DW's post apocalyptic build(s)

deedubz · May 4, 2018

To skip the background info scroll to post two.

If you're still with me, hey there! I'm Dave. I'm 34 and live outside Annapolis, MD. I do HVAC by trade and dabble in a bunch of other stuff for fun. I've been reefkeeping since late summer 2016. I had a 55g and 2 fluval evo 13.5g tanks. I ended up giving my sister and her daughter one of the evos about a year ago. Things were going great in my 55 and evo until January 2018....

Even though I'd been quarantining all new fish since early 2017, I wasn't doing it for coral or inverts. Unfortunately, I ended up with velvet and prazipro resistant flukes from ~20 new snails and hermits. I had, between the two tanks, 15 fish. I'm currently down to 7 but I am thankful that I was at least able to save them. I have a very small home... I'm talking 700 sq ft! In order to treat my fish I had to break down both dts to setup 4 qt tanks. I gave my oldest niece and her fiance my 55 knowing they'd run it fallow a few months before adding fish of their own. I gave them the entire setup minus my light fixture.

Anyway, the surviving fish are all doing great and have been post copper for a few weeks now. We're ready to rebuild. Here's to a new and hopefully more successful start!

deedubz · May 4, 2018

As stated, this is a complete reboot. The tanks will be-
Coralife LED 32g Biocube
Crystal Dynamics 60x30x24 rimless 180g
IM fusion 10 for invert qt until I get a frag tank. I'll be doing my CuC qt and a few cheap frags until the two DTs are up and running and then I'll transition over to a real Frag/invert tank.

My Biocube will be here tomorrow. I've already purchased some goodies and have a few things that'll be trickling in next week. My 180 should be ready within the next few weeks. I have a handful of things I still need to buy but I'm 95% there.

Stay tuned!

deedubz · May 4, 2018

Ok, I'll start with the Biocube.

Of the survivors, the following fish will call the cube home. 2 black/white ocellaris clowns, 2 blue-green chromis, and a lawnmower blenny. I'm debating on adding a pistol shrimp and goby down the road. I may already be pushing the bioload lol!

I did a fair bit of research, as I was planning on upgrading the fluval before the outbreak anyway, and decided on the following;

Here and/or on the way
- 20-30 lbs of aragonite dry sand that I rinsed this afternoon. Not sure how much I'm going to use yet
- 25-30lbs reefcleaners dry rock I had laying around, also rinsed thoroughly
- I'm going to reuse the Apex Jr I had on my 55g. I have a GHL Profilux 4 for the 180

- Sicce syncra silent 1.5 return pump
- Vivid Creative Aquatics random flow generator
- Jebao wp10s and controller
- Eheim Jager 150w heater. A bit overkill for a 32g but I'd rather have too much than too little
- The obvious misc. equipment

Plan on ordering as the need arises
- Steve's LED retrofit kit with bluefish controller and iridescence booster
- InTank media baskets
- Tunze nano ATO
- Dosing pump for ATI essentials. I already have the large kit waiting on the 180 once it gets here. May as well use the same for the cube.

I think that's everything? I'll start posting pics tomorrow as I set it up!

deedubz · May 8, 2018

Cube came in on Saturday and I spent the day setting it up. I'm not very good at aquascaping, I don't particularly enjoy aquascaping, and I'm already not entirely pleased with my aquascaping, but this is going to have to do. I'm hoping it'll look a little better once there's some coral in there. I seeded the tank with Dr Tim's soaked biomax. I ended up at 1.015 so I had to do a couple water changes to raise it up and decided to also dose a bottle of biospira I had on hand.

Moved the residents over Monday evening. Any other build I'd have waited a few weeks for a real cycle but time isn't on my side. My 180 should be done soon and I need to start breaking down 2 of the 3 quarantine tanks. I've set up several qt tanks with bottled bacteria/biomax and have yet to have an issue with ammonia. I stuck an ammonia badge on the side and will observe closely. The fish are absolutely loving having rock vs PVC elbows! Man these guys are having a blast!

deedubz · May 8, 2018

My niece told me my orange/green bta split again the other day! I was going to hold off on ordering the Steve's LED upgrade kit a bit but, given I have an anemone waiting on me, I went ahead and ordered it. The InTank media baskets/refugium and a nano magnet refugium light will be here tomorrow. I have 2 Jebao wp10s coming Thursday.

I decided I'm not going to do any mods to fit a Tunze or K2-50 skimmer. Instead I'll stick with a refugium, which worked tremendously on my 55. I have the Coralife skimmer if I end up needing one

deedubz · May 8, 2018

I moved the rhomboid wrasse over to the qt with Gil, my percula clown, this afternoon so I can break the other tanks down. Gil might not be the flashiest fish on Earth, but man she is one cool cat. She swam up to the wrasse to say hello and promptly returned to her PVC elbow. This fish has zero cares in the world. She's the most mellow and docile fish I've had.. also one of my older ones at ~18 months. She's my girl

(My phone has a lousy camera)

deedubz · May 10, 2018

Today was like Christmas in May!

Intank baskets came in today. I didn't think to get a pic before dropping them in but man that's some good stuff. Great build quality. I have their filter floss in the top shelf and chemipure blue in the bottom. I'm going to do phosguard/purigen in the middle. Their floss comes in these giant "sheets" that you cut to your need. I bought 6 lol.. Think I'll have enough floss for a year.

My Steve's LED upgrade came in as well. I ordered the kit with iridescence booster and the Bluefish mini but was sent the Hurricane X instead. After talking with Jeff, I decided to give the hurricane a chance and take $70 in store credit. After installation I played around with the controller. Easy enough, though being able to use an app on my phone would have been nice too. Given I'll only touch it every now and again I can live with it. I'm otherwise very happy with the purchase. I have both white and blue intensities at 30% for now. I'll play with it once the tank has truly cycles and I start adding corals. Keep in mind this is my lousy phone camera. In person it's not so obnoxiously blue.