150g Cube Build

[Dryanimtt]

following along, beautiful tank and great work so far... I'm pretty interested in your canopy style, wondering if you have a more detailed view of that? sorry, just looking to build a canopy myself and gathering ideas.

 

[Dorado]

following along, beautiful tank and great work so far... I'm pretty interested in your canopy style, wondering if you have a more detailed view of that? sorry, just looking to build a canopy myself and gathering ideas.

No problem, happy to help. It's a front opening style canopy. I attached a couple pictures, let me know there is anything else you need.

 

[Dryanimtt]

Looks great! Thanks for the pics

 

[reefpizza]

Follow! Quite scary have that much screw under the canopy o_O humidity + screw over water= :eek:

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Nice. I find it intresting your main light will be led? And you supplement with t5? I will be doing the opposite. Lol!
Great build. Keep it up.
D

 

[Dorado]

Follow! Quite scary have that much screw under the canopy o_O humidity + screw over water= :eek:

Thanks for following. Most of the hardware that I use is stainless, not that that is failproof, but what is the concern? That the screws will rust and then flake into the tank or that the screws will fall into the water?

 

[Dorado]

Nice. I find it intresting your main light will be led? And you supplement with t5? I will be doing the opposite. Lol!
Great build. Keep it up.
D

In the past I have had a tank with all T5s and a tank with Halides and T5s. I want to give LEDs a shot with the lower energy and heat advantages and the fixture I'm looking at is about 19"x19". I couldn't fit two of those fixtures in the canopy so I figured I fill in the space with T5s. I know that some people are having great success with LEDs and I figure that T5s can only help. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

 

[reefpizza]

Thanks for following. Most of the hardware that I use is stainless, not that that is failproof, but what is the concern? That the screws will rust and then flake into the tank or that the screws will fall into the water?

Yeah with humidity some rusty/drops will fall in to the tank water i guess

 

[Dorado]

It's been a few weeks since my last post so I thought I'd make an update. My tank was hit with new tank syndrome pretty hard a couple of weeks ago so a got a small clean up crew consisting of 25 trochus and 25 margarite snails and they went to work and killed it. Within 3 days my rocks went from looking brown to bleached white again. Unfortunately, the coralline algae hasn't started blooming yet but hopefully soon. I also got three more lyretail anthias(for a total of 6), two mocha clownfish(one died due to shipping), 2 skunk shrimp and one blood red shrimp.

In an attempt to increase biodiversity in my tank, I started a phytoplankton and copepod culture setup from Poseidon phytotank. Its been a fun little project and I've had 3 successful harvests so far.

I also finally got my hands on some chaeto for my refugium. I decided to take a chance on the new Neptune refugium GRO light. The fact that it didn't need to take up outlet space on my apex was very appealing to me, I hope it works out.

Lastly, I'm a little on the fence about my future lighting situation. The original plan was to use the Straton LED fixture but because of its unavailability, I may just end up using the 8x24w T5 ATI Sunpower fixture. I'm getting a little tired of waiting an am eager to start stocking some coral. Below are a couple of my lighting option layouts.

 

[JoannaCora]

Beautiful stand and such clean plumbing! I certainly see where I have room for improvement now.

 

[Dorado]

Beautiful stand and such clean plumbing! I certainly see where I have room for improvement now.

Thanks Joanna, it helped that I had several months of waiting for my tank to be built to make drawings and plans.

 

[JoannaCora]

Thanks Joanna, it helped that I had several months of waiting for my tank to be built to make drawings and plans.

That’s a very fair point, I suppose I tend to work a little more fast and loose, then clean it up later lol

 

[Dorado]

May update:
I got tired of waiting for the ATI Straton to come back in stock, and decided to go with the dimmable ATI sunpower. I mounted the fixture on a couple of drawer slides to make it easier to service the fixture an change bulbs. The two holes are for the fixture fans and I also cut two more holes for exhaust fans that are pointing upward.

I moved the retrofit T5s around and added 3 OR3-60's. I know it's overkill, but it will give me a lot of options and eliminate dark spots.

All of the light fixture cords are fed through a 2" sleeve to the garage on the other side of the wall and are controlled by another EB832

I'm still playing with lighting intensities and bulb configurations which has been a fun challenge. I also bought a PAR meter to help me home in on my desired intensity.

 

[Dorado]

Slowly but surely I've been acquiring some coral here and there. Here are a few tank pics

It appears that the largest of the female anthias is starting to transform into a male. Below is before picture.

And now she's starting to develop red on the tips of her dorsal and pectoral fins

 

[Dorado]

Lastly, my wonderful wife surprised me with an early birthday present when I got home from work today. A battlebox from Battlecorals.com. I'm so happy with the frags that I got, and they all look great.

I glued little numbers on them so that I could keep track of their names.
1. Miss Scarlet
2. Battle de Fuego
3. Mr Neutron
4. Blood Bank
5. Happy Glamper
6. Fox Flame
7. Rainbow Brite
8. Flamethrower Table
9. Clean Tangerine
10. Hyperberry
11. Kermit Song
12. Greg C efflo

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Lookin great.man.. great attention to.detail.
D

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Ur rock looks like its really starting.to.develop
D

 

[Dorado]

Lookin great.man.. great attention to.detail.
D

Thank you very much. The next thing I need to worry about is cal/alk dosing. I've been keeping pretty good numbers with water changes and a little soda ash here and there, but that'll all change with the new SPS additions

 

[Dorado]

Ur rock looks like its really starting.to.develop
D

Yeah its finally comin around, at least it's not white anymore. I've been trying real hard to get lots of biodiversity and micro fauna in the last month. I got a large assortment of organisms from indo pacific sea farm which has really helped out.

 

[Dorado]

June Update:
I added a powder blue tang to the tank and he's been a model citizen so far. The yellow tang has been a little territorial but nothing to worry about yet. The SPS in the tank are doing really well and spreading their bases pretty quickly. Alkalinity consumption is rapidly going up and I've since started dosing Kalk with an Ecotech Versa dosing pump. My next challenge is to get rid of all the microbubbles in my tank. It's strange because before adding a CO2 scrubber to my Skimmer a couple weeks ago, I didn't have any microbubbles. I'm not sure why it's making my skimmer perform so differently but I'm trying to figure out a solution without getting rid of the scrubber.