5.5g Ecoxotic build

[stephaniegarcia06]

Been working on this one just a little bit. Going to make a valiant effort to take it to work and keep it hidden in a little nook I've made in my office. We shall see how long it lasts.

Specs:

Tank: 5.5g Ecoxotic Cube
Lighting: Maxspect 420R Nano 60w 10K
Water flow/filtration: deep sand bed, Aquaclear 50 with 'Fuge mod and small bag of carbon in tank. 6ish lbs LR in tank. Recent addition: Dragon's breath picked up from another MAAST member. Currently in Aquaclear along with a net in tank until I can get the 28g I bought up and running. May add a small powerhead though this tank seems to get a lot of flow just from the AQ already.
100 watt heater, JBJ digital temp gauge.

Also bought a Reefkeeper Lite for it since it's going to work, but have yet to hook anything up. I don't plan on doing that until I build a stand for it.

Need to build: Stand and either a sump system to hide all the filtration and heating, or some sort of hang on the back sump/fuge etc. Haven't thought too terribly much about it at this point.

Inhabitants:

5-Blue leg hermits
Turbo snail

All Frags:

fruit loop zoas (thanks FSU!)
clove polyp
pulsing xenia
neon pineapple
taylor's tree coral

Still Fiddling with the lighting setup to simulate dawn/day/dusk and getting everyone where they like to be. My neon pineapple is royally ****ed at me at random points throughout the day. At one point it looks fine, then slumps over. I'm moving him tomorrow to see if he likes it better higher up on the rock. The Clove polyps are in and out all day, seem happier now that I've moved them out of direct light and into a lower flow area. The tree coral is doing great halfway up in the rock. The xenia is doing great and the zoas are perfectly content at the bottom of the tank.

Water parameters:

1.025
8.1 pH
< 5 nitrates
0 phosphates
400 calcium
can't remember what the last alk reading was today but was well within normal.

Some pictures before I build a cabinet to house all of this and a sump for all the equipment. I need to wait as I have a 28g I have to get ready for a clownfish pair coming next week, but after that I should have some spare time to build a nice stand (or buy a 10g stand and mod it a little) for the 5.5g to get the filtration and heater off the rim. All I want on there is the lighting and the temp probe inconspicuous in the background. I'm also putting a 180g together for the new house, so updates may be few and far between.

Maxspect Nano 420R 10K.



Tank right after LR added. Once I get the filtration moved to an under tank deal, the lights will clip on the back and that's all you'll see.



Zoas:




****ed off neon pineapple. He hasn't been happy since putting him in there. Looks like a wrinkled..well nevermind. Fairly certain it's acclimating to the LED's though they were under halides before I got them.



Doing this one with the JBJ, but that will be fairly bare for a while. Until I get bored. Then I'll start in on that with the rock, lights etc. The photon clowns going in it are going in my "man" cave/library so it needs to be decent looking. I think based on size I'm going with AI SOL's. Everything I own will now have a controller on it, so might suck up and splurge for the Apex Lite when I get to that point, just to try it. Build thread for the JBJ and muy grande (the 185) coming later. I'll update this one as I go along.