(biocube 29 HQI)

[nano0112]

I am, by every means of the label, a newbie when it comes to aquariums. Other than the occasional fresh water growing up, I have never had an aquarium that was officially a member of the family like I plan on this one to become. With that being said, I ordered the Biocube 29 HQI from the Marine Depot 4 days ago and it will be here in about a week. I have a friend that has the standard Biocube 29 and between him and all the research I am lost on what I should do. My main question is, besides the obvious necessities of live sand, rock, salt water, testing kits.... does the HQI qualify as a good starter tank? Should I upgrade the lighting or protein skimmer right away? should I install a water chiller? should I mod anything? between sump this and fugium that I just want the first year to be the best it can for my rock, sand, and possible starter corals...

[RedStang]

Ditch the bio balls and stock filtration. Go to mediabaskets.com and buy yourself a media rack, filter floss, purigen, and chemi-pure elite. Set the purigen and chemi-pure aside for now. If you want the refugium buy that too but with a skimmer it may not be necessary. Be prepared to throw away the biocube skimmer.

 

Buy 2 50w heaters. Not one 100w heater. Get a decent power head such as an Ecotech MP10 if you can afford it or a Koralia Nano 425GPH otherwise.

 

Research, and then invest in, an auto top off(ATO) unit.

 

Oh yes, learn what RODI stands for if you don't know and then use nothing but.

 

Get 20lbs "live" sand. May need another 10 depending on how deep you like the look of your sand. My opinion is don't raise it past the black trim cause it ends up looking nasty. Get some combination of Live Rock(LR) and base rock that equals roughly 20lbs give or take a couple either way. At a minimum 5lbs should be LR IMO to seed the rest and help establish your cycle. I wouldn't get more than 10lbs LR unless you get a great deal or have the money to blow. See comment about MP10 first though if you have the money to blow as well as a controller.

 

Do NOT cycle the tank with a live fish.

 

Setup your tank away from direct sun light.

Mix up or buy 20-25 gallons of salt water.

Put your LR in as many 5gal buckets, with salt water, as necessary to hold them.

Arrange your rock in the tank until you are happy.

Do NOT let it tip over and fall or you WILL scratch the crap out of your glass. Ask me how I know.

Once you have your rock in place set firmly on the bottom of the tank add your live sand.

Put a plate, bowl, whatever on the sand to absorb the impact of the water and fill her up.

Throw in a piece of dead shrimp to kick off the cycle but I'd take it out after a day or so.

Start testing every couple of days. You might/should see an ammonia spike followed by nitrite, followed by nitrate.

 

Order your clean up crew(CUC) when you get a diatom bloom AND ammonia and nitrite is 0. When you get them match temp by floating them and make sure salinity matches. Ask whoever you get the CUC from what salinity they come from and match it so you don't need to drip acclimate. If you've pre matched salinity(double check what they tell you), just match temp and dump them in.

 

Welcome to the extreme basics of getting started. I just saved you countless hours of browsing through other people's build threads only to find out that most of us do it this way with minor differences .

Now, go read through a bunch of build threads because you should NEVER trust single opinions in this hobby. Verify what you read before doing it.

 

Your lighting will be fine but you may want to at least look into LED's for when summer comes and you can't figure out how to keep temps down.

Remember, what I wrote above is based off of my experience and what I've read for the most part and not what I KNOW to be true.