Wuzzo’s Cube Revival Project

[wuzzo]

So, I’ve been in the hobby for 4 years or so with 3 different nano tanks.  This past year, I lost all interest and stopped caring for the tank.  All my time and money had gone to waste, and the tank was a mess.  I recently found a new love for the hobby, and I decided to start my first *real* build thread, as I never really took pictures of my old tanks and regret it.

This was the tank in September, you honestly can’t even tell what it is lol.

Started off by doing simple maintenance, deep clean, water change, change media, stuff like that.  Parameters were really messed up, my water was basically freshwater acidic, at 7.2 pH and my salinity was crazy low.  Phosphates were high but I managed to get everything in check.

This was the tank late September early October, moved the rocks around but the tank still looked dirty, ordered a lot of CUC from reef cleaners but the hurricane hit and a lot of the stuff died, I still need to order more. Definitely some progress though.

This is a FTS from today.  Got a royal gramma and some frags from uniquecorals, as well as a pincoushin urchin.  That’s pretty much all the additions, starting it slow with some softies and easy lps. Parameters in check.

 

STOCKING LIST:

Corals-

LPS)

Crocodile Chalice

Purple green and orange acan lord

Red and black blastomussa

Orange frammer

Softies)

GSP

Eagle eye zoa

Pink zipper zoa

Mohawk zoa

CB angry Viking zoa

My Clementine zoa

GBP zoa

Atomic space monster zoa

AOI zoa

Pink diamond zoa

Yellow death paly

Green death paly

Purpke death paly

4 different unidentified zoas

Hitch hiker shroom (rhodactis?)

 

Inverts-

Pincoushin urchin

Emerald crab

Tiger fighting conch

Scarlet reef hermit

Nerite snails

Nassarius snails

Porcelain crab

 

Fish-

Royal Gramma

Lawnmower Blenny

 

EQUIPMENT:

AI Prime HD 16

Some cheap Chinese powerhead ( it has served me well for 2 years)

Heater

Filter stuff

 

TANK IS A BIOCUBE 29

 

If there is one thing to takeaway from this, I want to give a props to the 6 rock flower anemones that somehow survived my neglect, in honor of this (and the fact that I’m addicted to rock flowers) I will slowly be covering the sand bed in rock flower anemones over the coming years.

Current FTS:

[wuzzo]

Gonna try and get better pictures tomorrow, sorry for the bad FTS.  This is gonna be a slow moving tank, as being on a heavy budget doesn’t help me lol

[wuzzo]

Needed to get a quick frag rack as I don’t have any on me and trying to plan out where everything is going, so I made one. Also thinking about moving the rockwork.  Anybody know how to get rock flower anemones off of the rocks? I don’t like my scape right now, but can’t do much because of the anemones.

[tidepooldreamer]

You could try a nem cannon to move them - never tried it myself but it seems the most common suggestion. Googling that phrase should bring up the R2R thread explaining how to make it with PVC pipe.

[wuzzo]

1 hour ago, tidepooldreamer said:

You could try a nem cannon to move them - never tried it myself but it seems the most common suggestion. Googling that phrase should bring up the R2R thread explaining how to make it with PVC pipe.

Thank you! I’ve never seen this, so I’ll definitely try it

[ajmckay]

We've all been there...    Life gets busy and the aquariums go on "Maintenance mode only" which then drops to "Clean it when someone complains that it looks gross".   I mean the water is still clear - it's just the glass and rocks and stuff that's gross lol.

 

Anyways I hope that your renewed love persists and that this is a really successful tank that you'll want to share and be proud of.  

 

One thing that helps me is to dedicate 1hr per week to maintenance and to keep that as consistent as possible.  For me it's Sunday morning - because I rarely do anything at that time.  I even set a calendar reminder in my phone and an alarm.   It's amazing what you can accomplish in 1 hour per week.  

 

Other than that be sure to take some time to sit there and stare at your tank.  If you do that you'll pick up some of the small details and at least for me I'm more motivated when I take some time to literally just sit there and let my eyes wander to various parts of the tank.  Keep an eye out for problems but don't necessarily focus on things like equipment because if you spend your 1hr working on equipment stuff you won't have time to do the maintenance, which comes before equipment. 

 

Overall I like the tank though - best of luck! 

[wuzzo]

43 minutes ago, ajmckay said:

We've all been there...    Life gets busy and the aquariums go on "Maintenance mode only" which then drops to "Clean it when someone complains that it looks gross".   I mean the water is still clear - it's just the glass and rocks and stuff that's gross lol.

 

Anyways I hope that your renewed love persists and that this is a really successful tank that you'll want to share and be proud of.  

 

One thing that helps me is to dedicate 1hr per week to maintenance and to keep that as consistent as possible.  For me it's Sunday morning - because I rarely do anything at that time.  I even set a calendar reminder in my phone and an alarm.   It's amazing what you can accomplish in 1 hour per week.  

 

Other than that be sure to take some time to sit there and stare at your tank.  If you do that you'll pick up some of the small details and at least for me I'm more motivated when I take some time to literally just sit there and let my eyes wander to various parts of the tank.  Keep an eye out for problems but don't necessarily focus on things like equipment because if you spend your 1hr working on equipment stuff you won't have time to do the maintenance, which comes before equipment. 

 

Overall I like the tank though - best of luck! 

Thanks man, really appreciate this. For a major part of my life I loved reefing and I just got really busy, but now I really enjoy it again, even the annoying parts.  Nano reefs really make you appreciate every little detail, especially when on a budget where you can’t buy everything at once.  I’ve been doing regular maintenance, all the algae that is in the tank isn’t new and isn’t growing, I just need to go in and scrape it off.  Getting another order from SBB in the coming days so I’m really excited.

[wuzzo]

Couple photos from yesterday, trying to get better at phone photography.

[wuzzo]

Just got some zoas locally, will send better pictures when they open

[ajmckay]

Ooooh new frag day!  

[JBM]

Following along.  Seems like your back in the right head space. 

[wuzzo]

Little update, been catching up with the normal maintenance again, water changes, changing filter media, etc. Everything is doing great, got a ton of cheap zoanthids, some of them aren’t stunning so I might put them in a pico cube I’m setting up. Planning on doing a zoa garden in this tank, just haven’t plugged everything yet, also got an orange “hammer” (pretty sure it’s a frammer) No more algae issues except for that one rock on the top pretty much.

I can never seem to get a good fts or shot of more than a single coral, might invest in getting some better lenses for my phone.

[sapling]

already much better than the first post pictures, keep it up! 

 

Im sure the fish and corals appreciate what you're doing here too!

[debbeach13]

Nice job cleaning up. Tank is looking good.

[wuzzo]

One more thing, I’ve had this cabbage leather since I got my first tank, and it was always doing great until I cleaned the tank up again. 
Here’s a picture I was able to find right as everything went downhill, fully open and happy.

Ans this is it now, unhappy and shriveled up.  Does it not like the clean water or to much flow or? Not sure what’s wrong, everything else is doing great.

[debbeach13]

That's too bad. How long has it looked like that?

[wuzzo]

13 minutes ago, debbeach13 said:

That's too bad. How long has it looked like that?

Around when I started working on the tank again, October to early November I’d say.

[wuzzo]

Just finished doing a little thing, going to look a bit out of place until stuff grows over but threw in an extra rock I had from an old taken down tank, glued the smaller zoa frags to it. Also turned the rock on the other side. Not sure what I’m going to do with the other zoa frags with much more polyps, I honestly might chop a couple heads off and glue them to this rock, then put the rest in another tank.

[wuzzo]

Alright, so here’s an FTS:

Just cleaned the glass so not everything is open right now, might try my hand at getting some pictures later. I fragged 4 of those zoa mini colonies on the rack, never fragged anything before but it was a success. 2 already open and the other 2 still recovering. Also glued the hammer, trying to figure out where I’m gonna have everything, I wanna have it sectioned off (zoa garden, acan garden, mushroom garden, monti garden, euph garden etc) and have each part of the tank have a certain coral.  Right now I might add or glue some branches of rock more in the center, as it looks like there’s a good amount of rock and surface area of stuff to grow until you see the side view: 

Still lots of room. Anyways, here’s a picture of the pincoushin with a lego on it.

[wuzzo]

Went to the lfs, I don’t go there very often but I picked up a lawnmower blenny and a porcelain crab. I really need to update the stock list on this thread. Blenny is hiding right now, the RG has been in a while but it isn’t really bothering him so I’m happy.

Also want to give some of these guys a name

[wuzzo]

Welp, the least surprising thing I did this week was rescape the tank again yesterday.  I always have an idea of some big central mound but end up going back to some variation of the arch. This is definitely the last time I’ll rescape, I really like how this turned out.  I may take out or move one of the rocks at the top but this gives a lot of surface area for all different corals, planning to have a very mixed reef. Have to re glue everything though. Might do some reef epoxy as my lawnmower blend is starting to come out more, and will eat the algae off the frag plugs but also sometimes accidentally knock them off.

[tidepooldreamer]

How are you liking your porcelain crab? I love mine, very personable!

[wuzzo]

Really like mine so far, he has taken residence under the flaps of my blue and green splatter RFA so far, he exact one I wanted him on. I’ll try and get pictures tomorrow, the lights are off right now.

You can actually see him near the royal gramma in that FTS

[wuzzo]

So hard to do phonetography, fairly blue because I took them an hour before lights shutoff. I really need to take a day and just remove all those little stems, they were mermaids wine glass macro that covered the tank in the beginning, and just now seem to stick to the rock with just the stem.  I’ve taken a lot off, but they seem to just reappear somewhere else or sit in the sand bed.

[ajmckay]

Nice update!  

 

I'm liking the overall look of the corals you chose. 

 

Also the scape looks good how you've done it.  IMO marine tanks are hard to scape just because so much is dependent on coral placement and grow out.