Saultmans deconstructed waterbox 15 pen

[Saultman]

This started out as some old equipment I had stashed in the basement, just a simple tank for a fish and some softies for my kids to enjoy as I took down my tank when they were born 5 years ago. 
 

started out with a bucket of brand new salt that’s been stored for 5 years (not sure if this stuff exp.) AC50 , a koralia nano, and a par38

 

quickly turned into drilling the tank and building a kinda diy AIO chamber and diy ato and a new prime16hd 

 

 

In the chambers I just have Filter floss and a piece  of felt that I have been changing about ever 4 days 
The return pump feeds a mr1 reactor that I had full of marine pure spheres with a nano bag of chemi pure blue at the top

 

the cycle was uneventful Starting with dry rock dosed with ammonia and MB7 went from some diatoms to some powdery green algea a initial spike of no3 to 25ppm i did a 75./. Water change and the no3 hasn’t been over 3ppm since while feeding a clown fish for the last 4 weeks. 
 
I also have some red macro growing in the display for the last 2 weeks that I got with a small cuc that has been doing real well

 

My plan is to grow this tank out and letting it mature before moving everything to a slightly bigger tank with a sump just for a refugium while keeping the marine pure spheres. I’m liking more and more being skimmer less. Which I think skimming on smaller tanks really striped the water to much and gave me problems in the past. 

[Saultman]

Just a quick update the tank is now 4 months old but moved it into a water box cube 10. And added a aqamia kps . 
 

i have never had much for algae just a diatom phase a green powder phase. I never had high no3 except for right after cycle and after a month of 3ppm test results I stopped checking. After the tank swap I have had some brown stringy stuff that disappears at night only to build up through the day and my snails seem to be lethargic. I can only determine its dinos but not confirmed. Tested no3 and got 0. I have a uv on the way and in the mean time have started feeding more. 

[Saultman]

A little over 6 months old now 

 

Was dealing with a Dino problem for a couple months dosing phosphate and nitrate and running uv. Now haven’t seen them in a couple weeks. Just running filter sock small amount of carbon and ceramic in chambers. I now have some hair algae trying to take over my zoa rock that I have to deal with. 

[Fryguy0201]

What’s your maintenance schedule like? Maybe try not running the ceramic you probably have enough established surface area they might be doing more harm then good...

[Leoito]

Any reason why keeping the ceramic in there would lead to a negative effect?

[Fryguy0201]

8 minutes ago, Leoito said:

Any reason why keeping the ceramic in there would lead to a negative effect?

Nothing inherently but it doesn’t really offer a greater amount of surface area then say an extra piece of rock in the display or even a piece of rubble in the back chamber. I just think it’s not necessary with 10 gallons of water relying on your natural filtration in the tank is probably going to yield better results then trying to shove a reactor, skimmer, carbon, floss, etc. in there. Especially the reactor and skimmer imo if you’re not cleaning them properly and frequently they’re just gunna cause you more harm then good. 

[Saultman]

I do a 2 gallon water change once a week. change the filter sock every 3 days. Change carbon every other week. Vacuum sand with water change. Feed a mix of pellets, mysis , flake . Dose aminos with reef chili every 3 days. Does 2 ml mb7 once a week. Test alk po4 (Hanna)no3 (nyos) every other day lately. And dose phosphate 2.5ml a day and nitrate 1 ml a day just to keep them .05 and 3ppm. No skimmer , no chemical filtration 

[Fryguy0201]

38 minutes ago, Saultman said:

I do a 2 gallon water change once a week. change the filter sock every 3 days. Change carbon every other week. Vacuum sand with water change. Feed a mix of pellets, mysis , flake . Dose aminos with reef chili every 3 days. Does 2 ml mb7 once a week. Test alk po4 (Hanna)no3 (nyos) every other day lately. And dose phosphate 2.5ml a day and nitrate 1 ml a day just to keep them .05 and 3ppm. No skimmer , no chemical filtration 

Sounds solid i’d still try removing the ceramics and see what that does for you it certainly won’t have negative effects imo. You might have to dose less phosphate and nitrate without the ceramics. 

[Leoito]

31 minutes ago, Fryguy0201 said:

Sounds solid i’d still try removing the ceramics and see what that does for you it certainly won’t have negative effects imo. You might have to dose less phosphate and nitrate without the ceramics. 

I hope this isn't one of those "photos taken moments before disaster" situations 😆. All joking aside, if dosing phosphate and nitrate is a thing, then maybe removing some biological media wouldn't be the worse thing in the world. 

[Fryguy0201]

1 hour ago, Leoito said:

I hope this isn't one of those "photos taken moments before disaster" situations 😆. All joking aside, if dosing phosphate and nitrate is a thing, then maybe removing some biological media wouldn't be the worse thing in the world. 

Yea it sounds like the filtration is maybe too good...

[Saultman]

I’m going to start pulling out the ceramic a little at a time thanks 

[Saultman]

New setup

I’ve been working hard on this the last few months getting it back into shape. I removed the back chambers on the waterbox and drilled it. Switched to a xr15 pro and started dosing kalk. So far I’m dosing 160 ml of full saturated kalk along with 5 ml of all for reef. I think the kalk dosing over the last 3 months have really turned this around for me. 

[Saultman]

   Well I think I did something dumb. I didn’t like the look with the size of sand I had so I sucked half of it out and replaced it with some Fuji pink. And it caused a Dino out break. I thought if I did half and waited a couple weeks and did the other half I would be ok. The problem is not horrible at the moment it’s started about 4 days ago. No3 is 1 and po4 is .05, I have always had problems with keeping my nutrients up even though to me I feed quite a bit. I’m hoping the Dinos will fade away on their own with out causing a issue as I’ve had Dinos before and it took about 4 months before they finally went away but never really caused a big problem other than being unsightly. Good news tho I finally have coralline populating the glass. After two years of not seeing coralline I was starting to wonder.( Started with dry rock)

[DevilDuck]

Might as well replace the rest of the sand at this point and remove as much as the dino as you can. You're basically halfway into a rip clean. 

[Saultman]

Just an update , the Dinos did not last long I went straight to a 5 day black out while running the hang on uv and they were gone. Lost about half the birds nest which I fragged and now 3 months later it’s grown bigger then it was before.      
I’ve been doing the bare minimum this summer as far as maintenance goes just been really busy. Changing 1 to 2 gallons a week and the occasional test so far everything is growing well with our issue. I think just letting it be and not messing with everything has helped. 
still dosing 180ml of kalk a day and 5 ml of AFR.  

as of today ^
Also the clown is the only fish in here which is very aggressive I’m afraid to put another fish in because it will just get killed if anyone has any recommendations on a fish that will survive let me know. 
there is also a peppermint shrimp that has long served it’s purpose and now just steals food from corals. 

[daniejd]

I’m a noob myself, but I have a clownfish pair and what has worked for me, isn’t so much what fish I put in more where they like to live/stay. My clownfish pair hang in the open water/ upper back corner mostly. My clown goby hangs out on the rockwork. My royal gramma spends 50% in a cave I made for it. Later I’m going to add a watchman goby for the sand. It’s a small tank like yours (12 gallon) so its overstocked a bit (ok more than a bit) but I planned out the fish specifically along the lines of compatibility and where they like to stay in the tank, and so far knock on wood, no aggression issues (well the female clown picks on her mate a bit, but nothing serious).

[Saultman]

Thanks , I think I will try a watchmen there is a nice cave on the sand that the bubble tip left when it moved. 
 

[Saultman]

I was growing tired of the eshopps nano, hopefully this isn’t over kill 

[Saultman]

It’s been awhile, just a quick update of what I’ve been doing 

The state of the tank goes up and down depending on how much effort I put into it.  

DOSING
I am still dosing kalk full strength via versa 175Ml a day 

along with 9ml of AFR a day “going to switch to ATI 2part when this runs out “

dose 5ml of mag by hand ever other day 

2ml of nitrate and 1ml of phos everyday 

FEEDING 

mixture of mysis , reef roids , brine , flake , phyto 

FLOW

lots

LIGHTING

XR15 pro gen 5

AB+ 100./. Intensity - 60./. Schedule 

 

[Saultman]

I’ve been auto dosing po4 and no3 after manually dosing for awhile, I’ve been maintain 10ppm no3 and .08 po4  I started to get this on the sand bed that I’ve been manually cleaning up everyday. I went out of town for a few days and I come back to this , it’s more brown then red and it’s starting to look slimy and stringy , what does everyone think? It isn’t affecting corals or fish they are looking great. It’s mostly on sand bed and glass