Happyfeet

Ok, I was feeling industrious today so I finally finished upgrading my system. I only have one more thing to attach and that's another MP10, but I don't think is really required yet. So my main goal was to hide my equipment and there simply is not enough space in the BioCube stand. My solution was to re-purpose an old bookcase I was going to throw out and turn it into an extension of my stand to hide my equipment. Turns out if is darn near perfect and worked better than I ever imagined it would. Here is a picture of the tank and bookcase, eventually I'm going to hide all the wires using a channel for them. The wires going between the two really annoy me, hopefully I'll hide them this weekend, so it wont look so cruddy. Here is the upper portion of the bookcase, it has turned into the section that houses my new Neptune Apex. Hopefully I wont get any heater malfunctions anymore. If I do have a malfunction, at least I'll get emailed and it will shut itself off! Here is the lower section which is housing my dosing station Hopefully I wont have a repeat of my previous crash, I lost a lot of big corals it was heart breaking. Anyways thanks for stopping in to see whats up.

I bought two Finnex Titanium heaters to replace the single Stealth I was using before. Lesson learned. I like the black sand as well, though I wasn't sure I'd like it when I first started out. It goes very nicely with the black theme of the Biocube and fell in love with it after I put it in the tank.

I realize I'm pretty bad at making updates. So here is a small update on this tank. I'll make a larger one later this week. Unfortunately the tank crashed in December and almost everything died. The heater got stuck in the on position while I was on vacation, it's amazing anything in the tank survived. What did survive lost a lot of color and is only now starting to recover. I'm in the process of updating my system and adding corals back in, I'll post pictures of the new setup once I'm done later this week.

OH RIGHT!

I wonder if thats why all my CC's got used in Colorado this year >_<

There is a myriad of algae control methods. I've known people who let it grow and let their herbivore tank inhabitants go nuts on it. Algal scrubbers are another method, you simply promote the growth of different algae species in an unseen location in an effort to out compete any other species trying to grow in visible locations within the tank. I'm sure their are some terrible additives you could put into your tank to kill the algae (but solutions like that rarely work out in the long run in my experience, it's a band-aid not a cure as it does nothing to solve the root problem of why you are getting algae). Water changes are done to control the NO3 and PO4 levels, so the frequency of the water changes will depend upon the algal growth and levels of the NO3 and PO4 within the tank. Only NO3 is potentially dangerous to the fish within the tank, I'm unaware of any reasonable level of PO4 being detrimental to their health. I think overall yes, it would be easier to maintain a FO only tank when all the variables are considered. Ah, yes, Thanks Coral Hind, I haven't kept tangs/angels in years I forgot carbon can adversely affect their health. It's believed it contributes to HLLE correct?

I use a hammer and a screw driver for all my fragging needs. They are all rusted and they haven't hurt anything in my tank, it's just like adding a little Ferric Oxide to the tank, thought I haven't notice any changes to my PO4 when I do frag. Just stay away from stainless steel and you will be fine.

I agree with Coral Hind, I don't really see a question. I think what you are asking is what is required maintenance in the absence of all the live rock and clean up crews? I don't really consider myself an authority on the subject and most of what I'll tell you is anecdotal. Firstly, all the fake coral and fake rock will work exactly like Live Rock in regards to filtration. Both of them act to increase surface area and in turn increase the active area where bacteria can grow and provide filtration within the nitrogen cycle. So Nothing really changes in that regard except maybe that live rock may be better at it due to all the nooks and crannies providing even more surface area, but that would come down to the material use to create the fake rock and the pattern/mold used to produce it. Second, from my experience, hermit crabs and snails are still used in FO only tanks (Except in predator tanks where they would be eaten), the absence of the critters really only puts more demand on the external filtration, and in the absence of corals aren't required. Third, emphasis on external filtration seems to be the focus. Most of the tanks I've seen which are fish only have a good skimmer and run a media reactor with GFO and Carbon to reduce algal growth. I've seen a couple that had Algal Scrubbers in an effort to promote filtration via Algal means only in desired locations, whether or not that works, I don't know, seemed to for them. Overall there is less demand on perfect parameters, due to the absence of coral, but for a nice appearance to the tank, mechanical filtration seems to be preferred. This coupled with the regular water changes seems to be enough for FO tanks. Again this is mostly anecdotal and I'm not an authority on the subject.

You can raise it by by putting something between the pipes and the rim. It looks like the BH100 and 1000 are different in how the bubbles are channeled, so I can't offer any advice there. It does however look like yours is putting out the same amount of bubbles as mine.

I use the BH1000, When the collection cup doesn't cover the small hole in the side of the acrylic tons of bubbles get dumped into your display. It really shouldn't be flooding if it's covered. Have you tried raising the skimmer's position in the tank to reduce pressure on the return? Just a thought.

My neighbor set it up in my 29 Biocube and if we set it up vertically we were able to turn the cube into a whirlpool, was pretty funny. Overall I'd stick to my MP10 for my cube. Wasn't thrilled with it other than the vortex creating potential

Many schools turn off the Heat/AC on Friday until Monday morning to save electricity. I'd find out how often they do that if they do and plan accordingly. I'd skip the skimmer, in a tank that size majority of your filtration will be rocks and water changes.

There are a lot of things going into Evergrow settings. Factors include, Distance between Lamp and Water, Distance from top of water to first coral, lenses, type of corals just to name a few of the factors. These evergrow units are really powerful and I believe for most tanks the top end of the power setting should be 60%, but 60% over my tank literally vaporized my Acros. I've found I need to have mine around 30/40%

I don't QT, but I also rarely add fish to my tank. Last fish added was 2 years ago.

As a biologist I can confirm "Copperband Butterfly (fish) spawn in the ocean." Do we have any dietitians to confirm Paul B eats Oysters? We may be onto a breakthrough here in copperband butterfly fish spawning.

I as well use the Tunze Osmolator Nano on my BioCube, and it is perfect, never had an issue with it. Only problem I had was I should have installed it from day 1.

I'm partial to the Black Ice Clownfish, so long as they have their helmets. Well actually, I'm partial to almost all Clownfish so long as they have their helmet.

Are we going to be getting some rain?

Thanks for sharing this is really cool! We did something similar, but land developers used it to check the land to see if any T&E species where living on a land they wanted to develop and then would go out at night with a GPS locator and blast 'em so they could develop.

Sounds like maybe you want a visit from these guys But seriously, a Foxface requires a lot of space, stick with small fish, you will have enough of a headache with your parameters in a smaller tank, no need to exacerbate the problem with a large fish. Welcome to Wamas. I really like your rock layout!

Quick Update: Was loosing color on my corals couldn't figure out what was wrong and realized my dKH test wasn't testing properly and my Alk for my 2 part was clogged and not dosing. dKH fell significantly which was causing the color loss I believe. I didn't realize just how much color I had actually lost until visiting a fellow reefers tank and thinking... "you know my coral doesn't look like that anymore". Problem solved, slowly raising my dKH back up, currently sitting at 7.2 dKH after raising for a couple days. I took a picture to document the close call and remind myself to always check to make sure my equipment is working properly. I also got new test kits in double to double check params every so often. The top corals aren't as bleached as the picture leads the viewer to believe, it's just my camera can't handle the high light and white washes the colors out.

Careful talking to this bunch, you will find you do need stuff, lots of shiny new corals. Welcome to WAMAS, when is the cookout!

Yeah, I use an oil radiator and there is almost no change in the overall bill.

It's probably not actually a good thing. Clear blue water is probably signifying large scale death of microbial life which associated with the clay in the sand turn water brownish. Then again a good South East Wind and shift in the jet stream could have just blown all the turbidity away for a bit.

Anyone else and I'd think they are joking. I found it easier to just install a second thermostat for my basement, keeps the basement at a constant temp of 78. With high quality pumps, powerheads, and leds there is very little heat transfer inside the tank and it only gets raised by a single degree. I can't remember the last time I actually saw my in tank heater on and I've never measured the tank water being higher than 80.