Krish's Waterbox Cube 7 - The Lost Ruins of the Sacred Elegance

[Krish87]

Waterbox Cube 7 - Mixed Nano Reef

 

WHY A NEW TANK?!

 

Alright, here we go! My much awaited Waterbox 7 is all ready to get into its cycling phase. My BioCube 16 LED will be a year old next month. It has gone through 2 significant transitions and the tank is doing great (thanks to many folks on this forum who have always been helping and providing wonderful guidance). As the corals are outgrowing, I usually give them to my local reefer  buddies or give them to my local LFS for some store credit. It was not long ago, I thought it would be awesome if I had another tank (a small one considering the space factor) just to move a few corals from my current setup and ensure that there is no unseen warfare in the tank and someone eventually giving up.

 

So as I was browsing through for a potential fit, I stumbled onto a great offer for the Waterbox Cube 7 at Saltwater Aquariums, and given I had some credits from some of my previous purchases, it did not take my more than 15 min to decide and go for it! It is indeed exciting to know that now I have one more tank where I can do everything right that I did wrong when I started with my BioCube 🙂 Experience teaches you many things, and this being a hobby that warrants continuous learning - one more tank, why not! Let's do it!

 

 

WATERBOX CUBE 7 FEATURES

 

◕ Glass Thickness: 5 mm

◕ Tank Length: 11.8"

◕ Tank Width: 12.2"

◕ Tank Height: 11.8"

◕ Total Volume (Gal): 6.8 Ga

 

 

TANK HIGH LEVEL CHARACTERISTICS

 

⇨ Aquascape : 4.5 lb. of Live Rock

⇨ Sand : 10 lb. of CaribSea Hawaiian Black Arag-Alive! Live Reef Sand

⇨ Heater : Cobalt Aquatics Neo-Therm Heater, 25 Watt

⇨ Lighting : AI Prime HD+

⇨ Powerhead : Hydor Koralia Nano 240

⇨ Pump : AquaTop NP-80

⇨ Skimmer : Reef Glass (it tucks in perfectly in the second chamber)

⇨ Screen: DIY Screen Kit

 

 

SUMP DETAILS

 

Chamber 1

In the first chamber, there is the InTank Media Basket (very compact and enough space for a filter floss, little Carbon and Phosguard)

 

Chamber 2

This chamber houses my heater and skimmer. Good enough space for the Neo-Therm heater to be one side and the Reef Glass skimmer to be on the other. 

 

Chamber 3

This has the return pump and the ATO inlet.

 

Here are some pics of the setup.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm still playing with the aquascape. Should have it ready tomorrow and then I shall pics 🙂Livestock additions will follow once I'm through with cycling!

 

Can't wait to see how the colors of the coral pop with the contrast of the Black sand bed.

[banasophia]

Niiiice! Can’t wait to see the scape!!

[dling]

Nice start. Thats a great little setup.

[Krish87]

Here is what the scape looks like. I tried my best to get some real estate in the middle (free sand bed) for my Trachy and maybe one more center display. There is still good amount of space on the rocks and especially the full back corners. Let's see how it all shapes up once I put the corals in 🙂 

 

 

 

[Krish87]

Live Rock and Live Sand indeed speeding up the cycle. Will be adding a snail or two tomorrow to double check the cycling process completion and over the next couple of weeks, will add a coral to see if stability sustains.

[WV Reefer]

On 4/12/2019 at 7:31 PM, Krish87 said:

Here is what the scape looks like. I tried my best to get some real estate in the middle (free sand bed) for my Trachy and maybe one more center display. There is still good amount of space on the rocks and especially the full back corners. Let's see how it all shapes up once I put the corals in 🙂 

 

 

 

 

I like it! 😊

[Krish87]

After a phase of patience with the cycle, and a tad struggle with finding the right light intensity for a 7G with an AI Prime, we finally have it all set up 🙂 

 

 

@banasophia -This took a while but finally done. Will be sharing individual coral pics shortly.

[Krish87]

Alright, coral pictures! I started with an idea to make this an LPS only tank, but I guess this will house 1 SPS and 2 soft corals as I ran out of space in the BioCube 🙂

 

Purple Tip Hammer with Neon Green Tentacles

 

[Krish87]

The Island of the Acans

 

[Krish87]

Good Old Toadstool

 

[banasophia]

Ah man, very nice Krish! This tank is really coming along, and I think I just decided acans may be my favorite corals... yours are gorgeous!! 😍😍😍

[ReeferBray]

Very nice looking tank great work

What are you dosing or do you just do waterchanges and how often? 

[Krish87]

8 hours ago, banasophia said:

Ah man, very nice Krish! This tank is really coming along, and I think I just decided acans may be my favorite corals... yours are gorgeous!! 😍😍😍

Yes, so finally the idea of a second tank did not let me down. I put all my learning onto this one. The BioCube journey was so helpful after all 🙂 

 

That being said, the biggest challenge I met with was finding the sweet spot of the AI over a 7G. It is such an awesome and powerful light, if not programmed correctly, it might have burnt many corals in this small nano. After a lot of struggle, I think I have found something that every coral loves. Also, this being a tank dominated by corals that like low light, it became all the more arduous! 😞 But we are getting there!!! 

 

I wanted to make this display look stunning with colors, hence I carefully chose the corals. Hopefully when the GSP outgrows that Tonga rock, and when the Toadstool gets bigger with the Neon Green Stylo that I have got in there lat week, it would look really gorgeous!!!

 

I'm not very happy with the flow that I got in there, am working on a better solution. The Koralia Nano is not doing what I expected it to do! 

 

I'll keep this post running, stay tuned.

[Krish87]

7 hours ago, ReeferBray said:

Very nice looking tank great work

What are you dosing or do you just do waterchanges and how often? 

Hello @ReeferBray - thank you so much 🙂 

 

I just do water changes often. I have not started dosing on this yet! I do a water change every 10 days (considering it is a smaller tank, water change is easier and helps to keep supplying the nutrients the corals need).

 

But that said, when the corals grow, I might need to start dosing to meet the higher nutrient demands.

[Krish87]

Pics for the day...

 

The Zoa Island

 

 

[Krish87]

Lobophyllia Brain Coral

 

[ReeferBray]

Great work keep me updated buddy

[BehindGlass]

On 6/11/2019 at 4:24 PM, Krish87 said:

After a phase of patience with the cycle, and a tad struggle with finding the right light intensity for a 7G with an AI Prime, we finally have it all set up 🙂 

 

You may need to share those settings with me since we both have the same tank and light setup 

[Krish87]

22 minutes ago, BehindGlass said:

You may need to share those settings with me since we both have the same tank and light setup 

I’ll share the file! Let me know when you are ready to fire it up. 

Man... it took me many attempts to get the right intensity for the tank of this size, especially to crack the math for the amount of corals (their types) and the depth of the tank.

I’ve modified the David Saxby setup for this nano. I use it for my BioCube and it’s been awesome so far!!!

[BehindGlass]

7 hours ago, Krish87 said:

I’ll share the file! Let me know when you are ready to fire it up. 

Man... it took me many attempts to get the right intensity for the tank of this size, especially to crack the math for the amount of corals (their types) and the depth of the tank.

I’ve modified the David Saxby setup for this nano. I use it for my BioCube and it’s been awesome so far!!!

Within the next couple of days. I'm thinking about getting it wet tonight if I can get my schedule lined up. Next I have to figure out how to download everything to do such. 

[Krish87]

An Update Long Due . . .

 

So... I have been wanting to update this journal from a while, but I faced a lot of unknowns with this setup and hence the delay. My apologies to the the ones following this post.

 

When I started the tank, it was like a dream. I had everything in place, all good and ready to rock and roll. I waited patiently for the cycle to complete, surprisingly I was all done in 15 days. I waited for a week more, and then added my corals in. 

 

I transferred a couple of corals from my BioCube into this, and then added new ones  I was all happy and pumped to see the tank doing so well.

 

Then started the challenges . . . 

 

FIRST BATTLE - THE ALGAE ATTACK

After a successful two weeks, the algae bloom started. It was just crazy - film algae all over the glass. It was slowly spreading over the rocks, but very surprisingly not over the corals. That was such a big sigh of relief! I managed to clean the glass and make it spick and span. But I noticed that the live-rock was not looking that good. My cleaning crew clearly were on strike, as I couldn't see them doing their jobs. I carefully scrapped off the algae off of the rocks, which made it look aesthetically pleasing again. Phew! 

 

But was I through? Not yet. . . nope! The film algae problem was happening every other day. I thought I goofed up my light intensity, so I tweaked that to make sure that it is not a lot (I was on pretty low settings already). I was seeing some improvement, but I wasn't very satisfied with the result. 

 

SECOND ROADBLOCK - THE BROWN DUST

To my sorrow, I then found loose brown dust on the sand-bed. I was confused as to whether it was diatoms or detritus or something else. I could rule out the detritus suspicion as I had established a pretty good flow. When I used to just stir the sand-bed, I could clearly notice that the brown dust used to loosely float in the water. Not slimy, not sticky, just dust. I was really confused. I then wondered, it could be a possibility that I didn't rinse the sand properly. I was very baffled.

 

Finally, there came a day when I had to move the tank to another room. I took down the whole tank, and when I did so, I got an opportunity to vacuum the whole sand-bed removing all that brown dust off of the bottom, making the sand look jet black as it was before. I set the whole tank again and had to re-do the aqua-scape to house more corals. This was perhaps a blessing in disguise as all the brown dust was gone, very less film algae (the typical amount) and tank is looked much better then.

 

THIRD CHALLENGE - OPTIMUM LIGHT INTENSITY

This is a 7G setup, and I have an AI Prime. Yes, that a herculean amount of light for such a small size tank. I faced a tough time in figuring out what is the right intensity of the channels together that not only helps the corals to photosynthesize, sustain growth, control the algae but also makes it a great display to look at! I finally got a good setup in place. It has been up and running since 2 weeks, and I am observing a very less algae (albeit a few here and there on the rocks, but the new clean up team is doing their job well) and zero irritation on corals.

 

As of now, this is a coral only setup. My plan is to wait for another few weeks and then add a Tailspot Blenny (just one fish ). 

[Krish87]

ACANTHASTREA LORDHOWENSIS

[Krish87]

PURPLE TIP ELEGANCE (Catalaphyllia Jardinei)

 

[Krish87]

More FTS and coral pictures coming soon . . . 

[dling]

I really like elegance corals. I have one . Its gotten so large since adding it to my tank. Nice job on all your livestock.