afboundguy's 25'ish cube build from 2011

[afboundguy]

So I've decided to take a few minutes to share the journey I've had with my current tank. It has been up and running since 2011 and before that it was a 55 gallon tank for probably 10+ years. Wife convinced me to downsize unfortunately but I'm in the process of trying to upgrade slightly... I got a brand new 25'ish gallon cube with 3 sides of low iron glass and a canopy... I had planned on going skimmerless and to make it as low maintenance as possible...

 

[afboundguy]

First thing I did was seal the canopy...

 

[afboundguy]

After I had a stand build I did a clear coat of poly. Did about 4 coats with sanding in between coats and then used a marine wax to give it a little extra protection from water...

 

[afboundguy]

First sign of life in the tank!!!

 

[afboundguy]

Next step was to install a small shelf... Idea from the get go was to simplify almost every aspect of the tank and not have as much "fish junk" in the living room and attic... So I needed a small shelf for the extra storage...

Used some extra pre-stained wood from my father-in-law's stash and made a quick shelf. I wanted the RO/DI water to be able to fit in the stand so I used them along with a small box to level it out before screwing in the angled metal...

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[afboundguy]

Next I had to decide how to keep the fish in the tank The back of the canopy is wide open. I decided to use some of the left over plastic screen mesh I purchased to cover my old 55 and 29... I stapled the mesh to the back of the canopy and left the last few inches unattached and cut out some of the aluminum frame so that it would sort of snap into place... Happy with the results...

 

[afboundguy]

Next was a waiting game for the lights to come in... I almost gave up and did the tank swap with the intentions of using my 30" T5 light corner to corner so the corals would have some light but they finally came!!!

I wanted a total of 16 GU10 LED bulbs that I found out about about these lights from a local club member and I ordered 8 3x1W blue and 8 3x1W cool white...

Pre-fab...

 

[afboundguy]

First shots of tank being filled up with rocks. Most of the rock didn't make the cut from my old 55 gallon as I ended up using one large piece from the old set up and two smaller ones to make kind of a cave like structure...

 

[afboundguy]

Pictures of the ghetto fabulous LED set up... Looks fine when the canopy is all closed...

 

[afboundguy]

Here are some pictures of the old 55...

 

[afboundguy]

New 25'ish cube pictures...

 

[afboundguy]

More...

 

[afboundguy]

I started off getting some crazy polyp extension but the coloring on the SPS were a little browned out. Slowly acclimating the corals to the LED lights...

 

[afboundguy]

 

[afboundguy]

Crammed as much stuff as I could under the stand I had more room in this one that the 55 because I didn't have a sump and everything else I crammed in there lol...

 

[afboundguy]

So this is going to be an ongoing theme with this tank build... So buckle down!!! I ignored the tank for 7 months from August 2011 to Feb 2012 and it went down the crapper lol... Got motivated and cleaned and reorganized it...

 

[afboundguy]

Updated the lights around the same time and picked up the AI Sol Nano

 

[afboundguy]

And here we go again... Ignored tank again from March 2012 till Aug 2014 when we ended up buying a house so I had to pay attention to the tank since it was coming with me! This was right after I installed the new light...

 

[afboundguy]

And this was August 2014 right before we moved...

 

[afboundguy]

And then guess what??? I ignored the tank again from Aug 14 until about Dec 2015 when I did a water change for the first time in 11 months...

I ended up doing quite well in some fantasy football adventures and ended up using the winnings to upgrade some equipment...