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Dave's 20g glass box 🎉 Water Box 20 IS STILL GOING.......


DSFIRSTSLTWATER

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER

So I set up my new water box 20 yesterday. What a PITA transferring everything from the one to the other. I finally have a tank upstairs in the main living room. Had some unexpected things happen, but all in all it went well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey guys, so I have had my tank up for awhile now. I have been on the site since March and I'm finally making a tank journal.

My tank has been going since March and I'd like to think it's going well. I've had more ups than downs for sure and right now I'm battling some GHA which I'm hoping i just figured out.

 

 

My tank:

Water box 20

15 pounds of rock

Bare bottom

AI prime HD

Carbon/ purigen

Hydor ATO( Have but not hooked up on new tank)

Inkbird temp controller with 100w heater

 

Livestock:

BICOLOR BLENNY( NEW AS OF JANUARY 2021)

SOME SORT OF WRASSE 🤷‍♂️(NEW AS OF JANUARY 2021)

Clownfish

Lawnmower blenny(passed away :sad:)

 

Corals

3 hammer corals of different colors  DEAD

Mushroom coral

4 different color acans DEAD

Green star polyps( don't have anymore)

4 rock flower nems

Misc mushroom corals

Cabbage leather(don't have anymore)

2 Favia corals ONLY HAVE ONE. THE OTHER IS DEAD

2 bubble gum digis DEAD

2 purple stylos DEAD

sunny d zoas

 

QUICK UPDATE MAY 2021:

As you can see about I lost a lot of coral. I'm going to be updating this soon to describe what I think happened.

It was sad to watch all those animals die, and there was nothing I could do about it. 

 

 

Crabs

Porcelain crab(disappeared)

Pom pom crab(disappeared)

 

 

So how this tank came to be a saltwater tank.. I had a 75gallon African Cichlid tank and this was the QT tank that I had in my living room. I decided one snow day that I would move it out of the living room and put it downstairs, so I was thinking that since it'll be empty I should turn it to a saltwater tank, been wanting to do saltwater for years and I had done the research. My wife was away so I was like well I'm starting a saltwater tank today. My wife actually didnt mind when I told her what I had done, she said it's about time.

I really didnt have a plan for this tank, but so far I like it and now I'm leaning to all rock flowers and Lps corals.

Here are a few pics when I first set it up....

 

 

It's changed shape a few times and here is what I have now..

 

 

Well here's my story and  I look forward to taking you on my journey.

 

Enjoy 🙂🙂

Dave

 

 

 

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Here are a couple new pics.

 

IMG_20190204_202517.jpg R.I.P. BUDDY

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER

I mentioned that I'm having a little GHA issue at the moment and I'm thinking it's the seachem matrix I have. I'm going to be pulling that out of the filter tonight and I'm just going to run floss and my chemipure to see if my nutrients drop some. I'll post some updates if anything changes.

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER
1 minute ago, spectra said:

I visited...……...then posted and now leaving :tongueout:

HAHA Thanks for stopping by at least :happydance:

 

Just now, vlangel said:

Very nice Dave.  I think RFA and LPS are great choices.  Your current aquascape suits that too.  I look forward to watching your tank progress.

Thanks :smilie:, I've been working on it for a while. My next tank will be more calculated this was a on the whim set-up. I still don't know if I like the structure, but as of now it stays. Placing corals has been the hardest part of this. I'll have to post a pic when I get home of my oops moment with the hammer in the center top of the tank....I'll explain that when I put the pic up.

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER
3 minutes ago, vlangel said:

Very nice Dave.  I think RFA and LPS are great choices.  Your current aquascape suits that too.  I look forward to watching your tank progress.

I can't wait till things fill out some. I'll have some old pics to post of my first favia and what it looks like now. It's cool to watch everything grow.

So far only two casualties... one clownfish and my clove polyps

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2 hours ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

I can't wait till things fill out some. I'll have some old pics to post of my first favia and what it looks like now. It's cool to watch everything grow.

So far only two casualties... one clownfish and my clove polyps

For me, if I can keep a fish alive for 2 weeks, then I relax and usually enjoy that fish for years, some even a decade or more.  The first weeks of transition can be rough however.

 

Clove polyps like high nutrient (dirty) water.  Your tank may have been too new.

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER
1 hour ago, vlangel said:

For me, if I can keep a fish alive for 2 weeks, then I relax and usually enjoy that fish for years, some even a decade or more.  The first weeks of transition can be rough however.

 

Clove polyps like high nutrient (dirty) water.  Your tank may have been too new.

Lol I figure with my GHA issue their would be enough for them lol. When I got them, they we're good for probably 4 months, then I noticed they started to kinda melt away. I have heard some people just can't keep them. Who knows..I still have a few but my rock flower might be killing them.

I took my matrix out of the filter and I'm gonna let it roll with floss and chemipure and see if I can get the algae to dissolve.

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER

So here is the current stock. I have some orange glasses that I use to take pics. What do you guys think?

So in the pic with my hammer corals, you'll notice one upper part that looks mostly dead, yup I did that by a stupid lapse in judgement. This accident happened almost 3 weeks ago and I'm shocked as hell to see it recover.

So I decided one night that I wanted to scrub some hair algae off the base, so I took it out and scrubbed the base, well I noticed something where the flesh was. I took tmy little toothbrush and tried to brush the flesh gently and low and behold i popped or ruptured the flesh. I thought it was for sure dead, well here we are three weeks later and the flesh is coming back. It has filled in and seems it may actually survive.

Moral of this long post is don't be me, don't toothbrush your hammer coral 😶

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER

So since I pulled the matrix out of the filter, I'm going to do a deep cleaning either tonight or tomorrow and see if I notice a change in the algae area. I really hope so, I hate that it's there. I've had this running for almost 9 months and I didn't even get this when the tank was new. I made sure of it. I am going to be getting some macro algae because I really like the looks of them. Now the question is what kind to get? I am looking at algae barn and I like what they have.

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER

Ok well I've done a really deep cleaning. Scrubbed the shit out of rocks and vacuumed the hell out of the sand bed. Now I wait and see if it was indeed the matrix. Here are some really shitty pics,but you can see where I scrubbed the algae. Waters kinda murky from all the cleaning.

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blizzardscout2

I wouldn’t get too frustrated with the algae as your reef is still very young. Usually at a year it begins to get a lot easier to manage algae as your reef matures. Looking nice, love the RFAs!

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER
Just now, blizzardscout2 said:

I wouldn’t get too frustrated with the algae as your reef is still very young. Usually at a year it begins to get a lot easier to manage algae as your reef matures. Looking nice, love the RFAs!

Thanks for that 🙂...it has been getting a little frustrating the last couple months. That shit gets all over everything, so when I scrub and suck it out, I've been using a fish net to try and grab as much as I can.

I'm going to be starting a 75g within the next few months and the coral that is in this tank will be moving. I think this tank may end up just being nems. I'm at the point where I don't know where anything is going to go and I don't wanna load up the sand bed.

Next tank will be a lot more planned out lol.

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I had a massive gha problem in my cube . I was doing weekly 40perecnt changes for a year.  I did a 35 day fluczole treatment and stopped water changes and started dosing then bam gha gone.. now I do a w.c. like every couple months and stuff is more stable and clean...

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER
2 minutes ago, Weikel said:

I had a massive gha problem in my cube . I was doing weekly 40perecnt changes for a year.  I did a 35 day fluczole treatment and stopped water changes and started dosing then bam gha gone.. now I do a w.c. like every couple months and stuff is more stable and clean...

I don't need a skimmer to for that do I? I may try it if I can't get it to go away with water changes and scrubbing.

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5 minutes ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

I don't need a skimmer to for that do I? I may try it if I can't get it to go away with water changes and scrubbing.

No skimmer the stuff I used is called reef flux... they had to rebrand it and say it's not for alagae but it works.. the thing is your tank has to survive the 30 days without water changes so if your tank will use too much alk and ca then you should dose those to keep the coral happy 

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER
4 minutes ago, Weikel said:

No skimmer the stuff I used is called reef flux... they had to rebrand it and say it's not for alagae but it works.. the thing is your tank has to survive the 30 days without water changes so if your tank will use too much alk and ca then you should dose those to keep the coral happy 

I might be able to get away with it. I'll test and see what it consumes and go from there. Thanks for the advice 🙂. Last time I tested for a week my calcium stayed right on and my alk was holding steady. I'm curious to see what would happen.

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER

I haven't gotten my blenny to eat since I've had him. Granted I have plenty of algae for him to eat but I want to make sure that'll be fine for him to live off of. He's not getting skinny so I'm pretty sure he's fine, it's more so a piece of mind that I'm doing ok with him. ehh could just be worrying for nothing I guess.

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1 hour ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

I haven't gotten my blenny to eat since I've had him. Granted I have plenty of algae for him to eat but I want to make sure that'll be fine for him to live off of. He's not getting skinny so I'm pretty sure he's fine, it's more so a piece of mind that I'm doing ok with him. ehh could just be worrying for nothing I guess.

What all have you tried?  

 

Put in sheets for him to graze on if you are worried. 

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DSFIRSTSLTWATER
6 minutes ago, WV Reefer said:

What all have you tried?  

 

Put in sheets for him to graze on if you are worried. 

Oh damn you're a genius 😀. I have been trying to get him to eat the algae frozen squares. Nori sheets right? Do i have to take the sheets out if he doesn't finish?

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Just now, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

Oh damn you're a genius 😀. I have been trying to get him to eat the algae frozen squares. Nori sheets right? Do i have to take the sheets out if he doesn't finish?

Yeah.  Don’t let it pollute the water. If he’s the only one eating just rubber band a piece to a rock and see if he’s into it.  Also there are various sizes of algae pellets and wafers.  

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