twofinhogie
New Member
So After a decade+ and 5 moves, I decided back in February that it was finally time to break out the old Biocube 14 and get back into it.
This is one of the old Oceanic Biocube’s that the only thing I’ve changed out from stock, is the lighting. It now has an “upgraded” LED system that a friend of mine was prototyping for the Biocube when he was in college. So if you ask about PAR, intensity, or wavelength, the only answer I can give you is the light’s are blue
As for water parameters, I really just rely on my LFS as I get all my water from them and just top off with distilled.
Since I was last in the hobby it’d seemed like some things had changed, one of them being the lack of cultured live rock and coralline algae. I took that as an opportunity to do my own aquascaping using gorilla glue gel to secure it all how I wanted.
This is the design I more or less went with, keeping the front two rocks independent so I’d always have the option to remove or rearrange if needed.
The next few months we’re agonizing as I didn’t realize how much longer the tank takes to cycle using dry rock. Eventually in May I started stocking the tank. I started with some Zoas a frogspawn a Digi and a cleaner shrimp.
It did no take long for the coral bug to really bite and within 2-3 weeks I just had frags coming left and right.
(I tried changing some of the individual LEDs out for some white lights. Didn’t last long.)
At the same time I was working on making a stand for the tank since everything I found was either too short or didn’t have enough depth to hold the tank. Also, Biocube’s $200 laminated particle board stand was too expensive for much too ugly of a stand. Here’s what I came up with.
So back to the tank,
In June I kept buying frags and kept stuffing them in.
Ended up getting 2 clownfish but unfortunately they only lasted about 2 weeks before succumbing to a bad case of ick.
Up to this point, I’ve been having some trouble stabilizing the temperature and deciding what to do with how much flow I wanted so in the next month there were ups and downs but I think I finally have it how I want now.
The rest of these photos are just photos of the tank and corals in chronological from the end of June to now. Enjoy!
This is one of the old Oceanic Biocube’s that the only thing I’ve changed out from stock, is the lighting. It now has an “upgraded” LED system that a friend of mine was prototyping for the Biocube when he was in college. So if you ask about PAR, intensity, or wavelength, the only answer I can give you is the light’s are blue
As for water parameters, I really just rely on my LFS as I get all my water from them and just top off with distilled.
Since I was last in the hobby it’d seemed like some things had changed, one of them being the lack of cultured live rock and coralline algae. I took that as an opportunity to do my own aquascaping using gorilla glue gel to secure it all how I wanted.
This is the design I more or less went with, keeping the front two rocks independent so I’d always have the option to remove or rearrange if needed.
The next few months we’re agonizing as I didn’t realize how much longer the tank takes to cycle using dry rock. Eventually in May I started stocking the tank. I started with some Zoas a frogspawn a Digi and a cleaner shrimp.
It did no take long for the coral bug to really bite and within 2-3 weeks I just had frags coming left and right.
(I tried changing some of the individual LEDs out for some white lights. Didn’t last long.)
At the same time I was working on making a stand for the tank since everything I found was either too short or didn’t have enough depth to hold the tank. Also, Biocube’s $200 laminated particle board stand was too expensive for much too ugly of a stand. Here’s what I came up with.
So back to the tank,
In June I kept buying frags and kept stuffing them in.
Ended up getting 2 clownfish but unfortunately they only lasted about 2 weeks before succumbing to a bad case of ick.
Up to this point, I’ve been having some trouble stabilizing the temperature and deciding what to do with how much flow I wanted so in the next month there were ups and downs but I think I finally have it how I want now.
The rest of these photos are just photos of the tank and corals in chronological from the end of June to now. Enjoy!
