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Mrs. Limpet's Biocube 16


Mrs. Limpet

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Mrs. Limpet

Mrs. Limpet's Biocube 16 established May 27, 2019

 

I am starting my first nano tank. I have have many tanks over the years- freshwater, FOWLR, reef. I currently have a 75g tropical freshwater that I started in November of 2014. I have the bug to do reef again. I've decided to do a nano tank so that it will fit nicely in my living room where I can enjoy it . Lurking on this site for the past year, and more so since becoming a member last November I've decided to get a biocube 16 and learn from the members on this site.  Currently my tank is going through the cycle stage, I've opted to use Dr. Tim's ammonia and bio spira to cycle instead of my usual fish cycle. I will post my journey and look forward to sharing my results. 

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6 minutes ago, Mrs. Limpet said:

Mrs. Limpet's Biocube 16 established May 27, 2019

 

I am starting my first nano tank. I have have many tanks over the years- freshwater, FOWLR, reef. I currently have a 75g tropical freshwater that I started in November of 2014. I have the bug to do reef again. I've decided to do a nano tank so that it will fit nicely in my living room where I can enjoy it . Lurking on this site for the past year, and more so since becoming a member last November I've decided to get a biocube 16 and learn from the members on this site.  Currently my tank is going through the cycle stage, I've opted to use Dr. Tim's ammonia and bio spira to cycle instead of my usual fish cycle. I will post my journey and look forward to sharing my results. 

20190528_112912.jpg

 

Welcome to NR! 😊

 

Looks nice so far. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Mrs. Limpet

My tank has finally finished cycling. Yay! I made some changes to the rockscape. I enjoy caves and swim throughs. And I think I got the best I could for this size tank. I also put in the wave maker today and traded out the stock rack for an In Tank media rack.... Well worth the money. I will be adding livestock on Tuesday. I'm so excited. 20190608_131507.thumb.jpg.4b76a7a4e28cc9a660f045677648efed.jpg

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Mrs. Limpet
1 hour ago, Staticmoves said:

Are you planning on some SPS. Looks like a few nice spots up high.

Yes I'm planning on it. I'm still in planning stages in my head, but built the rock scape with ideas in mind. I enjoy differ t heights and depts of field. Hope I'm able to translate my vision to reality. 🙂

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Mrs. Limpet

I made another slight change to my rock work. The top shelf I leveled it out a bit. My tank is ready for livestock! Yay. I'm on my way to the LFS now. 

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Mrs. Limpet

I have my first livestock. Yay! A blood red cleaner shrimp and and pink birds nest coral. The shrimp really likes the double cave I created. 

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Mrs. Limpet

A few more corals light acclimating on the bottom: heteroxenia, purple anthelia, taro tree, blue cespitularia, open brain, toadstool leather green polyp and giant green polyp Duncan. I think I went a little crazy, hopefully all works out! 

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Cpl_Wiggles

Very nice! Since you have stock lights you'll want to make sure your SPS are in "optimal" locations to get as much light as they need. Biocube definitely has some "dead" zones for PAR penetration. 

 

What kind of water change schedule are you going to follow?

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Mrs. Limpet

Thank you, I'm planning on putting them up higher in the tank. I plan on 3 gallons weekly for water changes. Do you have other tips, tricks, advice for me? 

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Cpl_Wiggles
2 hours ago, Mrs. Limpet said:

Thank you, I'm planning on putting them up higher in the tank. I plan on 3 gallons weekly for water changes. Do you have other tips, tricks, advice for me? 

A good one I've learned is make sure your salt is fully mixed/dissolved best you can - otherwise some of the crystals will land on your corals and irritate them. Typically after I do a water change and the water "settles" I will use a turkey baster and blast each of my corals just in case. 

 

My filter floss typically lasts 4-7 days - most have good luck with filter floss 2x a week and 1x water change. Three gallons is a good amount, I'm probably going to up mine now that I make my own RO/DI. I vacuum my gravel bed for 75% my WC volume and disturbed particles in the water column for the other 25%. Some would disagree with disturbing the sand bed but I feel like there's just so much gunk that gets trapped in there I gotta get it out. 

 

I've had poor luck with SPS - @Jackal227 is who I would says is the current authority on stock Biocubes and SPS. All I know is light placement, calcium dosage, and crystal clean water all strongly contribute to healthy SPS growth. 

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Mrs. Limpet
2 hours ago, Cpl_Wiggles said:

A good one I've learned is make sure your salt is fully mixed/dissolved best you can - otherwise some of the crystals will land on your corals and irritate them. Typically after I do a water change and the water "settles" I will use a turkey baster and blast each of my corals just in case. 

 

My filter floss typically lasts 4-7 days - most have good luck with filter floss 2x a week and 1x water change. Three gallons is a good amount, I'm probably going to up mine now that I make my own RO/DI. I vacuum my gravel bed for 75% my WC volume and disturbed particles in the water column for the other 25%. Some would disagree with disturbing the sand bed but I feel like there's just so much gunk that gets trapped in there I gotta get it out. 

 

I've had poor luck with SPS - @Jackal227 is who I would says is the current authority on stock Biocubes and SPS. All I know is light placement, calcium dosage, and crystal clean water all strongly contribute to healthy SPS growth. 

Thank you 

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  • 1 month later...
Mrs. Limpet

It's been a while since I've updated my progress.  I ended up losing all of my above pictured corals.  I had a secondary ammonia spike after the tank fully cycled.  I'm not sure the cause.  I had to leave for my brother in-law funeral and my dad passed away so I had my daughter take care of the dogs and fish while I was away. A few things happened while I was gone, the tank over heated- I now have a chiller; and it's quite possible my daughter over fed my single mandarin dragonette (Mandy) and 1 blood red cleaner shrimp (Vlad). Both Mandy and Vlad survived.  So needless to say I was bummed.  I cleared up the water issues and waited about 3 weeks before adding anything new.  I took that time to be sure the mandarin continued to do well.  For an entire month I had her as the only fish in the tank while I trained to to eat frozen.  I supplement with pods also.  She knows when its feeding time, she comes up to the turkey baster for her food.  Once this was happening everyday I was comfortable getting tank mates.  2 weeks ago I added a yellowhead pearly jawfish (Ricky-Bobby), a superman mushroom, a duncan, goniopora and some zoa's.  A week after that I added a bonded pair of ocellaris clowns (Bonnie and Clyde), a hairy leather mushroom, a blue mushroom and a purple sea fan (Groot), waving hand xenia and some rainbow zoas. All seems to be going well. My most happy moments are at feeding time and the mandarin continues to come to me for food, not intimidated by the additional tank mates. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Wohoo! Another BioCube! This is fantastic. You are off to a great start. As mentioned above, there are a lot of BioCube threads here that you can use for reference if need be. 

 

Very excited to see how your rockscape turns up. I must say we have a similar set of livestock. 

 

Again. welcome to NR! 🙂

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