s a few pics of the new arch from the right side. Sorry it’s a bit blurry, my camera doesn’t take very good pictures through that much water.

 

I managed to get a nice shot of my fire and ice zoanthids here

 

A couple more shots of the arch from the right side. I love the bottom rock of the arch, it has lots of caves in it.

 

Close up pics of the arch from left side

 

Here’s my brain coral chillin’ under the arch. I will post more pics of this coral later.

 

Some of the zoanthids on the arch. I plan on turning the arch into a zoa garden. These are whammin watermelons, devils armor and radioactive dragon eyes.

 

Here’s my orange monti cap, Leng Si monti cap and tri color tenuis corals.

 

Right and left angles

[AaronMyers]

Here’s pictures of my tachyphyllia geoffroyi open brain coral.

 

Here it is in the QT tank on day 1:

 

Here it is a few days later

 

Here it is a few days after moving it to the 29 gallon tank. It started to bleach shortly after this as you can see further on in the pictures. I tried to feed it whenever I saw the feeder tentacles out like in this picture. I would feed it pieces of mysis shrimp.

 

Under actinics.

 

Here you can see the color starting to fade. This was after a few days in the 29 gallon.

 

A few days later I caught this picture of the brain coral expelling zooxanthellae.

 

Here it is the next day.

 

A few nights later I got these shots of some crazy polyp extension. Not sure what the reason was for this and I have not seen it do this since.

 

About a month later you can see the colors are really faded in this picture.

 

This is 2 months later after putting it in the 29 gallon tank I finally moved it back to the QT tank. I kept it in there so long because I thought it would eventually acclimate to the halide bulb and color back up.

 

About 5 months later it had colored back up and about that same time I added to arch to the 29 gallon tank and realized I now had a shaded spot where the brain coral could live so I moved it back. It has been at this spot for about 5 months now and it’s still doing good and not showing any signs of bleaching.

 

Here’s my clowns with the brain coral before I moved them back to the QT tank because my fire fish did not like them.

 

About 3 months ago I found my porcelain crab perched on top of the brain coral. I guess he thought with was a good place to collect particles from the water.

 

Here you can see it’s starting to color up even more.

 

Here it is last month under actinics.

 

Back to its former glory! These were taken 1 month ago.

[ryeguyy84]

I really like the way you ran the lines for that reactor. I've been looking to see how other people did this. where did you get the "U" lines that come out of the rear chambers? I can't find them anywhere.

[AaronMyers]

I really like the way you ran the lines for that reactor. I've been looking to see how other people did this. where did you get the "U" lines that come out of the rear chambers? I can't find them anywhere.

 

Thanks Ryan. The "U" lines are from Drs. Foster & Smith, they are actually directional U-Tubes that I cut the nozzle ends off with a dremel. I just replied to your PM but it looked like there was a problem with sending the message, did you get it?

[AaronMyers]

Time for some updates. First, the bad news. My tail spot blenny died a few weeks ago. One day I noticed he was scratching himself against the rocks and his skin and eyes looked dull and he was breathing very rapidly. So I quickly set up a 10 gallon hospital tank and transferred 10 gallons of water from the display tank to the new hospital tank and then caught the blenny and transferred him to the hospital tank and added some Seachem Cupramine, which is what my LFS recommended for treating a wide range of illnesses. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts he died a few days later. I was really bumbed. I’m just hoping and praying that my other fish don’t come down with what he had. Here are a few of the most recent pics of the little guy, RIP Lenny:

 

 

One of my trochus snails died back in March and this is what I found snacking on it. If anyone knows what kind of worm this is please let me know. It’s not a bristle worm and the small frilly skirt along each side moves in a wave like pattern, almost like the legs of a millipede when it walks.

 

 

In May my peppermint shrimp died. He was over a year and a half old. I replaced him a few weeks ago with a scarlet skunk cleaner shrimp. Here’s a pic of the new shrimp:

 

 

Now that the bad news is out of the way, here’s what’s been happening in the tank. I decided to use some of our tax refund money this year to replace my PC florescent bulbs with 2 Ecoxotic Panorama Pro modules. At first I went with the 12K white and blue combo and the 445nm blue and magenta combo. I didn’t like the color of the magenta, it just looked odd to me, so I returned the 445nm blue and magenta for the all 445nm blue module and I like it much better. Overall, I think the tank looks better with the LED’s. Here’s some pics:

 

LED’s only:

 

 

Metal Halide only:

 

 

Metal Halide & LED:

 

 

Pics of the lights in the hood:

 

[AaronMyers]

This tank has been running for almost 2 years now and my corals have started to outgrow this tank so I decided it was time to do some fragging. I started with fragging all but one of my rhodactis mushrooms. This was urgently needed because the mushrooms were starting to get too close to my orange montipora capricornis and caused it to start to die off on one edge. I had 14 of these mushrooms and they were starting to take up a lot of real estate in my tank. Here’s a pic of the mushrooms from February of this year:

 

 

Here’s a couple of pics of the mushrooms from May of this year just before I started fragging them:

 

 

Here’s a couple pics of the first round of fragging these mushrooms.

 

 

I used a scalpel and cut around the foot of each mushroom and then started cutting through the inner flesh. Since all my rock is glued together and would topple over if I removed any of them, I had to do this in the tank and it made a huge mess. I had rhodactis mushroom guts floating all over in the tank. Needless to say, I did a large 10 gallon water change after this and replaced the carbon and GFO in my reactor. Since this made such a mess, I decided to only frag 5 one day, then I fragged another 4 a few weeks later, then another 4 a few weeks after that. Here’s a pic of the rock after the first round of fragging. You can see where the one mushroom was still making contact with the orange montipora.

 

 

Here’s a couple of pics after the second round of fragging the rhodactis mushrooms.

 

 

And here’s a couple of pics from 2 weeks ago after the third round of fragging the rhodactis mushrooms. I now have just 1 mushroom left. I’ll keep that one and frag any additional mushrooms as it propagates.

 

 

Here’s a few pics of the frags I made with these mushrooms. This rock has 3 mushrooms on it. It had 4 but one wouldn’t stay attached so I moved it to its own rock.

 

 

This rock is from the first round of fragging the mushrooms, it has 2 mushrooms on it. I tried to get all 5 mushrooms on it but 3 ended up melting away, so this is what I was left with.

 

 

For the third round of frags, I put each mushroom on its own frag disc that I made from 2 part epoxy putty that we use for gluing live rock together. To keep them from floating away, I put them in those small glad tuperware containers you buy a the grocery store with a hole cut in the lid to allow some flow to enter the container. Here’s some pics:

 

 

I also decided to move my green Leng Si montipora capricornis. I didn’t place it in a very good spot below the orange montipora. As they grew, the orange montipora shaded the green montipora and caused it to not grow very well. When I broke it away from the rock, it of course crumbled into various pieces. You can see the pieces that I managed to save in the pics above on the frag plugs. Here are some more pics of the green montipora frags and a frag of the orange montipora that I accidentally broke off when I was fragging the rhodactis mushrooms.

 

 

Next project: Turn my 14 gallon biocube that was originally supposed to be a quarantine tank into a frag tank. It only has the stock PC florescent bulbs, so I plan on replacing those with the Ecoxotic Panorama Pro modules and then moving all these frags to that tank and let them grow out.

[AaronMyers]

I also decided to try my hand at fragging my devils armor palythoas. I removed 13 polyps and glued them to a small piece of live rock. Here’s the result:

 

 

Not too bad if I do say so myself.

Here are some progression pics of the devils armor palys. I bought these in July of 2011:

 

 

They really glow under blue LED’s. This is with only the 2 Ecoxotic blue stunner strips on:

 

 

Here they are in February of this year:

 

 

Here they are in May of this year:

 

 

Here’s some progression pics of my orange montipora capricornis. This is one of my favorite corals. It has definitely grown to be the centerpiece of this tank:

Here it is when I first bought it in July 2011:

 

 

September 2011. You can also see the green Leng Si montipora below it:

 

 

February 2012:

 

 

May 2012. You can see where the rhodactis mushroom was touching it and causing it to die off:

 

 

One month ago. You can see where a large chunk broke away when I was trying to chip away the dead spot. This is where the small frag came from:

 

 

2 weeks ago:

 

[AaronMyers]

Here’s some random pics.

Got some really good pics of one of the many brittle star hitch hikers:

 

 

Here’s my wife with her hand in the tank:

 

 

Here’s the brain coral last month:

 

 

Tri color tenuis acropora. You can see where it started to sting the green Leng Si montiopora. I tried to remove the whole coral, but it was really attached to the rock and I couldn’t break it away at the base, so I cut off the top and remounted it a few inches away. It is already starting to get too close to the orange montipora now, so I will probably have to relocate it again soon.

 

 

Metallic orange pavona maldivensis. This coral was originally mounted to the rock under the orange montipora but it started to bleach there, I’m assuming because it wasn’t getting enough light from the montipora shading it so I moved it here and it is starting to color up again and has nice polyp extension again. But now it is too close to the Duncan coral and I noticed the other day that one of the Duncan corals tenticles was touching it, so I removed that head on the duncan coral. It’s getting too crowded in here, I think it’s time for a new tank!

 

 

Top down FTS from a few weeks ago:

 

 

My yellow watchman goby and randali pistol shrimp added a new entrance to their lair under their rock. This is under the small arch under the rock with the Duncan coral.

 

[animalmaster6]

Love this tank!

 

How long has the ywg been paired with a Candy Stripe Pistol?

[Flying Bones]

Beautiful...makes me realize how bad I am at this hobby. :{

[AaronMyers]

Love this tank!

 

How long has the ywg been paired with a Candy Stripe Pistol?

 

Thanks Animalmaster!

The YWG and candy stripe pistol have been paired for a year and a half now. It wasn't as easy as with the tiger pistol I originally had, but the tiger pistol died after 1 week for some reason and my LFS didn't have any more but they did have this candy stripe pistol so I decided to give it a try. It took about a month before I actually observed the YWG in the burrow with the shrimp. He would hang around outside of the entrance and every once in a while he would try to squeeze himself inside but the shrimp just wasn't making the entrance big enough for him to fit and as you know, its a mush smaller shrimp than the tiger pistol. I don't know if the shrimp finally made it big enough for him or if he finally just forced his way in, but they have been together ever since. The YWG does have to turn himself sideways to fit into the burrow entrance. They are so much fun to watch, really comical, I really love the whole goby/shrimp thing.

 

Beautiful...makes me realize how bad I am at this hobby. :{

 

Thanks Flying Bones! I'm sure you're just being hard on yourself. Just the fact that you are in this hobby is awesome, just keep at it!

[animalmaster6]

Thanks Animalmaster!

The YWG and candy stripe pistol have been paired for a year and a half now. It wasn't as easy as with the tiger pistol I originally had, but the tiger pistol died after 1 week for some reason and my LFS didn't have any more but they did have this candy stripe pistol so I decided to give it a try. It took about a month before I actually observed the YWG in the burrow with the shrimp. He would hang around outside of the entrance and every once in a while he would try to squeeze himself inside but the shrimp just wasn't making the entrance big enough for him to fit and as you know, its a mush smaller shrimp than the tiger pistol. I don't know if the shrimp finally made it big enough for him or if he finally just forced his way in, but they have been together ever since. The YWG does have to turn himself sideways to fit into the burrow entrance. They are so much fun to watch, really comical, I really love the whole goby/shrimp thing.

Awesome Shrimp gobies are the best.

[AaronMyers]

Well, I think the water from my LFS when I bought my scarlet skunk cleaner shrimp may have been contaminated and caused the death of my tailspot blenny because now the shrimp is dead. I also bought an emerald crab and 15 small blue legged hermits that same day, the emerald crab was dead within 5 days and I have seen a lot of empty hermit crab shells laying around lately so I think most of the hermits have died off also. That was my first livestock purchase at that LFS, the only reason I bought them was because they were the only place in my area that carried the Ecoxotic modules that I wanted and I needed the livestock, so I figured why not. I know that invertebrates are not affected by fish illnesses like ich, but I'm thinking that they were not in good condition for them to die off so quickly, so maybe there was something going on with the whole combination of water and livestock that was not right. I always drip acclimate my livestock before adding them to my tank and have never had a problem until now, the only difference is where I bought them, so that seems logical to me. I hate to jump to conclusions so quickly, but I won't be purchasing anymore livestock from there, I'll stick with the LFS I usually go to, they are very trust worthy.