ACRORGV's 29 Gallon Biocube

[alxjrz]

So after taking a 5 year break from reef-keeping on fine Sunday my brother-in-law says he's cleaning out his garage and ask If I would like a 29 Gallon Oceanic Biocube that he picked up but never setup. It's hard to say no to " FREE " so I took it and set it up last year November 2014. I started jumping on a couple of forums to catch up on the last 5 years and I started liking R2R more than other site so here I am chronicling my 29 Gallon Biocube's journey.
The image shows the Biocuble with my 200x 36" Orbit Power Compacts when they were very popular! I kept it threw the years works fine.
The Liverock was in trash bins loaded with the old tanks water for 5 years and the sand was the old aragonite sand I had kepted in buckets for 5 years which dried out, I just rinsed them and threw it in the tank.
Every week I would run down to the LFS and pick up my 5 Gallon RODI water for topoff and 2 x 3 gallon RODI mixed salt water to Cycle the Cube.

 

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Trash Bins of LiveRock which stayed in the garage for 5 years.

 

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This image was taken back in December 2014 one month later.

 

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Surprisingly the levels after 2 months we not as high as I imaged they would be given the liverock and drying out the sand.

 

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Then it happened, Cycling period started on the 3rd month. I was in no hurry so I just let the tank do it's thing. I picked up some test kits at petsmart after my really old test kits ran out. lol no joke, they were expired and I would compare them to the new test kit and some would read the same go figure...

 

[alxjrz]

On Jan 13 2014 I went ahead and changed out the Orbit Power Compact with another old light I had laying around the house. I bought a set of Aqua-Medic 24" Oceanlight DE 25o watt MH with 24w T5 x 2 Pendants I purchased back in 200x with some Reeflux 12k bulbs and new ATI T5 bulbs I never used and decided to run one on the cube.

 

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Houston we have signs of Coraline! Jan 16, 2015

 

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Jan 29 2015 I walked into Petco and I noticed some shroom's that were looking pretty bad, and given I always take a challenge decided to speak with the manager and convinced him into letting me take them at a discounted price. $16 is what I paid for these.

 

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Jan 29 2015 I picked up mediabaskets's media basket and Innovative Marines Ghost Mid-Size skimmer.

 

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Feb 6 2015 it was time to do a large water change but things were looking better.

 

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Feb 10 2015 the shrooms were doing fine and the rocks were starting to take off and decided to install media reactor.

 

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Feb 12 2015 I call it my Toxic Rock Period I kinda liked the way the rocks looked. At this point I had my PH prob lying around so I decided to add it to the cube.

 

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Feb 23 2015 after a several weekly small water changes levels started looking decent. Time to jump on the media reactor and load some biopellets read the instructions measured and ran it threw my weekly water change waste to clean the pellets. Dont laugh at my early circa 200x water buckets. haha

 

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Feb 25 2015 I went out and picked up the 130 Maxspect Gyre.

 

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Mar 19 2015 after fighting with the Gyre and the Grye won, I removed the sand and checked the levels a few days later.

 

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March 24 2015 Checked levels again a few days later after removal of sand.

 

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Mar 24 2015 I added the Tunze Osmolator and decided to Blast everything to kingdom come with an old Tunze Turbelle 6200 lying around brand new in box. that was fun!

 

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March 26 2015 I picked up a frag or a piece of a broken frag from ReefValley a local Fish Store that sold me for $15. Test Subject #2 challenge accepted.

 

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March 30 2015 The Shrooms look fine given how much water movement is in the tank. haha

 

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April 9 2015 my mechanical Timer went out on my given they were pretty old I decided to upgrade.