29 Gal biocube

[jeittreim]

Well, I figured I haven't posted for a while and since I am now a card carrying charter member, I need to start keeping an update going :-)

My biocube 29 I started a couple months ago is going great. Below are a couple of new pics to show off. I had started a rather bad bacteria bloom, but as soon as I put in a cleaning crew, it was all gone within 24 hours. 2 weeks later, everyone from the cleaning crew is still happy and keeping the tank nice looking.

I have seen a significant increase in green, pink, and purple coraline algae growth so this weekend I decided to do a little shopping. I ended up buying a scooter blenny, two firefish, and a nice green zoo rock. Unfortunately, the place I bought the stuff from, while giving me a great deal on the stuff, had overly stressed the firefish trying to get them out and by the time I got home 20 minutes later, they were both dead in the bags. everything else seems to be doing quite well though. (I even found a 2" hitchhiker on the bottom of the zoo rock in the form of a rather healthy looking clam (not one of the nice fancy ones, but a great filter feeder none the less).

All told, my current tank lifestock includes:

20lbs aragalive sand
20lbs fiji live rock
25 blue, red, and white legged hermit crabs
10 Astrea snails
10 Nassarius snails
1 emerald crab
1 peppermint shrimp
2 blue-green chromis
1 scooter blenny
1 2" clam
1 ~8" green zoo colony
1 sand sifting star

Here are some pics to show yall....For anyone who has seen my other post on this tank, I am still working on the plans for the sump and will get pictures of the drilled bulkheads and refugium setup when I get there.

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[wolff809]

Sounds like a nice set up. Is that scooter blenny on frozen food? I know they can be some picky eaters

[jeittreim]

At the moment he is going nutz with live copes, my tank is filled with them. when that starts going down, I am debating getting a B/S hatcher until I can get my refugium up and running for a more consistent supply of copes. I know the scooters are picky, but not as bad as the mandarines, I kept one of those on a 55 for about 2 years and actually got him eating a mixture of frozen and pellet (don't ask how, it took a long time and a lot of patience playing with food mixtures).

[FireWater]

I kept a scooter for a long time in my old BC29. He took to frozen pretty easy for me. Started him out on brine shrimp and he went from there.

Set up looks like it has a good start.

[Zack]

Looks good!

[jeittreim]

It's been over a year and a half since I posted on this last...WOW how the time flies. Thought I would give a quick update to the biocube. Things are going great, my coral has been growing like mad and I have been doing a lot of trading with the various LFS around town (one of them really let me down on both trading and the quality of their store.... not going to mention which one as it is a VERY BIASED opinion...) Things that I have done since last post: added a stunner strip for a little extra light and that great shimmer you can't get with just PC's. Custom designed my own reef controller using a Netduino controller and misc. parts i had lying around. upgraded the pump for higher flow rate. added a diverter for the water outlet to give better "wave-like" water flow.

The controller has been my biggest work in progress. All told, I am only out about $150.00 and it currently does temp, PH, and controls up to 5 devices through a hacked under-monitor power strip. It has a 2gb SD card for logging data and I have created a webserver on it to be able to also log dosing, feedings, and other issues. This will give me rock-solid data on the effects on my treatment of the tank and how it changes the water parameters.

A video of my tank has been uploaded to youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYcfFfjUzK0 if you want to check it out.

My biggest issues has been keeping some things alive. Fish have been a huge problem for me between my two salt water tank. I am suspecting my acclimation process, but am not sure yet. I also had an accident with my part B calcium mix (didn't disolve it completely and some solids settled on my montipora and burned the daylights out of it). hopefully it will make a recovery.

Let me know what yall think. If anyone is interested in any frags from this tank, let me know. the only things I can't currently frag are the brains and the green encrusting monti. everything else is fair game.

[Mr Cob]

the rock scape looks great, very natural

[jeittreim]

The latest updates :-) I just got back from 10 weeks of training and had a lot of work to do on the tank. So far this week, I have added a new ESHOPPS RS-75 sump with MAG-5 pump (all fitting very nicely inside the stock biocube 29 stand with plenty of space to spare. I also added two new stunner strips to give a little extra oomph to the lighting. To the sump I added a simple light so that I can house some macro. On the tank itself, I upgraded the water output to include a diverter, added a Korealis pump and have FINALLY finished my homemade controller. So far it monitors Temp, PH, Date/Time, runs a cooling fan if the temp gets too high, acts as a wavemaker with the korealis pump, and runs all of my lighting. In addition, I can now pull a log of all the water parameters off of a simple website and produce graphs to show temp/ph fluxuation and compare it to fan timing, time of day, water changes, etc. I am totally excited about how this will go, so far I am less than $200 into the controller and it already does everything that a $600+ store bought one does, but I got to build it :-)

Hope you all enjoy the pics. Sorry the water in the main tank is cloudy, it is still settling from the installation of the sump and addition of substrate.

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