60g Cube, It's hip to be square!

[ngoodermuth]

Nice cube! Looking forward to more growth updates

 

[hart24601]

Thanks! I appreciate the kind words!!

I have to admit I would have never thought v2 photons would look better than G3 radions. I am surprised the aquasvape impacted it so much. But I am running the greens and reds lower too.

 

[hart24601]

With the heat increasing outside (this weekend high of 99 – and humid) running the AC a lot – so the pH has been low. I have not calibrated the RKL pH probe, but I had large pH drops in my other reef tank before during summer. I was just fiddling around last night and remembered an old jug of BRS CO2 absorbing media I still had from a few years ago. I just cleaned out the fish supplies a bit this week and found tubing and a BRS gfo reactor I do not use anymore – turns out the reactor *just* fits in the stand and tubing I had lying around happens to fit to connect the skimmer and reactor. Yay for using stuff I already have!


In just a couple hours running it last night pH went from 7.9 to 8.0 and was even higher this morning. Plus it works as an ever better silencer for the skimmer, that vertex is fantastic, but the air draw is a bit loud – not any more, the tank is almost dead silent. I am curious how long the media will last. But talk about a nice win/win/win


I have been scratching my head over this… I have noticed very low demand for calcium and alk in the tank. I have only been dosing kalk for now, and that is on a timer and only adds a couple L a day amounting to about 0.3 dkh a day if I remember correctly. This week alk actually increased over the week to 10dkh! Coral is growing and the clam seems to be as well, so I was a bit concerned and unplugged the kalk to bring it down but it was holding steady alk early this week.


I finally figured out what was going on, I have my kalk in a 5g bucket, and the dosing line while out of the tank water still are close to surface as they are built in by skimz in the sump. Well the kalk was slowly siphoning, not so much that I could really tell, but it was siphoning until the bucket level was = to the exit of the dosing line. Not a big deal, I just put a max fill line on the bucket of about 3.5g but it was nice to solve that mystery. I might use a different probe holder for the kalk line that isn’t built in so I can fill the bucket full – but anyway with the siphon stopped (BRS 55ml/min peristaltic pump) the tank dropped from 10dkh to 7.6 in two days! As those stony coral grow this is going to be a crazy high demand tank.

 

[hart24601]

At my lfs today and picked up an Indo elegance coral. I know Aussie is the way to go, but this is been there a few weeks and looks good still so maybe.... I also saw a green tentacle purple tip hammer that had a couple heads that had died a while back so I talked him into selling for $5 over cost. I clipped the huge base off and made a little pillar out of water weld for the remaining stalks, also made a flat base from water weld for the elegance as normally only Aussie has flat base.

 

[hart24601]

Putting a few pics here so I can track growth, the rock still seems to be releasing nutrients, so excuse the diatoms:
BamBams

Cali Tort

Mr Clam

dfs-original-rm-rainbow-nasuta-acro

2 pics of a green acro I can't remember

Hawkins, it didn't like the move and lost color but seems healthy enough.

 

[hart24601]

Yellow Zoa:

Green Machine from Matt Coralman:

ORA SSC and Fox Flame

Red dragon that lost color when moved

RR Pink Floyd

WWC What the Heck (I think)

Spongodes

WWC Yellow Tip

Pc Rainbow (I think)

 

[hart24601]

I think the coral are starting to settle in, there was some color loss, but they are started to encrust. The last pic of the PC rainbow the base has grown on the rock and some of the WWC coral has also.

Wow, this tank has only had water in it for a bit over 6 weeks now!

 

[hart24601]

Flashlight pic of mesenterial filaments after feeding. Video is better but this is just with my phone and a white flashlight.

 

[hart24601]

Haha. No idea what was playing on tv... I can't figure out how to remove sounds.

 

[SIJoe]

How did you take the top of your stand off? I have the same exact stand with a 30g frag and I am using the exact same sump as you. I can't get the top off the stand however. I took the screws out of the top but It won't pull off.

 

[hart24601]

How did you take the top of your stand off? I have the same exact stand with a 30g frag and I am using the exact same sump as you. I can't get the top off the stand however. I took the screws out of the top but It won't pull off.

I used a hammer wrapped in a towel! Sorry for late response, I just noticed!

 

[hart24601]

So I decided to add a chaeto reactor. It just fits next to the CO2 scrubber!!

Used phosban 550, red horticulture led strips, and wrapped in black vinyl. Quite pleased so far, one wrap of the vinyl is good, only lets a bit of light out and I want to make sure it's running so I don't want another wrap of it.

Used a siice 0.5 pump I had. I bought a heat gun, wow... I have been using braided line for my FW tanks and fittings were a horrid battle using boiling water. No more! I can't believe how easy it is with a heat gun and those are so tight, not going anywhere!!

 

[hart24601]

I forgot to put that once nice feature on the reactor with the vinyl is that if you cut the sheet about 3" longer than you need, then stop sticking it down 3" before the overlap you can fold that extra part back over and make a nice little flap you can open to check on the reactor but still close it back up so light doesn't spill out. A bit hard to explain, but it's really nice to have the light blocked but still be able to open it up a bit and see how the chaeto is doing. So are running it on 24/7 period just to see initial growth. So far so good.

 

[HolisticBear]

So I decided to add a chaeto reactor. It just fits next to the CO2 scrubber!!

Used phosban 550, red horticulture led strips, and wrapped in black vinyl. Quite pleased so far, one wrap

I read on another forum that their reactor started to crack due to the lights after a couple months. People in the thread blamed the phosban reactor I believe, saying another reactor would have been ok. No idea if that's the right conclusion (maybe he chose wrong lights), but something to watch for. I'm in the process of making one myself. Was going to use a BioTek reactor because it fits my space better.

 

[hart24601]

I saw that and am trying to see how hot they get, but it's not very warm really. With water passing over the LEDs I don't really see how it could have gotten that hot really unless they were running it dry, but I will keep an eye on it. I was even thinking of running 45min on, 15 off, so the heat doesn't build up. I really don't know how anyone could really jump to conclusion of one reactor vs another unless they had wall thickness and material in front of them.

 

[HolisticBear]

I saw that and am trying to see how hot they get, but it's not very warm really. With water passing over the LEDs I don't really see how it could have gotten that hot really unless they were running it dry, but I will keep an eye on it. I was even thinking of running 45min on, 15 off, so the heat doesn't build up. I really don't know how anyone could really jump to conclusion of one reactor vs another unless they had wall thickness and material in front of them.

I also was looking for thickness of the arcylic used in reactors and basically couldn't find it for any manufacturers. I read that the all red lights may not work as well as white. Maybe red/blue is key. Curious how it works out. Been following this thread for awhile now. Good luck, keep the updates coming

 

[hart24601]

I also was looking for thickness of the arcylic used in reactors and basically couldn't find it for any manufacturers. I read that the all red lights may not work as well as white. Maybe red/blue is key. Curious how it works out. Been following this thread for awhile now. Good luck, keep the updates coming

Will do! I think there might be a difference between white strips that some run just the red color and red/blue only strips. I don't know if it's always reported what they are running exactly, but if one has a white strip that is running only reds then there is a great deal of power you are not using while red/blues have only those diodes so the output should be greater.

That being said I saw how well the BRS video the kessil red macro algae light worked so I am not too concerned, but the cracking I will keep eye on.

One thing I am not sure is if there is a "ramp up" period for macro algae before it can start photosynthesis, which would impact my 45/15 idea for cooling depending how long it is. I need to search google scholar a bit.

 

[hart24601]

I have been watching the reactor for several days and it really does not get very hot, the water seems to be cooling it without issue, however I just switched to a 50min on, 10 min off lighting to try and minimize any heating effects on the reactor as I really don't want cracks - although with it being just slightly warm I really don't see how it would crack.

Of course I am wondering if the heating and cooling every hour is harder on the acrylic than just leaving it on... and if the chaeto is ok with 50 min on/10min off, but I guess that I will find out!

Added some pods the other day, tiger and tisbe so I hope they take off. I ordered a couple tux urchins from LA, they arrived in bad shape and didn't make it, but the LFS just happened to have two of them (I have been waiting for at least a month, no LFS here had them) so I snagged them up. Most of their shipment was dead, but these two were decorating and have transferred well.

I noticed with my rock work, because there are not a lot of contact points between the bottom and the rock, snails have a hard time "finding" the rock to clean it. I am thinking of breaking some more rock to make little ramps where the rock sets on the starboard, nothing large, but maybe it would help the snails get on the rock better.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Loving the update pics! Great shots!

 

[hart24601]

Reading some threads and FB posts from people like Sanjay, there is a convincing argument that starting tanks with dry rock starts systems a bit too sterile... I think there might be something to that. I bought refugium starter packs (plus pods and the such) last week from inland aquatics, florida pets and some garf gunge plus. I am thinking of putting the grunge in a colander for a month or two in the display so critters can move into the display rock. The inland stuff is shipped overnight and is coming tomorrow. I will probably remove the filter stocks for a while after adding all this invert diversity. It might end up being a bit of a mess, but I think the system will benefit from the additions.