Biocube 32 struggles

[overhead]

I had something similar, after having the LFS look at it under a microscope it turned out to be chrysophytes. Manual cleaning and blue leg hermits took care of it. The picture below is horrible, but it is the best I have. Only way to tell for sure is to look at it under a microscope or have someone at a local fish store look at it. I zip tied a toothbrush to the end of a half inch tube and "vacuumed" it out the best I could.

If you are worried about salinity I would suggest testing it often, that will tell you if you are having an issue. I have not had issues with salt deposits impacting salinity, but I am still new at all of this. But, like I said, testing will tell you.

 

[Reef Jedi]

I started out with a 32g bio cube back in 2003. I was so excited to enter the hobby and I too had no idea what I was doing. I would highly suggest as mentioned before investing in a ATO. That tank will evap its sump chambers in just a couple days so an ato is a must. It’s good you don’t have the stock lighting as it’s not powerful enough anyways. The stock filter will do okay however i swapped mine out for some foam squares. It was easier to take them out to clean them more often. You can take some filter floss and add it between the chambers but I found it will get dirty quick. I bought rolls of it and made little squares that would fit just right. That made the cleaning filter process much better.

I hate to say it but I didn’t have the best of luck with that size of tank. I ran into so many issues due to its size I upgraded to a 75g with in 3 months. Once I went larger I found it was so much easier to take care of. Since then I’ve always wanted to try a smaller tank again however I keep going larger. There are many successful people who keep nano tanks but they do require a lot more attention. To circle back, an ato will help save you time every day. Just remember, since there is a smaller water volume, your parameters will swing a lot faster. Keep an eye on your nitrates and phosphates as those can creep up pretty quickly depending on bioload. And last piece. Don’t buy a fuzzy dwarf lion fish and put it in that size of a tank. Looking back I can’t believe my LFS gave the advice to put it in there. Good luck and welcome to the salty side! It truly is a lot of fun.

 

[falter]

I started out with a 32g bio cube back in 2003. I was so excited to enter the hobby and I too had no idea what I was doing. I would highly suggest as mentioned before investing in a ATO. That tank will evap its sump chambers in just a couple days so an ato is a must. It’s good you don’t have the stock lighting as it’s not powerful enough anyways. The stock filter will do okay however i swapped mine out for some foam squares. It was easier to take them out to clean them more often. You can take some filter floss and add it between the chambers but I found it will get dirty quick. I bought rolls of it and made little squares that would fit just right. That made the cleaning filter process much better.

I hate to say it but I didn’t have the best of luck with that size of tank. I ran into so many issues due to its size I upgraded to a 75g with in 3 months. Once I went larger I found it was so much easier to take care of. Since then I’ve always wanted to try a smaller tank again however I keep going larger. There are many successful people who keep nano tanks but they do require a lot more attention. To circle back, an ato will help save you time every day. Just remember, since there is a smaller water volume, your parameters will swing a lot faster. Keep an eye on your nitrates and phosphates as those can creep up pretty quickly depending on bioload. And last piece. Don’t buy a fuzzy dwarf lion fish and put it in that size of a tank. Looking back I can’t believe my LFS gave the advice to put it in there. Good luck and welcome to the salty side! It truly is a lot of fun.

Thank you! I've never been clear on what the difference between the foam squares and 'floss' is exactly. I'm thinking I will load all my filtration into the middle chamber as with the protein skimmer there's no room for anything else in the first chamber.

I am thinking this tank is kind of small too.. we had a debate about getting a larger tank, but we were doing a rescue and I was trying to economize by using what we had, and was following the 'start small' logic which doesn't work so well with aquaria.

I'm thinking one issue we may be having is the Seatorch 12 settings we have.. when we set up the tank initially, the store owner told us to set it for 'LPS'. There is no 'LPS' setting in the Seatorch Link app, so we went and looked up LPS settings and matched those. Among them, it said to set UV to 75% during the day. I'm thinking that may have been too high? I've dialed it back to 30%. Maybe that gave our algae a head start.