Waterbox Cube 20 Questions

[paradizecityz]

Hello there, sorry if I’m in wrong section. Old member coming back after long time

Recently got a Waterbox 20 cube to transfer from an old tank. Everything is running great but have a few questions.
1) The tank comes with 2 sponge for middle chamber, for bottom and top. Are y’all using both?
2) Why are y’all suggesting to upgrade pump to Sicce 1.0?

Both are kind of related because I find that the 3rd chamber water level drops easily so I was thinking of dropping to a Sicce 0.5 instead for slower gph? Also I’ve read that something could be clogged but I checked and don’t see anything that would cause that or maybe it’s the bottom sponge?

Any guidance is highly appreciated, thank you!

[Mike83]

Following. I too purchased a WB20 after coming back from a long time. I watched a Youtube video where one guy said the stock pump was good enough by iteself and he didn't even have additional wavemakers in the tank. But his was a softy only tank.

 

I plan on taking all the sponges out since they seem to be a nitrate factory and just use filter floss on top of the InTank media basket where the filter sock would go. Then eventually throw in a eshopps protein skimmer in the middle chamber.

[paradizecityz]

So I've had mine running for awhile now and so far so good.  I took the sponges out and cut it up to fit in first chamber and I added a filter floss on top of that.  Other than that, it's just bio filter like marinepure blocks.  I have some mangroves coming in so I'm going to try that.

I got the water level where I want and added an ATO to help with that.

The stock pump was pretty good but mine was kinda loud so I did upgrade to the Sicce 1.0 and now I use stock pump to do water changes and mix salt lol

I bought a cheap small wavemaker off Amazon just to help with flow but all is well.

Hope this helps you!

[Kron Johnson]

To answer your question about the sponges:

 

I have a 2 day old peninsula mini 25. I never installed either sponge. I used 3 biospheres I still had in a box and some marine land ceramic rings (under $4 a box on Amazon). I used two boxes of ceramic rings and filled the bio ball bag from the tank with one and filled another zip bag with the other. The second bag is in case I need to seed my QT tank fast. They provide a ton of bio hosting surface area and are extremely porous. 
 

I don’t like the sponges because they are really hard to clean up and in my opinion can end up harboring nutrients that I’d rather not have in the tank (my opinion only, I’m neither a chemist nor a marine biologist). 
 

should you choose to remove your sponges in favor of a ceramic media, I would only remove them one at a time if you’ve been using two this whole time. I had bio spheres laying around, but if you don’t then just pick up the marine land ceramic rings which are literally cheaper than dirt, or spring for the bio gems. 
 

to give you an idea of their filtering capacity- my tank is 2 days old. It has one clown in it and no pre-cycled media. Dry sand and rock used. No live anything. I seeded the tank with cycling bacteria at the start and that’s it. My alarm just went off at 2am for me to check ammonia on my peninsula and my qt and using any of the “compare the color” style tests I have undetectable levels of ammonia. So the ceramic media is 100% doing it’s job of hosting the reproducing bacteria. The bonus is that if your chambers get nasty you can rinse the bags easily in clean saltwater to clean them up. 

[UGA]

Welcome to the Waterbox community! I have a cube 10, so not exactly the same tank, but close to same layout/dimensions in the back. You will find through multiple threads on here and on their Facebook group that many people end up changing out their first chamber for the intank media racks. I did that so I could put a skimmer in the middle chamber and really have enjoyed the results since doing that. In the first chamber now I have filter floss first, then chemipure, then two types of bio media (which you can pick your preference here). I have my return pump, heater, and ato sensor in the third chamber.

[wake74]

On 1/31/2021 at 8:37 AM, UGA said:

Welcome to the Waterbox community! I have a cube 10, so not exactly the same tank, but close to same layout/dimensions in the back. You will find through multiple threads on here and on their Facebook group that many people end up changing out their first chamber for the intank media racks. I did that so I could put a skimmer in the middle chamber and really have enjoyed the results since doing that. In the first chamber now I have filter floss first, then chemipure, then two types of bio media (which you can pick your preference here). I have my return pump, heater, and ato sensor in the third chamber.

 

What are you using for a skimmer in the middle section?

[UGA]

Sorry for the massive delay answering this question, I didn’t get a notification of a response on this. I’m using the eshopps nano skimmer. It does take a two week break-in like normal skimmers do...then all it takes is raising or lowering within the rear chamber to get it working perfect. I’m sure many people on here are rolling their eyes at having a skimmer on a 10 gallon. I still make 20% water changes every week. I like to feed my tank heavily, between my fish, inverts, and coral...so that’s why I like having the skimmer.