Hey everyone,
A couple of days ago I took delivery of my Waterbox 70.2, this'll be my first ever reef tank and 2nd tank only to a small 36L freshwater aquarium that my gf and I have had for the last 3-4 months.
So I guess I'll start off with a current parts list;
Waterbox 70.2 Tank (Obviously)
AI Hydra 32HD light
Octo VarioS 2 pump
Eheim 150w thermocontrol heater
Approx 13kg of Real Reef Rock
Aqua Natural Coarse Aragonite Sand
(Skimmer and powerhead/s to follow later)
This is the first shot once the tank itself after it arrived and lighting was set up. I went to Waterbox's website and downloaded the AI blueprint for mixed reef for the moment and have set up the lighting with that. I haven't had too much of a play with the app itself just yet, however from what I've seen it comes on around midday and turns off around 10.30pm. May try and adjust this somehow in future but it'll do for now.
As the tank is in the corner of the room, I have two couches on either viewable side, so I wanted to try and make something that was fairly interesting to look at from both angles. We managed to mock up something that we were happy with, but then we ran into issues trying to get things to stay put and bit a bit more sturdy in the tank.
Cue a day and a half of messing around with rocks, getting frustrated because nothing was working for us and trying to find something that would hold the rock together so that it would be stable. We had also decided that we needed to change the rock a little and build it up slightly. So off to the store we went for some more rock and purchased some Stone Fix, this stuff is amazing. It looks a little messy because of the way I did it and probably got carried away with trying to get things stuck, but it'll get covered up eventually and I was much happier it was now holding firm.
We have a plate piece of rock left over as we couldn't find a position we were really happy with for it yet, so we'll probably add that later down the line.
At the moment it's being used to disperse the water as we were putting it into the tank.
I really need to find another, much more efficient way to fill it using these 30L water containers I have, otherwise water changes etc will become a real hassle as 30L containers are pretty heavy to lift up and pour out etc. We were using a siphon with a squishy pump thing that we have for the other tank to try and pump the water up into it but it requires a LOT of pumping and it's just time consuming and inefficient. If anyone has any suggestions here it would be greatly appreciated!
I'd considered maybe using the return pump to pump it up the tube and into the tank but I don't know if that'll work. Would probably need to siphon into the sump, then from the sump, pump it up into the tank. At least there's a little water in it now (you can probably see the stonefix cement as well under that lighting, it's not so prominent under the blues).
So that's it so far. Hoping to have it filled eventually later today so I can start the cycle. Gotta do another run or 2 to the LFS to get more water. (Only have enough containers for 120L at a time).
Hope it's not too dull of a read so far, will be nice to get things moving along and get it looking brighter and more lively later.
Thanks for taking the time to check it out
A couple of days ago I took delivery of my Waterbox 70.2, this'll be my first ever reef tank and 2nd tank only to a small 36L freshwater aquarium that my gf and I have had for the last 3-4 months.
So I guess I'll start off with a current parts list;
Waterbox 70.2 Tank (Obviously)
AI Hydra 32HD light
Octo VarioS 2 pump
Eheim 150w thermocontrol heater
Approx 13kg of Real Reef Rock
Aqua Natural Coarse Aragonite Sand
(Skimmer and powerhead/s to follow later)
This is the first shot once the tank itself after it arrived and lighting was set up. I went to Waterbox's website and downloaded the AI blueprint for mixed reef for the moment and have set up the lighting with that. I haven't had too much of a play with the app itself just yet, however from what I've seen it comes on around midday and turns off around 10.30pm. May try and adjust this somehow in future but it'll do for now.
As the tank is in the corner of the room, I have two couches on either viewable side, so I wanted to try and make something that was fairly interesting to look at from both angles. We managed to mock up something that we were happy with, but then we ran into issues trying to get things to stay put and bit a bit more sturdy in the tank.
Cue a day and a half of messing around with rocks, getting frustrated because nothing was working for us and trying to find something that would hold the rock together so that it would be stable. We had also decided that we needed to change the rock a little and build it up slightly. So off to the store we went for some more rock and purchased some Stone Fix, this stuff is amazing. It looks a little messy because of the way I did it and probably got carried away with trying to get things stuck, but it'll get covered up eventually and I was much happier it was now holding firm.
We have a plate piece of rock left over as we couldn't find a position we were really happy with for it yet, so we'll probably add that later down the line.
At the moment it's being used to disperse the water as we were putting it into the tank.
I really need to find another, much more efficient way to fill it using these 30L water containers I have, otherwise water changes etc will become a real hassle as 30L containers are pretty heavy to lift up and pour out etc. We were using a siphon with a squishy pump thing that we have for the other tank to try and pump the water up into it but it requires a LOT of pumping and it's just time consuming and inefficient. If anyone has any suggestions here it would be greatly appreciated!
I'd considered maybe using the return pump to pump it up the tube and into the tank but I don't know if that'll work. Would probably need to siphon into the sump, then from the sump, pump it up into the tank. At least there's a little water in it now (you can probably see the stonefix cement as well under that lighting, it's not so prominent under the blues).
So that's it so far. Hoping to have it filled eventually later today so I can start the cycle. Gotta do another run or 2 to the LFS to get more water. (Only have enough containers for 120L at a time).
Hope it's not too dull of a read so far, will be nice to get things moving along and get it looking brighter and more lively later.
Thanks for taking the time to check it out