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Cultivated Reef

•The ‘Box - October 2020 Featured Reef


shaner014

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7 minutes ago, JR! said:

Thanks brother @Reefkid88 I might add a sump to my current build so I'm not to worried about the bubbles

 

 

Once I realized my noob mistake with an unrinsed filter sock, I have been micro-bubble free. This version 2 iteration is not that old. 

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I’ve had some algae going on for 1-2 weeks now, it’s been more prominent the past couple days. Tank is still very new and going through it’s phases. Here’s some ugly angle stuff. 

 

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I don’t know what it is, haven’t tried to ID it. My goal this time is to not panic and just assume the weekly water changes and attention to husbandry and responsible feeding will allow this stuff to cycle out over time. 

 

I have purposely let the back wall go without scraping since starting to allow pods to roam back there. It seems to have worked as they are everywhere in that stuff. 

 

Snails are munching this stuff down, you can see what they have cleared in the back wall. Might add a couple more snails and an emerald crab, haven’t decided. Also thought about hermits.... but hermits annoy me often times too, so I don’t know about that either. 

 

Cheers!

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Tuned up the NanoBox tonight. For myself, and to let a friend barrow it for a couple days to try out the spectrum on his tank. He currently has a Gen2 radion over a bubble tip anemone tank. It’ll be interesting to get his feedback! 

 

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Anyways, I scored the Mini Tide that was up for sale a couple days ago so I tossed that over the tank. The lower light for 3 days won’t kill anything and maybe it’ll give my snails time to catch up on the algae. Seeing this over my tank makes me so glad I went with the duo! I’m sure this light could sustain my LPS, but the Duo is just a nicer fit. The comparison isn’t completely fair though, as this ride has a diffuser and light spill snoot installed. 

 

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Eventually I’ll have the Tide over a second tank. :ninja:

 

Last thing, since the light got downgraded for a few days, I took some time to clear a bunch of algae and will use the lower light as an excuse to fight it back a bit. If it lingers for another week or so maybe I’ll bring the reactor online with a small bit of GFO.

 

Cheers! 

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Tank tonight with the Tide. Tank looks ok under blues but the duo wins for sure during the midday. 

 

Got a new hammer and a new ric and a fruit loop frag. 

 

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11 hours ago, shaner014 said:

Tank tonight with the Tide. Tank looks ok under blues but the duo wins for sure during the midday. 

 

Got a new hammer and a new ric and a fruit loop frag. 

 

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How did you have to cut off the intake chamber for the media basket?

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18 minutes ago, Chris882003 said:

How did you have to cut off the intake chamber for the media basket?

 

Theres two little acrylic shelf’s siliconed in chamber one that slice right off with a sharp razor blade and steady hand. The shelf’s hold the filter sock plate and need to be removed for the inTank rack to slide in. They could always be added back later.

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Turns out I got JF Jamba Juice not Fruit Loops last night. I always mix those up. Anyways. I found some fruit loops to grab this week. Here’s a full frontal from tonight.

 

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Once the rock cleans up more I’ll try to shift my pics to a bit warmer spectrum. Blues just look better with the algae around. 

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Deal of the tank so far is the new hammer. Crazy bright. Gotta find some more single heads to fill in around these. 

 

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Ric is still just hanging out there. Not permanent.

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Looking great.  27yrs in the hobby, and for the first time i'm considering going BB.  Really trying to not to just throw  .75" of sand in.  How are you liking it?  Any dead spots or any detritus settle anywhere?  Sans skimmer and light(K1 and Corona for me), we're running the same setup. 

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27 minutes ago, Seanano said:

Looking great.  27yrs in the hobby, and for the first time i'm considering going BB.  Really trying to not to just throw  .75" of sand in.  How are you liking it?  Any dead spots or any detritus settle anywhere?  Sans skimmer and light(K1 and Corona for me), we're running the same setup. 

 

Thank you!

 

This is my 4th tank ever, and first time BB. I have no regrets thus far. Though I'm early on obviously.

 

Being that the tank is new, its a little annoying trying to clean the bottom glass, and I slacked on turkey basting the rock for a bit while the algae was running its course, and a decent amount of detritus did end up accumulating in that algae. Well, when I finally started blasting the rocks again after 10 or so days not, I got a lot of junk flying around. The way flow is in my setup, I get a nice little "pile-o-crap" just behind the zoo island. It whirlpools there sometimes and the pile o crap turns into a tornado o crap and some will fly up into the overflow. I think this is all good. The sand would have held onto all this previously and only so much is exported with vacuuming sand. With BB I can see exactly what I have missed and go back. To that point, I plan to get a smaller siphon tube soon so that I can be slower with cleaning the floor off. 

 

Aesthetically, I think I'm still so impressed with my NanoBox that I haven't even noticed anything else haha. I have also been a little more particular with coral choice this time so I am distracted by that too. Initially in my head, I told myself I would let the tank mature and once I was done adding fish and things were really rocking, I would add sand and I would feel whole again. All that said, I don't think I need to be distracted from the BB look. After the initial super sterile look of it, and now that it has a somewhat duller tone due to bio-film and what not, I don't think I ever want to add the sand. Im pretty invested in the WWC/BRSTV Hybrid method too, and BB is a big component of long-term stability in their eyes. I'd like this tank to run as long as I can keep it going. 

 

TL;DR: Go Bare Bottom!

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Fair enough.  I ended up being gifted the RapidLED Corona and it appears to be a stellar light thus far. From my understanding it's their take on the ecotechs.  I loathe the WiFi only means of adjusting it.  But I get that this is the trending direction.  If I could rock xm10k's and reefbrites w/o a chiller I would. 

I've been watching that series by BRS which I think planted the seed for going BB.  Seeing your tank and I think there's another 20 cube I've seen on the WB Official Group thats BB too.  How often are you having to use the turkey baster?  I've always enjoyed nassarius snails and this would seem to put a damper on those, sand sleeping wrasses and or pistol shrimp goby pairs.     A lot to consider.   This isn't a TL;DR hobby...  I get the sell though. XD  I've been nonstop reading/watching about the pros/cons of BB.  Just curious how it's working out for you given our setups are so similar, so much so I've been considering attempting to trade one of my mp40's(small stockpile of them) for a 1k gyre and give that a try.  I'll likely be running a bit more rock.  

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On 2/23/2019 at 6:45 AM, Seanano said:

Fair enough.  I ended up being gifted the RapidLED Corona and it appears to be a stellar light thus far. From my understanding it's their take on the ecotechs.  I loathe the WiFi only means of adjusting it.  But I get that this is the trending direction.  If I could rock xm10k's and reefbrites w/o a chiller I would. 

I've been watching that series by BRS which I think planted the seed for going BB.  Seeing your tank and I think there's another 20 cube I've seen on the WB Official Group thats BB too.  How often are you having to use the turkey baster?  I've always enjoyed nassarius snails and this would seem to put a damper on those, sand sleeping wrasses and or pistol shrimp goby pairs.     A lot to consider.   This isn't a TL;DR hobby...  I get the sell though. XD  I've been nonstop reading/watching about the pros/cons of BB.  Just curious how it's working out for you given our setups are so similar, so much so I've been considering attempting to trade one of my mp40's(small stockpile of them) for a 1k gyre and give that a try.  I'll likely be running a bit more rock.  

 

Im using the baster every 2-3 days right now, I hit the rocks real good a couple times in the evening and then pull and replace the filter floss that night so I get out what was caught. I think as time goes on it’ll be like my old tanks, just before water changes. 

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Local club had a live sale this weekend. Really overloaded on zoas. Maybe too many even?

 

No pics yet, things are still acclimating. Here’s some silly names of what I got though!

 

Hyper Jubilees

Pink Krakatoa

Fruit Loops

ASD Leprechauns

Scrambled Eggs

WWC Twizzlers

Green Bay Packers

Whammin Watermelons

Candy Apple Reds

Utter Peace

 

Lot of varieties for a nano! More maybe than I even want. I’ll see what does well over the next month or 2 and maybe weed a few out based on keeping more variety of color over anything else. (The pink kraks and ASD leps aren’t going anywhere! Unless they melt haha)

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Saturday night I got a bad feeling about our impending windstorm....

 

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Lost power at 2am Monday morning to windstorm. Wrapped the tank in my favorite blanket and set an alarm for 6 am to start generator if it wasn’t back on.

 

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7:30am Today: tank is back to normal temps with flow. Glad I got this thing! Was annoying to get going out of the box at 6am in the dark though. Shoulda had it all ready to just pull start. I was gonna return it and do my research on what model to buy if we didn’t lose power though.  

 

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Glad you have that. Being home sick this weekend with rain and then a wind storm I was worried too. We had gnarly gusts of 30-40mph after being soaked for nine straight days of rain. 

-D

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48 minutes ago, DaveFason said:

Glad you have that. Being home sick this weekend with rain and then a wind storm I was worried too. We had gnarly gusts of 30-40mph after being soaked for nine straight days of rain. 

-D

 

Thats no fun. We hit 75+ Mph here in Buffalo. They forecasted it too which made me buy this. Very glad I did. 

 

Actually trying to decide right now weather to run the lights or not today haha. 

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Everyone’s happy the lights are back on. Went 20 hours with no power and the house got down to like 57 degrees. Basement, where the tank is, was closer to 51. 

 

The generator was soooooo clutch. Really got lucky. Going to have my house wired up to run one better though. I had to run extension cords for everything, and that’s a pain. As it got colder, I ripped my furnace open and wired it to run off an extension cord. Little sketchy, but it worked flawless. 

 

I’ve since learned you can have a transfer switch/panel installed so that the generator just plugs in, say in your garage, and then you use the power through the normal circuits (though limited). This is on the short list of house upgrades. 

 

Anyways. Here’s 20 minutes ago:

 

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6 hours ago, Reefkid88 said:

#perfection. 

Really appreciate that! I’m certainly striving for that, not quite there yet though. Let’s hope it all still looks as vibrant and is grown in a year from now. 

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