Mintys WaterBox Cube 10

[MintyFresh]

FTS 14 June 2020

 

FTS 04 June 2020

 

 

Tank Established: 26 May 2020

 

Equipment List

Tank - WaterBox Cube 10

Return Pump - Eheim CompactOn 600 (turned down to around 2/3)

Heater - 50W Ehiem ThermoControl

Fan/Cooler - TBD

Temp Controller - InkBird ITC-308 with plastic probe

Lighting - AI Prime 16 HD on 12" flex arm

Flow Pump - Jebao OW-10. Sine Wave, 4/8 power. 

Dosing Pump - TBD

ATO - Tunze Nano 3152

Mechanical Filtration - Filter floss in 3D printed holder

Chemical Filtration - Purigen

Biological Filtration - bag of Seachem Matrix

Substrate - CaribSea Aragonite Reef Sand

Hardscape - CaribSea South Seas Base Rock

Lid - TBD (custom lid would be nice, but the shipping cost from the US is almost as much as the lid for me.)

 

Livestock List

Fish 

2x Ocellaris Clownfish (Carl and Ellie). Long term I might move these to a larger tank and get a smaller goby or blenny. We're fairly limited in the nano fish range here. 

 

Inverts

2x banded trochus snails

2x astrea snails (Mufasa and Scar)

Small hitchhiker feather worm in blastos

 

Coral

Several Varieties of zoas.

Green Hammer

Blue frogspawn/octospawn

Purple + Orange Lobophyllia

Purple + Green Blastomussa (I think merletti, very small polyps)

Elegance Coral

 

Long term Coral wish list

Due to the limited room in the tank, I went in with a fairly clear idea of exactly what I wanted to stock the tank with. There is a little bit of wiggle room of course but this is 90% of what I want.
Gold Hammer

Pink Hammer or Frogspawn

2-3 acan lord varieties

Yellow Leather

Red Monti Cap

1-2 stick sps, still undecided on exactly what I want. There are a few nice millipora around but I'm not sure if I trust myself with them in a Nano.

More Zoas?

If there's room, Ricordea florida. But I think I would rather have acans over these.

[MintyFresh]

Naming Fish/Corals?
I’m honestly not really the one for naming pets, other than my cats (Mayonnaise and Eris). However my partner is very much on the name everything bandwagon, such as one of our old betta fish, Ser Aodh Bhaltair Murcadh Ahuic (May he SIP), so here I am. Naming my pets.

 

Carl and Ellie
Ellie is the girl clown, a normal coloured ocellaris and Carl is the boy, an onyx. Named after the characters from UP.

 

Mufasa and Scar
The astrea snail pair are named because of this photo:

They had both climbed up to the highest point of the tank and looked like they were trying to push each other off, so now they’re named after the pair.

 

If any other inhabitants get named they will be added here.
 

[MintyFresh]

A little backstory
I’ve mostly kept high end aquascaped planted tanks, with my main display being a 90x45x45cm rimless tank.

With this being the last time it was planted: 

 

And it currently looks like this:

This tank has gone on the backburner while this whole pandemic is going on, not sure when I’ll get round to getting it wet.

And while I do enjoy freshwater planted and it’s definitely more of my passion (along with plants in general), it’s not as fun when the plants we get in NZ are limited compared to everything seen overseas. 

And that’s where my first nano reef started at the end of 2019. Marine fish and Corals, while we definitely don’t have the range overseas are still imported fairly regularly which makes things more exciting. 

This tank was a “test the waters” thing. See if I could keep some corals, fish alive. I was pretty certain I could but I didn’t really want off the deep end yet. So I went fairly low budget, AquaClear filter, manually topping off, AquaKnight Light, etc. 

Well it worked, so here I am with the Cube 10.

Start of the Cube 10
This tank was dry for over 2 months. I’m pretty meticulous with my hard scape and it went through several iterations trying to plan out everything. I definitely had an idea of the majority of corals I wanted in the cube before starting, so I had to keep that in mind with rock placement for flow, light levels and room for everything. Some dry scapes also got vetoed, for being too “whale like,” not sure what this means?

 

 

 

 

Eventually i settled on this:

 

Tank cycling went pretty well, used all bleach cured substrate and dry rock along with some pre filtered media and some bacteria starter. Did have a small bacterial bloom that lasted 48-72H. Tank was clearing ammonia before this but I waited to clear before adding the clowns.

 

 

Once the clowns were added, I waited a few more days to ensure parameters were fine and then moved across all the coral, I ended up dipping everything in ReVive alongside a  3% H2O2 2min dip for some of my zoas, as I’ve been dealing with a very persistent turf algae for a while. Zoas still aren’t happy about this and I’ve sourced some fluconazole which should hopefully help. 

 

And this is where it stands as of the 4th of June. This entire thread was kind of spontaneous so I'll probably try and get better photos of everything from now on.

 

 

I wasn't entirely sure If I was going to keep this tank, as I scored an amazing deal on a brand new 45cm cube, instead of the 35cm Waterbox. Hence why the corals are kind of all over the place. I definitely had a plan in mind and I'll start moving everything around to where I want them along with getting the turf algae under control.

 

[MintyFresh]

Week 1 update:

 

Still haven't really moved any of the coral into where I want them yet. Still waiting on the fluconazole to start killing off the hair algae/turf algae (which it has!)

 

 

Also went to a LFS to see if they had the AF Mg test kit, of which they didn't. Ended up buying another zoa instead. Whoops.

 

Has slight white flecks through its face along with a very light lime green tentacle. The mouth is a really nice looking pastel peach/orange colour. Definitely need to try get some nicer, true to life photos.

 

In terms of algae and fluconazole, this is the same algae covered colony from the bottom left of setup. Most of the algae is starting to fade away so hopefully it continues to trend

 

Almost all of the other zoas are still pissed off though, bar the Hawaiian PE's which are doing fine.

Full Blues and daylight hours.

 

Hopefully the diatoms will start clearing up soon. Other than that almost everything is going smoothly so far.

[MintyFresh]

Week 3 update, diatoms have hit hard. 
 

 

Luckily, most of the corals are still doing fine. Ideally I would have let the tank get past this phase before introducing everything but the tank I had them in for quarantining everything wasn't doing too hot, so had to move everything across early. 

 

I also picked up (another) coral, even though I promised myself I wouldn't buy anything else until the tank matured more.

Picked up 2x0.75 heads of lords, They were cheaper than full size heads and had pretty nice colours. There's some flecks of orange through the red and green through the blue. They've been super happy and fluffy.

 

One of my astrea snails has started to munch down on the hair algae covering my small frag rocks, progress! This rock was almost completely covered 24h ago. In terms of snails in general, this week hasn't been the greatest. One of my trochus snails managed to get himself wedged and I didn't notice until it was too late 😞 This tank has claimed 2 of my trochus babies now, stings twice as much when they're $25/16usd here. One other astrea is also not feeling well and I'm really hoping he bounces back.

 

 

Had to apply some aptasia x on the blasto again, the small aptasia didn't get completely killed off so its not super happy with me.

 

Zoas have been a mixed bag, the PEs and the misc peach ones have been doing fine, but the others that got dipped in peroxide are still annoyed at me.

 

My lobo has also been super puffy and happy, only thing I need to do now is target feed it more. I was being pretty lax about this as I had some really bad turf algae issues in the previous tank iteration. Need to bring it back to its original colours. 

 

 

Other than that, everything is chugging along. Stability hasn't been the greatest but thankfully everything is still fairly happy and not receding. Just gotta cross my fingers that the diatoms will start to disappear soon and everything will be much happier.

 

[Christopher Marks]

Welcome to the community @MintyFresh! 👋

 

The first few months are often the hardest while things stabilize and algae blooms come and go. You'll get through the diatom phase soon, not to worry. Are you still actively dosing fluconazole for hair algae?

 

Sorry to hear about the trochus snails, it can sometimes be difficult for them to acclimate to new aquariums.

[MintyFresh]

7 hours ago, Christopher Marks said:

Welcome to the community @MintyFresh! 👋

 

The first few months are often the hardest while things stabilize and algae blooms come and go. You'll get through the diatom phase soon, not to worry. Are you still actively dosing fluconazole for hair algae?
 

Sorry to hear about the trochus snails, it can sometimes be difficult for them to acclimate to new aquariums.

 

Thanks 🙂 Been lurking for a while reading through peoples journals while getting ideas for this tank. 

Fluconazole was for some really nastng for a while looking through everyone's journals as I was pulling together ideas for my tank. 
y turf algae. Was a final resort as other methods didn't seem to have any effect, seems to have done the trick as I can't see it anywhere now.

Side effect is that it makes hair algae tastier for the snails.

[MintyFresh]

Another week another update. Diatoms are out and hair algae coming in.

Moved the blue frogspawn back on the rock, had it in the substrate and the snails did tip it over but it wasn't getting quite enough light there. Still not full polyp extension of what it was in the previous tank but its a lot better.

Ordered an MP10 and a DIY lid this week. Hoping it does a better job than the jebao wavemaker, that ones going to be assigned to salt mixing duties.
The lid will hopefully keep the fish in and the cat fluff out. Lobo was looking real pissed off this morning cause of a piece of cat fluff from a certain baby. Puffed back up over the course of a couple of hours once I removed it.

 

I'm also tempted to sell my elegance, I'm not really sure if I like where its placed and its really the only area I can stick it in this tank. It also gets quite a bit of flow there which I don't think its a huge fan of.

 

On to the bad parts, hair algae is starting to cover some of my zoas and a small outbreak of cyano. I'm hoping I can get these under control in the next week or two as everything starts to get over the new tank parts. Just gotta wait it though and not feed too much. Lobos gonna have to wait a little before getting daily reef roids.

[MintyFresh]

2 week update. 

 

Finally found a stand I like, company here sells Lockers with rimu (native wood) tops, suits the tank pretty well imo. 

Added an MP10 as the noise from the jebao was starting to annoying me. 

Finished the lid as well, no more flying fish.


And added the third (and final) fish, an orange spotted shrimp goby. Now called Cerberus.

He has made himself home in the little cavern right in the middle of the tank, with a little hole he can escape into underneath the right rock. 

Rock of zoas that I paid for a couple of months ago finally arrived too, guy was shutting down his tank due to moving house. Ended up getting a lot of extra zoa frags which are now scattered around, as I have nowhere to put them. 

 

I was mostly after this specific zoa, which I think is a Ring of Fire zoa?

 

Also ended up with a frag of eagle eye zoas with 30+ heads, 2 different frags of watermelons, Purple people eaters, x-men and a couple that I've yet to ID. Wasn't expecting quite so many.

Other newish stuff is pretty happy too, this guy has puffed up a ton since I got him. 

 

 

A lot of my other Hawaiian PEs are straight green, these however have this purple and pink ring and they're honestly one of my favourites now.

 

Other than that, almost everything bar the blue frogspawn is doing well. My euphyllia have been bumped around quite a bit and they weren't very happy for a while. The green hammer has bounced back and has almost full PE now, while the frogspawn is taking things a little slower but I think still improving. 

There's still quite a bit of hair algae, which is a bit of a pain. Tempted to get a smaller skimmer to see if it would help, but the only options available here would be the Coralbox S150. Not sure if it would be worth it.