29g Biocube help/advise/critiques always needed

[Copingwithpods]

Boy its been a while, so much has changed, this forum still active?

 

[Copingwithpods]

The tank now

 

[Copingwithpods]

A shell of its former self for sure but its come back is in the works, first order of business is a better stand. The last stand was too limiting, the tangle of cables in the back too pain-in-butt-ish, the internal volume too small. New stand is modular, the stand and controller board can be separated, all controllers sit on the face while all the cables sit behind the false bottom making swapping a cable as easy as unlatching the cabinet and having all the work room your heart desires.

Also tiny tank upgrade, going with a new 32g biocude. All this is still on and extreme budget so process will be slow but for now paint is cheap and dreams are free.

 

[Copingwithpods]

The original design had both the stand and controller box as one unit but I got the crazy idea of making them separable so I could both hide the wires and power bricks behind a false back sandwiched between the cabinet and stand and make cable management and the inevitable cable service as easy as possible. Now i can undo some latches and have complete access to the back of the cabinet, no more wires between the tank and the drywall and doing the "let me follow this cable back to its source only by feel and no eyes.

 

[Copingwithpods]

The front of the cabinet (pretty side) has just enough room for all the power strips, controllers, techy, nerdy stuff, dosing pumps?, temperature displays (for what ever nerdy reason we all need and went to be displayed) and more, and the rear has just enough space for all the ugly power bricks and cables no one wants to see, all completely detachable from the stand with 4 latches giving full access to the ugly side.

 

[Copingwithpods]

Onto the tank.....covid and covid related issues lead to its demise, ill be frank, most almost all corals died I didn't have access to the tank to save them, all inverts died, cope pods and some Caroline algae survived which is surprising because it had no dosing,no water changes and little too no too offs for over a year, in all honesty im lucky anything survived. Some mushrooms survived, a duncan, some lps and my cheato. That is amazing to me the fact that anything specially because they went without lighting for months as my AI prime died.

My budget is as always extremely limited and I've only gotten this far off gifts and freebies and doing most of the work myself.

I didnt want to settle for a prebuilt stand that at the end of the day I wouldn't be happy with so I stretched my budget and built my own,now a 5gal ato res is a real possibility, who knows. What im trying to say its progress will be slow, painfully slow, it still need so much equipment replaced and new parts it boggles the mind specially with the budget already blown, im trying my best to get my tank back in order as I know every day it spends outside my car is about and extra week of work trying to get it back in order. For these who gave follow this so far, thank you, your interest and input has helped me greatly and i hope you stick around a bit longer.

Might also give away some of the surviving corals so there's that.

 

[Copingwithpods]

Making progress

 

[Copingwithpods]

Not sure about the dosing pump placement, im buying a third down the road to dose mag and im not liking this set up, also still have a few more things coming in like the ato display and pump display.