29G BioCUbe (Updated 6/24 DIAL-UP BEWARE)

[Janus]

Well Finally we had a chance to get our pics up of our 29 gallon BioCube.
Right now our system is at about 1 year. It has about 38 lbs of LR with various soft coral.

I have modified the overflow in the 1st chamber and widened it to incerease the flow. We plan to add a Tunze Nano skimmer soone and use that to replace the bioballs in the 2nd chamber.

Livestock:

2 Ocellaris clowns
1 Firefish

various dwarf hermits
several narcisus snails
who knows how many baby turbos!



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[BioCube14]

nice tank

[erikharrison]

very nice! We are hoping to go that route after our seahorse tank!

[Janus]

thank you. I love this little tank let me tell you. Once I get the skimmer I want I will probably be adding either a mandarin or a blennie...depending on who wins on the next fish, me or the wife ;)

Oddly enough our next tank is going to be a 25 gallon tall seahorse tank.

[Janus]

Well its been a little while so we thought that we would update the pics we have of our biocube.

Sadly both of our original clowns went over the back of the tank into the overflow and we lost the so we now have a lone Percula.

New stock list

1 Pecula
1 Firefish
1 green mandarin

I know its a big no no with mandarins in small tanks but we set up a little "nursery" of Chaeto in the corner that has been breeding copepods and mysid shrimp for quite a while. I made sure to allow enough room for a small ammount of water flow to penetrate into the nursery area, but not enough for any of the fish to get into, allowing our smaller critters a safe haven.

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The only mod we have done to our tank so far

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Our newest coral.....frags to come very soon!!!!!!!

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Our reluctant mandarin

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Here is the little nursery area. I tend to go in with a baster and blow out some of the waste every few weeks.

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The worlds scariest hermit crab heh wife found this shell in a rubble pile and snagged it and he moved right in.

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[RayAllen]

Very cool, I also have a BC 29. So far the mods ive made are taking out the bioballs and 2 trays out of chamber 2 and replaced with LR rubble. I also made a mod to the filter cartridge by taking off the material and removing the carbon. In its place I added filter floss which really helps the flow. Im also going to put Chem-pure in chamber 1.

[hanknmorgan]

Nice looking tank. I hope your mandarin is eating frozen foods well. I would setup a fuge in one of the back chambers to try to keep your pod population strong. I imagine your poor mandarin has dominated the pods in your little cube.

[Janus]

yeah she has pretty much kept the population down to a miniscule ammount. Fortunatly she does eat frozen foods both brine and mysis so she seems to be holding her weight. had her in the tank now for about 3 months with just the other fish and they actually don't seem to be interested in the pods for the most part. Could be the healthy feedings we give them :D

[hanknmorgan]

That's awesome. My wife and I really want a Mandarin bad, but we will have to wait until we get a decent size tank for one. We have a 12g. It seems that a lot of people do well with Mandarins in the 30g range as long as they eat well. Great looking tank. I hope ours looks that nice someday.

[Janus]

thank you. I just really overdid it with the live rock so it seems to stay pretty stable.

[apedroza]

That hermit crab pic scared me!!! I was about to tell you to toss it!!!!

[Janus]

lol

yeah thats the exact reaction that I had when I saw that shell meandering through a patch of zoas.

[texasfootball21]

About how much money have you spent on the tank?

[Janus]

texasfootball21

Honestly I really don't like to think about how much but was spent on this old setup. If I had to guess I would say I ended up spending somewhere in the $800-$1000 range with all the fish and coral.

Update: Sadly due to a series of very unfortunate events I have now lost everything in the tank except for the firefish and a handfull of corals. I was away from te tank due to some personal issues and my ex was overfeeding and heavily dosing DT's daily. When I came to move the tank I discovered that it had crashed. I am not going to give up on the hobby but right now I am very demoralized by the whole situation. I hope to be able to slowly piece together the reef I once had.

[texasfootball21]

Sorry to hear that.

good luck