60 Cube After A Rocky Start With A 47 Cube

[MTWiley]

We had a rough start, the first tank was a used 24x24x18 cube from a LFS but it had a leak and the LFS's suggestion was to just slap some silicone on top of the existing seals and call it a day. My wife and I weren't happy with that answer since we have hard wood floors and didn't want to put them at risk over a $200 tank so we wound up buying a new 24 x 24 x 24 reef ready cube from a different LFS and they happened to also sell a cube sump that would fit perfectly in the stand for about half of the cost of the acrylic cube sump from Trigger Systems that I was eyeing and it happened to be designed for the Reef Octopus 110INT that I'd purchased for the 47 cube. Once we had the tank in hand and plumbed it was time to get get started on aquascaping. My wife and I spent a few hours trying to get the aquascape just right and then we were worn out and went to bed thinking we'd pick it up in the morning. She woke up at 4 am and wanted to get back to work on the aquascape because she was dreaming of stacking rocks and didn't feel like she was getting rest anyways. After another hour or so we had it figured out on the floor:

Then we had to figure out how to move it to the tank and make sure that we stacked it exactly the same way since it had taken us so long to figure out exactly what we wanted, once we got it in the tank it wasn't quite as stable as we'd hoped for so we had to play with it a little and make a few minor adjustments to get it just the way we wanted, but we eventually got to a point where my wife and I were happy. That took a while, but we're pretty happy with how it turned out:

Once the aquascape was completed it was time to start filling the tank. It took a while to make.mix the two batches of salt water in a 40 breeder we picked up while Petco was running their $1/per gallon sale last month. Once we had the tank filled we did something that will probably evoke some controversy, but we started the cycle with some StartSmart and put in a couple of clowns(the one with the spot on it's head is a Gladiator clown according to the LFS and the other is a Picasso):

 

[steelheader.262]

Looking good!!!

 

[DiverGirl82]

Looks good. I like how your aquascape turned out. The rock for my 60g cube should arrive Monday and I can't wait to start playing around with it. I hope I come up with something as nice as yours.

 

[MTWiley]

I do have to admit that we used a few Marco rocks that our LFS that had cut them in half so that the part that was in contact with the tank was perfectly flat and that really helped alot with the stability of the rock work, then we used a few tiny dabs of epoxy to really shore it all up and make sure that it wasn't going anywhere.

 

[RMS18]

Nice... better keep those levels down for those poor fish.

 

[MTWiley]

Replaced the lights and added a few corals.

 

[MTWiley]

I've been battling cyano and was planning on going home (half way across the country) for a week, so I had to get a few things in order before I left town.

- I borrowed the foscam we normally have focused on our dog crates while we're out of the house and got it setup in Fusion so that I could check in on the tank while we were out of town and had a friend lined up that would be in town in case we ran into any major problems. Unfortunately now I really want to get a camera setup on the tank full time and maybe a second that's setup to watch sump area.

- I also picked up an AFS to feed the tank while I was gone, but I ran into issues with the lowest setting not dropping enough food into the tank and the second lowest dropping way too much food in the tank so I came up with this modification: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/neptune-afs-adjustability-modification.222298/ and that worked awesome.

- Did a treatment with Chemiclean before leaving town, but it didn't kick it all the way so I did a second treatment when I got back after those two treatments and now starting to run GFO, Activated Carbon & Purigen in a BRS reactor things seem to be settling down.

I'm having trouble getting closeup pictures that don't make everything look blue, if you guys have any tips/tricks I'd love to hear them.

 

[MTWiley]

I setup a Raspberry Pi and Camera Module and integrated it with my apex so that I can watch the tank from anywhere(while on vacation/etc) and also set it up to take a snapshot everyday so that I could watch the tank progression and see how it changes over time. So far it's been up/running for a few days now and I've been very impressed with the auto white balance. Here's a sample of the stream/snapshot:

 

[MTWiley]

Added the Neptune LSM for night viewing.

Also added a Neptune DOS for Automatic Water Changes (2 gallons per day) and the tank has been looking better since then. Added a few rock flower Anemones and a few other things, I'll try to post a few pics in the next few days.

 

[MTWiley]

My Wife got me a couple new corals for my birthday this weekend at "The Reef Rack"(The owner was awesome and threw in a free T-Shirt since it was my birthday):

And I got this one for myself:

And the store owner at Live Art Aquatics where we bought the blue Fungia threw in a few small frags of this birds nest for free:

 

[Dashiki]

Nice corals!

 

[MTWiley]

Swapped my Jebao pumps for a pair of MP40wQDs and put in a few more SPS since the birdsnest we got a few weeks ago has quite a bit of new growth and seems to be doing well.

About a week or two ago my wife and I went to our first local club meetup where they were doing a fragging demo/workshop. At the end of the workshop the club auctioned off all the coral that Live Art Aquatics(our LFS) brought for the workshop. It turned out awesome since we scored and came back with ~7 frags for ~$56. Looking forward to next month when they do their next auction.

Dealing with a bit of algae and considering building/buying an Algae Turf Scrubber in the next few weeks/month to try to combat the problem.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Cool! I really like the scape!

 

[MTWiley]

From a different angle:

 

[MTWiley]

As you could see in the pictures I had a bit of an algae problem and it only seemed to be getting worse. I tried setting up an ATS that I built, but it wasn't helping that much so I've decided to give Vibrant a try and it seems to be working relatively well so far. I'll try to take/post some more pictures later today. For now here's one I just pulled off Fusion(but my camera got bumped apparently so it's not really oriented right).

 

[MTWiley]

I went home to SoCal for 2 weeks and stopped by Reefapalooza and won an 18" x 18" x 6" frag tank from Advanced Acrylics. I managed to get it back home to KC in 1 piece and was going to wait a while to get it setup. Last Thursday I saw a post on a local reefing facebook group that someone had a house fire and was without power/heat and they wanted people to come take/save their fish & corals.

I got there as quick as I could and bagged up what I could put into coolers and headed home to try to save what I could. Unfortunately, the tank in his house was already pretty cold since the house fire started around 1 am and I got there about 11 am. Luckily I had made up a fresh 30 gallon batch of salt water the night before and actually had a heater in my mixing station for once(I normally don't even though I know I should). Tossed the corals I grabbed into a couple buckets with some spare maxi-jets & heaters I had laying around and then I headed back to work. I came back later that night and set up the frag tank with some fresh water and moved from the buckets to the frag tank. I stopped by my LFS and as luck would have it they had a Tuna Blue Kessil A80 so I picked that up and set it up on the frag tank along with a spare Jebao RW-4. I drilled the frag tank and put in an overflow and got the frag tank plumbed into my sump so that I could keep it stable using the reactor(carbon), skimmer, heater, controller, etc. that I have for my main tank. So far the zoas, acans frogspawn, & hammer look like might make it. Unfortunately, the Montipora didn't make it.

Frogspawn:

Acans:

Zoas, Hammer, & Monti:

 

[MTWiley]

Couple of quick shots from this morning. I moved my trachy from the DT where the shrimp and Clowns were harassing it to the the frag tank to see if I can nurse it back to health. Having a hell of an algae problem since I got back from vacation. Took a look and my TDS are creeping up on my mixing unit so I just bought some replacement DI and a second stage of DI to try to prevent this from becoming a problem again. Also picked up a couple of Ts & check valves along with a pressure/bladder tank so that I could hook my new fridge's icemaker and door dispenser into my RO unit pre-DI and a valve to turn off water flow through the DI while we're just using it for drinking. It had also been about a year or so since I've replaced the prefilters so I'll be replacing those as well. Hopefully replacing my prefilters, DI and a couple good water changes can help get this algae problem back under control.

 

[MTWiley]

Just got my Neptune FMK in the mail through the Neptune Insiders program and this thing looks awesome. I can't wait to get it setup here in the next few days. I picked up the extra 1/4" sensor to toy around with and see if I could use it for ATO or Auto Water Changes. I haven't quite figured out if it's just a flow detector or a volumizer yet, but I thought it would be worth a try to check it out and see what uses I could find for it.