PRJ Posted January 9, 2014 Share Posted January 9, 2014 That growth you're seeing in such a short time is INSANE. Longest coral in my tank is a hammer I've had a month and it is still at 3 heads! Although, they open up a lot bigger now than before! 1 Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 9, 2014 Author Share Posted January 9, 2014 What are you using for the ATO reservoir? and where are you keeping it? Thanks in advance. Using a 7 gallon camping water container. It's in the third cabinet to the right in the stand. I saw a pretty cool 10G acrylic ATO reservoir on eBay that i'll probably order next month. It looks pretty bad ass and should be easier to bring water to it to fill it. Today I have to lug the container over to the laundry room every few days to fill. That growth you're seeing in such a short time is INSANE. Longest coral in my tank is a hammer I've had a month and it is still at 3 heads! Although, they open up a lot bigger now than before! Yeah, I hear you. I had all these corals in my Biocube and haven't seen growth anywhere near this. The frogspawn didn't grow at all for the past three months (after the acans fell on it and wiped half of it out). The Joker Frogspawn grew 2 new heads in the biocube over the 6 months I had it. That's more growth in three weeks in the new tank thank I had in three months in the old one. I have to admit I am some what disappointed that you love it so much....now I have to get this lol. I was hoping there was some negative that would keep me way. But I love shallow reefs. Can't wait to see where this goes! Full tank shot please Here's the FTS i promised 1 Quote Link to comment
rfalk Posted January 9, 2014 Share Posted January 9, 2014 Tank looks great! No problems running the skimmer in the middle chamber? 1 Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 10, 2014 Author Share Posted January 10, 2014 Tank looks great! No problems running the skimmer in the middle chamber? Thanks! No, no problem with the skimmer in the middle chamber except it looks pretty goofy. It is doing a great job skimming. The skimmer, media reactor and blue hermits have really cut down on what was looking like an ominous algae bloom. I figured out a way to trim of a bit more of the sides of the skimmer so i can adjust it further. I should be able to set out a little lower in the tank. Will try it tomorrow and update y'all. Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 12, 2014 Author Share Posted January 12, 2014 Added a bunch of livestock this week. 30 Blue Leg Hermits (small) 8 White Leg Hermits (medium) 2.5" Orange Linckia Starfish 5" Red and neon green Symphyllia 3" Bright Red/Pink and neon green Lobophyllia 4" Green and Red acans 3.5" Purple and lime green acans 30 Periwinkle (suicide) snails 100 Nassarius snails Corals are all doing awesome (thank you Extremecorals.com!!!) The blue hermits have picked every spot of algae off the rocks. They did such a great job that I'm a little worried about food supply. The white hermits have cleaned the sand until it's back to sparkling white. For a fine sand bed they beat out every hermit I've ever had. Only place I can seem to find them is reefs2go.com (great prices) or ebay (not so great prices). I never heard of periwinkle snails until I saw them on ebay. They're fantastic at cleaning algae off rocks, glass and the back wall. only problem is they seem to want to climb to the highest point of the tank. Since I can't keep the screen on right now due to the light mounts, I had about 10 commit suicide by climbing out at night. the ones that didn't die got moved to my biocube since it has a lid. The Nassarius snails all buried themselves into the sand which is exactly what I wanted them to do. Since adding the snails the water has gotten really cloudy. Hoping it'll clear up in a couple days. Could be a new bacteria bloom which is good and should level itself out. here are some pics of the new corals. Also added a picture of the skimmer to show how much it's collecting. and then some pictures to show some of the new growth on the joker frogspawn and duncan. you can really tell first thing in the morning before they open up. You can see how two of the heads on the frogspawn split into four heads (another one in the back split as well). The duncan just seems to keep adding new heads every day. Crazy... Quote Link to comment
Cameron6796 Posted January 12, 2014 Share Posted January 12, 2014 Uhm you know how hard starfish are right 1 Quote Link to comment
Fishstiks Posted January 13, 2014 Share Posted January 13, 2014 Wow. That tank is amazing! My LFS recently got this tank (and the SR60), and I REALLY wanted to get one. I ended up going with the IM Nuvo 38, both for space and budget, but your build has me drooling! Might have to find some space in the house for it after all! ;-) I love your aquascape! 1 Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 13, 2014 Author Share Posted January 13, 2014 Uhm you know how hard starfish are right LOL, yup. Somehow the water parameters have been perfect so far. I really expected ammonia and nitrate spikes or at least unstable readings. Will keep you posted on how the little guy does. You know what I always struggled with keeping? Xenia. No matter what i do it shrivels to nothing. Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 13, 2014 Author Share Posted January 13, 2014 Wow. That tank is amazing! My LFS recently got this tank (and the SR60), and I REALLY wanted to get one. I ended up going with the IM Nuvo 38, both for space and budget, but your build has me drooling! Might have to find some space in the house for it after all! ;-) I love your aquascape! Thanks Fishstiks! I really like the Nuvos. I may convert my 29G BioCube to a Nuvo 30. I actually like all the Innovative Marine products. The media reactors are fantastic. This Nuvo SRs go on sale from time to time online. Getting 15% off made it too hard to resist! Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 14, 2014 Author Share Posted January 14, 2014 Three days of cloudy water. Water parameters are perfect. Started after i added the snails. My green frogspawn, duncans and yellow toadstool leather are pissed off. Looks like it may be a bacteria bloom. Going to add carbon via media bag. May add UV for a day or so too. The duncans looked the worst so i moved then back to the BioCube for now. Funny thing is the lobophyllia and symphyllia seem to love it. So do the palys and zoas. Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 14, 2014 Author Share Posted January 14, 2014 Tank looks great! No problems running the skimmer in the middle chamber? Rftalk - FYI, after making my latest mods to the skimmer so that I can have it sit a bit deeper in the water, I tried to move it out of the middle chamber into the second chamber on the left. Bad Idea. The water from that chamber goes into the middle chamber where the pumps are. Micro bubbles galore. Once I moved it back into the middle and sat it down deeper with the modification, it's working great. Now if I could just get rid of the cloudy water i'd be thrilled! Quote Link to comment
rfalk Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Thanks for the update cant wait to see where this goes. Maybe after it breaks in you wouldn't have such bad micro bubbles. 1 Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 14, 2014 Author Share Posted January 14, 2014 Thanks for the update cant wait to see where this goes. Maybe after it breaks in you wouldn't have such bad micro bubbles. Agreed. It's really pumping out quite a bit of dark green soup. I think it's a keeper for sure. Would really like to move it over to that other chamber! Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 15, 2014 Author Share Posted January 15, 2014 Updated my first post with revised list of equipment and added livestock list. Found the miracle cure for my cloudy water / bacteria bloom. Tried carbon Sunday night. Only made a small dent after 24 hours. I ordered a 24W Green Killing Machine UV Sterilizer from Amazon.com on Monday afternoon. It came last night (Tuesday - gotta love Amazon Prime). $64 well spent. Water is crystal clear after less than 12 hours using the UV sterilizer. I was able to turn it off this morning. Using the sterilizer with my skimmer doubled the dark green crap it usually collects in a day. I'll probably keep the UV sterilizer off for now and see what happens. All my corals are starting to cheer up except my Yellow Toadstool. Need to keep an eye on him. Looks like he may not make it. Acans were all fat and happy this morning, even without any light. Turned my MP 40 up to about 55% from 50%. I decided to snap some pics with my cell phone (LG G2). You can see how sad the leather looks. I used the panorama setting for the FTS (a little blurry but still kinda cool). Let me know your thoughts... Quote Link to comment
Cameron6796 Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 LOL, yup. Somehow the water parameters have been perfect so far. I really expected ammonia and nitrate spikes or at least unstable readings. Will keep you posted on how the little guy does. You know what I always struggled with keeping? Xenia. No matter what i do it shrivels to nothing.I've heard of this people either have phsyco Xenia or Xenia that dies if u look at it the wrong way Also good to hear the water is clear 1 Quote Link to comment
lilmatty5dimes Posted January 23, 2014 Share Posted January 23, 2014 awesome build. it reminds me of my biocube..... just on a ton of steroids. everything looks great. Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 24, 2014 Author Share Posted January 24, 2014 awesome build. it reminds me of my biocube..... just on a ton of steroids. everything looks great. Thanks! LOL about the biocube. So true. Honestly, i really, really dig the all-in-one design. I see threads about people building custom sumps and drilling holes and all that. I get it, because it's part of the hobby (building, customizing, etc). For me personally, I'm just really glad I didn't have to do all that. I still have my 29G biocube. Thought about getting rid of it but it took me a year to get it exactly how I like it. I can't imagine parting with it! I think over time i'll just start using it as a live rock / frag tank. the Paly's in it are growing like mad. Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 24, 2014 Author Share Posted January 24, 2014 Time for another quick update... Skimmer still working like a champ. Just a major PITA and sort of an eyesore. May swap it out for a couple PLS 50's at some point. Still producing quite a bit of micro-bubbles too... All inhabitants are doing well. I am concerned about the Symphyllia though. Looks like it's bleaching a bit. The pictures look worse than it really is but i've moved it to the back of the tank with less light and flow for now. The bacteria bloom really messed with my Duncans and the Yellow Leather. The duncans were so bad I moved them back to the biocube while I got the bloom under control. They've made a full recovery and even sprouted two new heads. The yellow leather drooped like a dead flower for the past week. I moved it closer to the powerhead to get some direct flow. She's starting to perk back up now :-) The Acans are doing awesome. The reds are still making their slow recovery from the fight with the frogspawn. The three different green ones get really fat around noon. I tried to get a shot of three new heads on one of them. Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 24, 2014 Author Share Posted January 24, 2014 Here's a before and after pic of the Symph. Also cut the lights by 15%. Quote Link to comment
mpsti05 Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Kill that damsel now before you regret it! Or just get rid of it, it will grow fast and turn into the tank asshole and start to eat everything and pick on any new fish you may introduce. 1 Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 Kill that damsel now before you regret it! Or just get rid of it, it will grow fast and turn into the tank asshole and start to eat everything and pick on any new fish you may introduce. LOL. I definitely have my eye on him. My 3 year old daughter bought him for my wife. That's the only thing saving him. Quote Link to comment
Cameron6796 Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Awe that's so cute, I'd feel horrible getting rid of it 1 Quote Link to comment
lilmatty5dimes Posted January 26, 2014 Share Posted January 26, 2014 lovely acans. looks great. 1 Quote Link to comment
gahumphrey Posted January 26, 2014 Author Share Posted January 26, 2014 Awe that's so cute, I'd feel horrible getting rid of itShe is adorable unitil her 3 year old anger kicks in. She'd be reminding me until she's 34. :-)I also have this wierd guilt thing with the tank inhabitants. I left the murderous Pistol Shrimp and Queen Conch in the Biocube. The conch eats other snails and the pistol eats anything that gets too close. lovely acans. looks great.Thanks! Going to keep adding different acans to that arch till most of it is covered. Going to try to do something similar with palys and zoas on the smaller arch. Quote Link to comment
Cameron6796 Posted January 27, 2014 Share Posted January 27, 2014 Do you have any pics or a thread for the biocube Quote Link to comment
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