9 to 5 Montipora Cube

[M. Tournesol]

5 minutes ago, Robbie_Maxwell said:

The bits hanging off the nudi look different and colours dont match?

Could it be some Berghia nudibranchs?

[debbeach13]

Just now, M. Tournesol said:

Could it be Berghia nudibranchs?

That would be nice. Resell to LFS

[Robbie_Maxwell]

27 minutes ago, M. Tournesol said:

Could it be some Berghia nudibranchs?

Id never be that lucky hahaha

 

[A.m.P]

The photo kind of looks like one Monti Eater and one very small/young gsp eater.

When I had the buggers I dipped and aggressively agitated every third day for a month or so and glued all over the underside of the montis. 

The stress killed a few, saved a few others. 

[Robbie_Maxwell]

Hi all. Im gonna try and keep to an update schedule of every Saturday and see how that works out. Hopefully it will help me to create a  good maintenance routine so here is this weeks update. 

Parameters 4th of December 2021:

Temperature- 25 Celsius (77 Fahrenheit)

Salinity- 35 ppt

Calcium- 440 ppm

Alkalinity- 7.9 dKH

Magnesium-1280 ppm

Nitrate-0 ppm

Phosphate-0 ppm

 

I think it’s probably time that I invested in the hanna phosphate and nitrate checkers to go with my alk one because I am a bit skeptical of my nutrients being zero and if they are id like to keep them up a little to avoid dino if possible. 

 

Did some work on the algae problem as well today. I did a 50% water change while taking out the entire scape and obliterating it with a bristle brush and rinsing it in the bucket of tank water i just took out to get all the hair algae off.  Thinking about it now it hopefully killed any of the nudibranch eggs that were on the rock if there was any there.
 

Speaking of nudibranchs I think i found the problem coral. A purple digitata had some old dead skeleton where i attatched it to the frag plug and i saw some white stuff that looked like it could have been eggs. The frag also had some stn on the back side which I didn’t see until today which im guessing is from the nudibranchs. I snapped off some healthy looking branches and just threw away the affected chunk just to be safe. Tomorrow i will be dipping everything to see what comes off and repeat the dipping process every few days while keeping a watchful eye on the tank for any more adults nudis and pull out them straight away. 
 

Anyway here is the before and after the manual removal of algae. Got about 95% of it off the rock. I do apologise for the blueness
 

Before:

 

After:

 

Corals still look pretty happy apart from a red monti cap that kinda bleached a little but which assume is from too much par. I have since put the ai prime into acclimation mode so hopefully that helps. 
 

 

[Robbie_Maxwell]

I think it’s finally time to update this journal for the new year. 
 

so after a few rounds with montipora eating nudibranchs which wasn’t ideal. I think i can finally say that I have won but i am still playing it safe with the addition of any new montipora for a bit. 
 

I did lose a bit of motivation to look after this tank as the new year started because work got very busy and life in general just got in the way so the tank definitely got neglected over the past few weeks. Until today…
 

Todays tank maintenance consisted of taking out the entire rock structure and scrubbing as much of the hair algae as i possibly could off the rock. 
 

I also scraped all of the film algae off the glass with a credit card and did a 90% water change to suck up all the crap that had built up since before Christmas. 
 

I also had the chance to connect up the new canister filter i bought over a month ago. I got a pretty good deal on the fluval g3 which so far i am liking a lot. Its going to be easy to change out the mechanical media regularly with the quick access hatch, which is the biggest draw back with other canister filters from what i have seen. The display also tells you the amount of days it has been since it was last changed and gives an alert when temperature drifts or the flow is reduced due to clogged media. 
 

Next on the to do list for this tank is to find a way to tidy up and hide the wires that are in the stand. Im thinking maybe some white rectangular cable trunking to blend in with the stand. 
 

So far Im happy with the way this tank has turned out after the work i put in for today. 
 

Stocking wise i am still undecided whether to go with a small fish or an ornamental invert of some kind. Coral wise im going to change it up a bit while still leaning heavily towards sps, but will be easing into montipora as im still a bit nervous of any nudibranchs that could be hiding deep in the rock. 
 

Okay so after that long winded update here is a few very blue pictures of how the tank looks now. 

[debbeach13]

26 minutes ago, Robbie_Maxwell said:

also had the chance to connect up the new canister filter i bought over a month ago. I got a pretty good deal on the fluval g3 which so far i am liking a lot. Its going to be easy to change out the mechanical media regularly with the quick access hatch, which is the biggest draw back with other canister filters from what i have seen. The display also tells you the amount of days it has been since it was last changed and gives an alert when temperature drifts or the flow is reduced due to clogged media. 

Wow! This thing looks and sounds awesome.

[kimdawg]

Good luck in the contest, can't wait to see a final shot.

[Robbie_Maxwell]

Hi guys, I had been meaning to do a bit of a write up covering the overall tank from the beginning until now but life got fairly hectic so only just getting around to it. The build didn’t really turn out as I had hoped it would but it’s a starting point for this tank and I hope it can only get better.

Project goals: 

My initial plan with this tank was to set up a reef that focused on montipora and the different morphs and species in that genus. 

 

Project summary: 

I always had the idea in my head that I wanted to set up a montipora species tank so when I saw the contest thread, it was the perfect opportunity to start.

 

Unfortunately, from the get go this set up had its issues, from leaky canister filters to nuisance algae but the real killer for me was when one of the first few frags I bought came with montipora eating nudibranchs. Even though all the new coral I get is dipped before being added to the tank, it still wasn’t enough to keep out probably the worst pest possible for the type of tank I was looking to set up. Despite dipping every few days, scrubbing the bases and fragging off the affected areas they just kept coming back until I eventually lost the majority of my montis. 

 

After this I definitely let the tank go quite a bit just out of frustration that I couldn’t do what I had initially set out to do. I left the tank sit with the remaining 3 montis and just a few easy corals like birds nest and some milka stylo and a toadstool just doing basic maintenance once a week until about 3 weeks ago where I got my hands on a few rainbow bubble tip anemones and some pavona cactus and that is pretty much the summary of this build to date.

 

Equipment:

• Tank: 12” Cube.
• Stand: Ikea Eket.
• Lights: AI Prime 16HD.
• Heater: Hydor inline heater.
• Temperature Controller: Inkbird ITC-308-Wifi.
• Auto Top Off: DD H2Ocean compact ATO.
• Flow: Jebao SLW-5.
• Canister filter: Fluval g3
• Dosing: TBD.

 

Current livestock: 

• 3 trochus snails
• Milka stylopora
• Seriatapora 
• Bubble tip anemone
• Orange montipora capricornis
• Montipora capitata
• Pavona cactus
• Toadstool

 

Maintenance:  

I aim to do water changes weekly but sometimes that isn’t possible so I do about 50% when I can and just suck up any detritus and I scrape the algae off the glass about twice a week. 

I was never really happy with the Fluval g3 canister filter as i just found it a bit of a pain to change the mechanical media. I eventually just removed the mechanical filtration entirely and as of right now the canister is really only providing additional water volume as well as being a way of keeping the heater out of the tank which is something I was happy about. 

 

Things I’ve learned: 

• Dipping corals definitely doesn’t kill monti eggs.
• Taking the time to plan out and list maintenance tasks definitely helps with overall time management. 
• Setting up a coral isolation tank is definitely something I will be considering going forward just so I can observe the corals and avoid as much pests as I can in the future. 
• Herbivores are a big part of keeping the rocks algae free and in such a small tank finding effective critters for the cuc is definitely something that needs to be considered.

 

Future plans: 

As for the future of this project there is definitely a Montipora Cube 2.0 in the works. As I said I was never really happy with the canister filter and seeing as I want to keep equipment in the tank to a minimum that only leaves me with one option. So I bought an eshopps eclipse s overflow and another identical cube tank which will act as the new display and the original tank will be converted to a sump and placed in the stand. This will not only give me more water volume to help with stability but will also make maintenance a lot easier. 

 

Seeing as I plan to set up a coral qt I think I will be able to commit to keeping this tank 100% montipora only. As a final precaution, only live coral tissue will be added to the tank so no frag plugs.
 

I think I will likely start fresh with new dry rock just to try and keep the turf algae away that is covering the current rock. 
 

I plan to keep updating the journal when I find the time. This will also hopefully help me stay committed to this project.
 

So here is the tank as it sits currently in all of its turf algae covered glory.

[Robbie_Maxwell]

Dont have a whole pile to to say about this for the moment. Its still sitting dry for the time being as i want to silicone all the seams in the stand before I actually start running it.

It passed the leak test which is good. I need to try and figure out why my continuous siphon wont release air bubbles.( i assume this is due to the plumbing being stupidly oversized and the positioning of the elbows). 

 

Here are some of the pictures i took along the way from the end of the contest to how it sits now:

 

[M. Tournesol]

37 minutes ago, Robbie_Maxwell said:

I need to try and figure out why my continuous siphon wont release air bubbles.( i assume this is due to the plumbing being stupidly oversized and the positioning of the elbows). 

What do you mean by "my continuous siphon wont release air bubbles"?

[Robbie_Maxwell]

So when I start the return pump it gets quite noisy as you would expect but it doesn’t get any quiter. To fix it I need to essentially burp the air out of the pipe by opening and closing the valve and then resetting it to where I had it initially to keep it running silent. If I have to turn off the pump for any reason I have to repeat this process. 
 

I tried reducing my down pipe length so that it barely is below the surface of the water in the sump but I can still hear the air bubbles at the valve itself.

 

any other suggestions to fix this would be greatly appreciated. 
 

also here are some more pictures. 

[M. Tournesol]

Yay, it looks like it may be caused by your pipe size. Maybe try to add a reducer at your union and try a 16/22mm or a 12/16mm tubing.

 

[Robbie_Maxwell]

2 hours ago, M. Tournesol said:

Yay, it looks like it may be caused by your pipe size. Maybe try to add a réducteur at your union with a try a 16/22mm or a 12/16mm tubing.

 

Ya I think that is what I will end up doing. Thanks

 

[Reefkid88]

This setup looks incredibly clean,awesome job. 

[Robbie_Maxwell]

15 hours ago, Reefkid88 said:

This setup looks incredibly clean,awesome job. 

Thanks. Hopefully I’ll get it filled soon