25g rimless cube

Fla04gbf · Nov 27, 2019

Hi all R2R members! This is to documents my recent upgrade to 25g cube. This thread is inspired by Ray (https://www.reef2reef.com/posts/6758804/). He made me want to share this journey and my mistakes and mishap with reef lovers! Check you his thread if you haven’t already! He has shown so much spirit and fought on with all the mishaps and problems over the pass year or so. His 75g is now looking good and the worse should be behind!
Well back to my cube, here are the equipments:

Light: AI prime HD (main light and i am running the schedule of D. Saxby). I also have a chinese black box 50W that i am currently just running as supplementary and also for moon light.
i have a DIY LED 50W lamp for my fuge and the Macroalgaes are loving.

flow: 1 jeaboa 5w (right) and 1 Aqamai Kps (left) both running on opposite cycle with about 1 hour overlap. My return pump is ~500gph but i have to reduce the flow rate quite a bit (still doing a bit of tweaking to fine tune it).

skimmer: BM qq (this skimmer is great! And it is the only decent one that could fit into the tiny space)

controller: currently only running the chiller and heater on two temp controllers. Planning maybe to do a DIY aquarium controller with raspberry pi in the future but this would be another project

Stocks: pistol shrimp and yellow spot goby pair
Sexy shrimps 4
Pajama fish 2
Green Spotted dragonet 1
lawnmower blenny 1.
atrea snails ~10
Narrauis snail 1

corals: various zoas
3 brain corals
Various monti frags
1 flower pot (red color)
mushrooms 2 orange and green

More pic on the equipment and stocks coming up soon!

Fla04gbf · Nov 29, 2019

Hello reefers, hope you all had a wonderful thanks giving!
currently battling a but of a flatworm invasion into my fuge at the moment. I don’t find any in my DT so i think my green spotted dragonet is doing his job there. So some in my fuge that i started noticing last week. This coincidentally happened after my last green dragonet died (from jumping out of the tank that I wasn’t aware of while i was too busying messing about with my new tank ). i was really upset cause he was so cute and i already trained him to eat frozen and even bloodworms!
i opted to not use chemicals but to just up the flow a bit and more frequent WC and manually siphoning as much as i can find whenever i have time to get under that fuge. I am making progress and i (think) am seeing less everyday . I hope it’s not my imagination and hopefully it will be under control soon. This is a pic of the monsters. Wish me luck! Reef on!

Fla04gbf · Dec 2, 2019

Hi reefer, so this 25g is an upgrade from a 6g pico that i had for about 1 year. At the end it was getting very frustrating to even try to fit anything it... therefore i decided on the upgrade about 2 months ago.
I bought the 18” cube home then drill the two holes for return and drain myself! This is the first time i drill glass and it was both awesome and very scary.. . So far there is not leak.
i also made my own sump and did all the plumbing myself since i love DIY (but i am not very good at it yet). I didn’t use a filter sock as i have read in many threads that it could be a real pain to wash and also my sump is too small to fit regular socks anyway. I followed one of the DIY post and made lots of holes in a small container bottle then put some filter floss in the inside and just change the floss as they get dirty. Here is more pics on the setup. The stand i made with pre-cut aluminium profiles that i ordered online. So far it is holding well.

these are images of my sump and the ATO Reservoir and the chiller (most important item for a tropic climate. We have 8 months of summer in HK)

Raege · Dec 3, 2019

Fla04gbf said:
Hi reefer, so this 25g is an upgrade from a 6g pico that i had for about 1 year. At the end it was getting very frustrating to even try to fit anything it... therefore i decided on the upgrade about 2 months ago.
I bought the 18” cube home then drill the two holes for return and drain myself! This is the first time i drill glass and it was both awesome and very scary.. . So far there is not leak.
i also made my own sump and did all the plumbing myself since i love DIY (but i am not very good at it yet). I didn’t use a filter sock as i have read in many threads that it could be a real pain to wash and also my sump is too small to fit regular socks anyway. I followed one of the DIY post and made lots of holes in a small container bottle then put some filter floss in the inside and just change the floss as they get dirty. Here is more pics on the setup. The stand i made with pre-cut aluminium profiles that i ordered online. So far it is holding well.

these are images of my sump and the ATO Reservoir and the chiller (most important item for a tropic climate. We have 8 months of summer in HK)

Awesome job I disagree on you not being that good at DIY drilling and plumbing all look sweet. Ty for the kind words as well. You will love being able to scroll back over the coming months and I truly believe sharing good and bad helps ourselves and others.
Looking forward to following along!

Fla04gbf · Dec 4, 2019

I had been reefing for just over a year. So i have lots to learn. In terms of parameters and the cycle, i made lots of mistakes just like a lot of other beginners. I used cured live rocks from LFS at a very reasonable price (i did find a hitchhiker crab which to this date i have not definitely ID on it. Now it stays in my sump doing whatever it does). So the cycle was relatively smooth at the beginning and I introduced a cpl of shrimps and an anemone a few weeks after the tank was set up. The anemone turned out to be a big mistake. It died after a month or so and it never looked like it was health from the get go . I felt really sorry for it and vowed never to bug another anemone (sticking to my promise so far).

My parameters were ok back then but it was weird because i could never get my p04 and no3 level to the acceptable low level. Like it was always ~ 25-50 ad po4 above 1. This lasted for many months. And was very frustrating. Only after i have successful converted the middle compartment of my back side filter to a refugim was i able to get my n03 and p04 under control. In hide sight i might have rushed things a bit during the initial cycle and it made stabilising the parameters so much harder

Now in my 25g cube. My parameters are so far stable. Nutrition wise has been maintaining at a low level.
PH: ~8.1-8.2 (daytime)
N03: 1< (~0.2ppm by Salifert when viewed sideways at 10x sensitivity)
P04: not detectable by Salifert (but ~ 0.03 by Colombo)
Ammonia:I haven’t tested fir ammonia for a long long time. Only do that when sometime dies or when i am really concerned.
N02: I don’t have a test kit for this
Cal: currently at 380 (Salifert) i am not very sure about this reading i may need to get another kit to confirm this
Alk: 5.6 (salifert) again not very sure if this is correct may also need another test kit to confirm.

I don’t have excessive algae growth. Pretty clean on the rocks just occasional scraping the glass the tank looks ok. Corals seem to be adapting and growing well. I have recently added sps into the tank so it would be interesting to see how they grow in the coming months or so. More on the live stocks and corals list coming in the next post. Just a cpl more recent pics of the tank. Keep reefing! And questions and suggestions very welcome

Raege · Dec 5, 2019

Some happy looking corals! Liking that goniopora

Fla04gbf · Dec 5, 2019

Raege said:
Some happy looking corals! Liking that goniopora

Thx Ray, glad you like it! I will doing some more measurements this weekend and do another update soon. As with some of the measurements with those kits, i am having some doubts (particularly the cal level). Fortunately i work in a lab and i will make some precise standards to do a comparison test and see. But if that 380 cal is correct, i may need to start dosing something soon . Take care and keep reefing!

Fla04gbf · Dec 8, 2019

Hello reefers, so i did some test with an lab made calc standard sol. And tested with the salifert calc test kit at full reaction. Here is what i have got:
350= 310. (Measured)
400= 340. (Measured)
450= 384 (measured)
Red sea salt at sal=1.025 measured only at 380

so i can conclude that the test kit is actually pretty accurate since it can nicely follow the increase in calc conc. of the standard solutions. The somewhat lower readings is because the standard solutions were made up with pure water (install of seawater with Calcium). The other ions that are present in SW does contribute quite a bit to the reading that we get. I am a little bit puzzled by the red sea salt being only 380 at sal 1.025. According to their manual it should have 420 calcium. But i did only make up 1 gallon of SW instead of their recommended 2.5 gallon minimum. So next time i will make up a 2.5 gallon batch and measure it again. But my calcium is measure at 390 and alk at ~8. So everything is in check. . Have a good day. Keep reefing!