Cubeguy
Community Member
This will be my 3rd tank since I got back into the hobby 5 years ago. First tank was a 4 gal Aio, I actually had a pretty successful run at keeping acros in that tank, without a doser just doing water changes every 3-4 days. Didn’t take long for it to crash, no Surprise with a system that small.
Next up was a 15g Aio with some success in my 4g I figured I would see better results with a somewhat bigger tank. This tank went through everything, crazy Dino’s, cyano, hair algae that grows before your eyes. I had a rough go of it for a long time. Eventually the tank did level out at which point I started adding acros. I would have some encrust well and then stop and one day no flesh. All with good constant numbers. Then I lost all my snails and crabs and it was time to send out an icp. Came back with loads of tin, lead, copper. Scoured the tank for magnets rusting and couldn’t find much. Then one day I had a big hangnail and got absolutely rocked putting my hand in my water change bucket. Discovered the smallest crack in the pump I was using… after this and a couple water changes the few remaining coral I had started taking off. So I decided it was time to build a REAL tank where I didn’t make all the stupid beginning mistakes I had in the past. And so I decided to do a 40g breeder.
I Started slowly collecting needed equipment. The stand is a cheap metal one that I welded on a shelf at the bottom for a sump and mounts for the power strip.
Next up was plumbing, something I hadn’t done yet. I went with a bean animal (kinda?) also first time drilling glass. Second hole I drilled ended up cracking the glass. Good thing it was a $65 tank lol. Drilled a whole bunch of holes in the cracked tank as practice and then bought a new one and successfully punched 5 holes! Also had to drill a hole in the sump as a drain, more on that later.
Plumbed it up and glued everything before the Union so I could change around the design to fit equipment.
Pretty exited at this point. Did a quick leak test outside and everything was good so I moved the 15g out of the room and set it up. Took a couple days to get it to fill using my rodi but eventually I was in business!
One thing I decided to do was I added a drain with a ball valve on the sump. This allows me to just drain water out the bottom under the house and outside without needing to lug old water around the house. Cool idea and it’s worked well. I do worry about it having a small leak and allowing saltwater to drain out that is then replaced with top off water… open to ideas to add redundancy. Idk maybe I’m overthinking it.
I used dry rock to make the main structure and wanted a cool overhang so I made this cool piece using that mortar stuff.
The light I chose is a t5/led setup, in the past I had used led and hated them. Learning about the spectrum coral need and how narrow of a spectrum led emit I wanted to try something different. Also when I was a kid I my first tank had pc bulbs and I grew sps ok considering how many mistakes a made (14 year old). Using a setup like this I feel I’m getting the positives of both lighting types.
I used 40ibs of special grade live sand, 20ibs of live rock and 20ibs of dry rock. Also moved over the rocks from my 15g which are covered with life, sponges coralline etc.
The ugly phase hit hard, some Dino’s and hair algae but it cleared up pretty quick using some microbacter clean and raising nitrates and dosing HEAPS of phosphate.
After I got it under control it was time to get some fish. This is my list of what’s in there right now.
Midas blenny
Tailspot blenny
Mcosckers flasher
Neon goby
Purple firefish
frostbite clown
Bullet goby
Talbot damsel
Let it run like this for a couple weeks then transferred over the coral from the 15g they quickly started coloring up well and growing so I thought I’d try a $20 acro frag and see how it went. It quickly began encrusting and sprouted a new branch. So figured I could throw a couple more in and see how they do. I ended up getting a pack of 5 acros from lobsterofjustice for $150. And again they all did super well.
One actually hadn’t traveled well and had lost a lot of flesh during shipping. The rtn quickly stopped and over the next couple of weeks it’s began encrusting over the dead skeleton. This is something that none of my other setup would have done.
In case anyone is wondering lobsterofjustice did offer to replace the coral that hadn’t travelled well which was really cool of him.
Tank is 3 months old now and every day I’m increasing my dose of afr and kalk. Dino’s have come back in small waves but are only on the sand and clear up with an added dose of microbacter clean and bringing back up phos and nitrates. Last time they came back it was just a light dusting, maybe a month ago. Hair algea has slowly been cut back by the bullet goby. I’ve actually been amazed at how much hair algae that fish will eat.
Next up was a 15g Aio with some success in my 4g I figured I would see better results with a somewhat bigger tank. This tank went through everything, crazy Dino’s, cyano, hair algae that grows before your eyes. I had a rough go of it for a long time. Eventually the tank did level out at which point I started adding acros. I would have some encrust well and then stop and one day no flesh. All with good constant numbers. Then I lost all my snails and crabs and it was time to send out an icp. Came back with loads of tin, lead, copper. Scoured the tank for magnets rusting and couldn’t find much. Then one day I had a big hangnail and got absolutely rocked putting my hand in my water change bucket. Discovered the smallest crack in the pump I was using… after this and a couple water changes the few remaining coral I had started taking off. So I decided it was time to build a REAL tank where I didn’t make all the stupid beginning mistakes I had in the past. And so I decided to do a 40g breeder.
I Started slowly collecting needed equipment. The stand is a cheap metal one that I welded on a shelf at the bottom for a sump and mounts for the power strip.
Next up was plumbing, something I hadn’t done yet. I went with a bean animal (kinda?) also first time drilling glass. Second hole I drilled ended up cracking the glass. Good thing it was a $65 tank lol. Drilled a whole bunch of holes in the cracked tank as practice and then bought a new one and successfully punched 5 holes! Also had to drill a hole in the sump as a drain, more on that later.
Plumbed it up and glued everything before the Union so I could change around the design to fit equipment.
Pretty exited at this point. Did a quick leak test outside and everything was good so I moved the 15g out of the room and set it up. Took a couple days to get it to fill using my rodi but eventually I was in business!
One thing I decided to do was I added a drain with a ball valve on the sump. This allows me to just drain water out the bottom under the house and outside without needing to lug old water around the house. Cool idea and it’s worked well. I do worry about it having a small leak and allowing saltwater to drain out that is then replaced with top off water… open to ideas to add redundancy. Idk maybe I’m overthinking it.
I used dry rock to make the main structure and wanted a cool overhang so I made this cool piece using that mortar stuff.
The light I chose is a t5/led setup, in the past I had used led and hated them. Learning about the spectrum coral need and how narrow of a spectrum led emit I wanted to try something different. Also when I was a kid I my first tank had pc bulbs and I grew sps ok considering how many mistakes a made (14 year old). Using a setup like this I feel I’m getting the positives of both lighting types.
I used 40ibs of special grade live sand, 20ibs of live rock and 20ibs of dry rock. Also moved over the rocks from my 15g which are covered with life, sponges coralline etc.
The ugly phase hit hard, some Dino’s and hair algae but it cleared up pretty quick using some microbacter clean and raising nitrates and dosing HEAPS of phosphate.
After I got it under control it was time to get some fish. This is my list of what’s in there right now.
Midas blenny
Tailspot blenny
Mcosckers flasher
Neon goby
Purple firefish
frostbite clown
Bullet goby
Talbot damsel
Let it run like this for a couple weeks then transferred over the coral from the 15g they quickly started coloring up well and growing so I thought I’d try a $20 acro frag and see how it went. It quickly began encrusting and sprouted a new branch. So figured I could throw a couple more in and see how they do. I ended up getting a pack of 5 acros from lobsterofjustice for $150. And again they all did super well.
One actually hadn’t traveled well and had lost a lot of flesh during shipping. The rtn quickly stopped and over the next couple of weeks it’s began encrusting over the dead skeleton. This is something that none of my other setup would have done.
In case anyone is wondering lobsterofjustice did offer to replace the coral that hadn’t travelled well which was really cool of him.
Tank is 3 months old now and every day I’m increasing my dose of afr and kalk. Dino’s have come back in small waves but are only on the sand and clear up with an added dose of microbacter clean and bringing back up phos and nitrates. Last time they came back it was just a light dusting, maybe a month ago. Hair algea has slowly been cut back by the bullet goby. I’ve actually been amazed at how much hair algae that fish will eat.
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