Paul's 29 Gallon Biocube build

[pdt7361]

Hello everyone. I've been reading these forums for a while now and decided that I should get some info up here on my build as it progresses. I have another build thread up on one of the other large reef forums, but I wanted to put it up here as well for additional feedback.
Years ago I ran a couple small reef tanks but haven't had any kind of setup for about 5 years now. My wonderful wife decided it was time for me to get a new tank in place and bought me a Coralife Biocube 29 for Christmas last year. I immediately began looking at what it came with, what add-ons I'd need, and what all I needed to change on it.
I first began by ordering the inTank media basket, their fuge, and a JBJ Nano Glo LED light for the fuge. Once that all came in, I threw out the bio balls that came stock and put in the inTank equipment. Within my media basket I am running filter floss, purigen, and chemi-pure (order is top down).

 

[pdt7361]

The week after Christmas, I got 25 lbs of very nice live rock from Saltwater Island here in west county St Louis, 20 lbs of live sand, and 25 gallons of water. I got all of that into place and poured in a bottle of Biospira to help kick this build off.
The pic below is being a pain and keeps turning over...sorry for that

 

[pdt7361]

While waiting for the cycle, I began looking into what kind of flow I'd want in the tank. I ordered a Hydor Smart Wave Circulation Pump Controller and 2 Hydor Koralia Nano 425s. As soon as they came in I got them all set up on a 30 sec alternating wave. I also got my Aquaticlife 115 skimmer in that same week and began looking into it - and any potential mods that I'd need to make to it.

 

[pdt7361]

Since I was using some very nice live rock, live sand, 50% established water, and biospira, my cycle happened within only a couple of short weeks and by the 2nd week of January I was ready to add in a few small things. My first purchases would be a colony of green zoas and green mushrooms. I also added in a few snails.

 

[pdt7361]

With the zoas and mushrooms thriving, I went to my local LFS and bought 2 fancy clowns the week after my first coral additions. The immediately claimed the back right side of the tank as theirs - I assume they like the flow going into the back chambers and it is probably a good spot to catch extra food after a feeding.

 

[pdt7361]

Once I got the initial tank setup, I started doing more research on what I want my tank to look like and the best way to support it long term. I decided it that I needed to upgrade the lights. The look of the stock hood on these cubes is pretty decent and with 5 kids in the house, I don't want to run an open system right now...so I figured LEDs were definitely going to be the way to go. I researched all of the retro-fit kits and while they are all very nice, they are also more money then what I could spend at that time. I decided to do a custom LED mod using the TrueLumen Pro LED strips. I ordered 2* Marine Fusion and 3* Deep Water Blue strips (got an amazing price on them - thank you Amazon). I also got their Dual Ramp timer to control the lighting.

 

[pdt7361]

By the end of January I had all of my LED strips and the timer in place. In order to do my mod, I removed all of the electronics from the hood except for one controller to power the fans and 2 of the small Coralife LED strips that I decided to leave in for additional color/moon lights. I had a local company cut a piece of clear 1/4" acrylic for me (16x7 inches) that I would use to mount all of the lights to. I laid the acrylic into the hood and used a marker to dot out the existing screw mounts that were already in place in the hood. I quickly drilled out the holes for me to screw the mounting place to the hood. I also drilled out a 1/2" hole on each side to run LED wires down through.
I relocated the 2 Coralife LED strips to each side of my TrueLumen's and added another small LED strip to one end. Once everything was in place, I put the cover back on and was done.

 

[pdt7361]

After getting my LEDs in place, I added in this little frogspawn and another very small group of zoas - again, I didn't get the name of them so if someone knows, please let me know.

 

[pdt7361]

Immediately after I added the 2 little corals above, my wife found a great deal at another of our local LFS's - 3 sexy shrimp and a mini max anemone.

 

[Chrisfish]

Welcome to R2R, your tank is looking great, thanks for sharing the progress with us and look forward to seeing more.

 

[pdt7361]

Throughout February I continued to add quite a few new corals to the tank - Cup Coral, Flower Pot, Duncan, an Aussie Green Duncan, Kenya Tree, some Acans, 3 different Blastos (red/green, purple/green, and solid red), and lots of zoas (Armor of God, Sunny D, Bam Bam Orange, LA Lakers, Rastas, and a bunch of others that I don't know their name). Below are some of the pics.

 

[pdt7361]

As I added in the corals, I also added to my livestock. I've got 2 peppermint shrimp, 1 cleaner shrimp, a diamond goby, a tri-color wrasse, 2 porcelain crabs, and then my 2 clowns.

 

[pdt7361]

Some more coral pics and a full tank shot as of mid-February:

 

[pdt7361]

And finally up to more real time. Over this past weekend my 2 giant turbo snails decided that they wanted to try and jam themselves down between my rocks where they didn't fit. Unfortunately I learned the hard way that you should always secure your rock work together (either putty/glue or even drilling out for dowels). Anyways, they knocked down the whole left side of my rock work. Luckily for me, none of my corals were damaged. I went and got some putty to secure the rocks together and re-arranged my corals accommodate for some changes. I try to leave them alone, but with needing to re-do the aqua-scaping, I figured this was the best time. In the pics below you can see that I've added a 2 head Dendro and a small Hammer at the top.
My wife told me that the frag plugs made it the tank look like some old crazy lady's front yard at Christmas time, so I've removed a few of the corals from their plugs and so far everything seems happy.

 

[pdt7361]

I am manually dosing my tank once a week with calcium, iodine, magnesium, and trace elements. I spot feed the corals once a week on Monday nights (I use a mix of Reef Roids, Coral Frenzy, and Phyto), I feed the Dendros mysis by a dropper every other evening, and I feed the livestock every day in the middle of the afternoon. For the livestock, I alternate between mysis, Formula One, pellets/flakes, and Rod's.

 

[pdt7361]

In my inTank Media Basket, I am running 2 pads of filter floss in the top chamber, Purigen in the middle, and Chemi-pure Elite in the bottom. I change out the filter floss twice a week to keep it clean and I clean out the skimmer cup almost daily. My inTank Fuge has chaeto that is just stocked full of pods. I've had to trim the chaeto twice - the first time I had to pry a football size wad of it out (started at about the size of a tennis ball) so now I trim it by-weekly. I run my fuge light only when my main lights are off. The TrueLumen LEDs turn on at 9:15a (30 minute ramp) and then turn off at 7:15pm (30 minute ramp).

 

[pdt7361]

I think the next thing that I'll do is upgrade the stock return pump and I'm going to make some changes to the Aquaticlife 115 skimmer. For the skimmer I've already modified it to extend the air intake up to the same height as the top of the cup. However, mounting it has been a problem. With the new version of the Coralife BC, you can't use the tank mount for the skimmer - the hood design was changed so there is a bracket in the way. Right now I have it sitting on a custom made stand within chamber 1, but I think I am going to mod it to use a magnet mount - I figured this would allow for an easier way to control the height of the skimmer as needed. I've ordered my magnets and am just waiting for them to show up.
On a return pump for the BC29, what would you all recommend? I have the newest version of the BC, so it comes with the Coralife S-1000 pump that is rated at 265 gph.

 

[IdahoNano]

Awesome tank!

 

[pdt7361]

Thank you IdahoNano. It's still a work in progress but for the next month or so I want to just let everything grow. I'm especially excited about my Dendros....I really want to see them do well as they are a beautiful coral and will most likely start to get a lot harder to find now...some kind of ban on importing them has been put into place.

 

[Sheeler2013]

By the end of January I had all of my LED strips and the timer in place. In order to do my mod, I removed all of the electronics from the hood except for one controller to power the fans and 2 of the small Coralife LED strips that I decided to leave in for additional color/moon lights. I had a local company cut a piece of clear 1/4" acrylic for me (16x7 inches) that I would use to mount all of the lights to. I laid the acrylic into the hood and used a marker to dot out the existing screw mounts that were already in place in the hood. I quickly drilled out the holes for me to screw the mounting place to the hood. I also drilled out a 1/2" hole on each side to run LED wires down through.
I relocated the 2 Coralife LED strips to each side of my TrueLumen's and added another small LED strip to one end. Once everything was in place, I put the cover back on and was done.

i have a biocube 29 by coralife and was wondering how those lights are doing and the price because i too do not want to pay for a retro fit kit