Fern and Isabel's 29g Coralife BioCube

[fernb]

On April 4th my wife and I purchased the 29g Coralife BioCube as an impulse buy. We had gone to the LFS to purchase freshwater fish for our 16g
BioOrb and one look at the coral and we were hooked.
On April 8th we added the saltwater and about 20# of live rock and 15# of live sand and our journey began.
Below is a photo of our tank on April 22nd ( 4 days after our tank had cycled) with the addition of 5 coral frags purchased that day at our local club conference.
Two Zoanthids, a favia, a ricordia and a mushroom frag.

 

[Saltgator]

Nice looking. Btw, I'm BC13 on SWFMAS. Sending you a pm too.

Country Boy using tapatalk on his EVO

 

[fernb]

Bringing our 29g up to date

I am bringing our setup up to date on this post.
Livestock purchased so far:
8 hermit crabs
5 astraea snails
2 cerith snails
6 nassarius snails
1 peppermint shrimp (died 5 days ago)

Coral additions:
cup coral green
blue sympodium polyps
frogspawn
green star polyps
glove polyps
yellow coral polyps
blue ricordia
pom pom xenia
zoanthid frags x 3

We made a serious mistake of overfeeding our coral and as a result our ammonia levels shot up and were the reason for our loss of our peppermint shrimp.
That also caused our new zoanthid additions to be stressed as as you can see on todays photo they don't open completely. I am hoping that they will recover in time.
The frogspawn was also stressed during this time but already seems to be coming back. All other corals were unaffected.
Todays parameters were good except for a low calcium and dh levels. Those are slowly being corrected. And we are set for another water change tomorrow.
We did convert chamber two into a refugium a couple of days ago. Added chaeto and live rock rubble. Using an OTT Light at the moment with an LED arriving tomorrow.

Updated photos will be uploaded later.

We will update thread as new additions are made or problems encountered. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

 

[fernb]

Photo Updates

 

[fernb]

Photo Updates Continued

More Photos

 

[fernb]

Photo of Refugium

Sorry for the poor photo but do not have much room back there, lol.

 

[Lilmatty5dimes]

everything looks good. welcome to the very addicting hobby. lol

 

[fernb]

Tackling the issue of rising water temperature

Living in Florida is great but the summer heat is going to be a problem. Even though we keep our indoor temperature at 76 degrees (my wife is menopausal) we have noticed that we have to keep the BioCube lid raised to lower the temperature at night and keep the lid partially raised during the day. Even with that routine sometimes the temperature will climb to 82 degrees in our tank! I find myself having to add an ice pack to chamber one during the day to lower the temperature when it gets to 80.
I have been researching the LED retrokits out there and between the one offered by stevesleds.com and rapidled.com i am leaning towards the former because of ease in installation. We are also considering just removing the lid and going with a hanging LED fixture that is programmable by reefbreeders,com (the Reef Breeders Photon 16). The issue that the hanging fixture would introduce would be increased water evaporation.
The other issue Isabel is most concerned about is that there is no data on the long term effects of these LED's on the coral's health. So far from what we have found online most people have noticed increased growth and coloration.
If any of you reading this thread have any experience with LED lights any advice would be welcome.

 

[spacetime]

Well I think LEDs have proven to be very successful for keeping coral, but with anything quality and amount is the most important thing. I would suggest a google search or forum search to see what fixtures are successful for others using your tank. But even with the right fixture, acclimation to a stronger light fixture is also very important.

I noticed your concerned about evaporation. When I had my all in one Red Sea Max I had to ensure I kept the water level proper otherwise my powerheads would spit out bubbles which irritated all the coral. I eventually got an Auto Top off and I couldn't be happier. It really is some of the best money that I've spend on a tank.

 

[Lilmatty5dimes]

I've seen a lot of ppl buy the reefbreeder LEDs(like you mention above) I believe they are fully custom to what you want and I'm sure those guys can hook ya up. But that would mean the top has to come off. Like space time said above look into getting an ato. Autotopoff.com has a nice dual switch for around $45 or get a jbj ato. Just stick your extra water under your stand and plump the hose out the back up to the top. Don't think it'll look bad.

 

[fernb]

Ty Spacetime and Lilmatty on the suggestion of the autotopoff. I checked out the site looks pretty simple to do. I guess I would have to place it in chamber one since that is level with main display. I hope i can fit both heater and this in chamber one, lol

 

[fernb]

Jbj nano-glo led - 4 led refugium light

Just got my refugium light in the mail. Nice light and nice suction cup apparatus to attach to the back of chamber 2.
Sorry for poor quality photo, very tight space behind my tank.

 

[alberthiel]

Look good Femb and on the LED's there are so many choices that it is hard to really say go with X or Y or Z, as prices vary greatly, and the need for high end ones is usually only a consideration if you are keeping SPS that really require the ability to tweak the LED intensity and vary the colors to determine how they react best ... with what you have in the tank right now I do not think you really need high ones.

And on the temp : if the room temp is 76 then something is giving off heat to the water (pump?) or your heater is not set properly ... the lights you are using should not really increase the tank's temp that much, maybe a degree or max 2. IMO.

What else is in the tank that may be exchanging heat with the water ?

If you can get some fans and blow air over the surface of the water ... that will help too. Of course that does mean that you will need to raise the top.

I guess that by now everything recovered from that ammonia spike ... which is kind of odd as it would tell me the bacterial colony was not able to digest it and convert it ...

What CUC's do you have in the tank as normally if you overfeed and part of it sinks to the bottom but you have enough CUC's that excess would more than likely be consumed by the omnivores.

Other than that looks good to me ... so I guess the tank is now nearly 1 month passed the end of the cycle right ?

 

[fernb]

Thanks Mr. Thiel for taking the time to look at our progress.
I have kept track ot the temperature for the past three days at varying times during the day. We are starting the day with a temperature of 77, and as the day progresses with the hood partially raised and the lights on the temperature has been climbing to 79 to 80 degrees. The only source of heat is the pump and lights. And we keep the hood up all night.
The recent spike in ammonia and nitrates was caused by overfeeding 5 days straight. By the time we found our peppermint shrimp dead the levels of phosphate, ammonia and nitrites were already zero. the only elevation was the nitrates.
Since that episode I have converted chamber 2 to the refugium and added LRR to that chamber and the cheato. So we should have better handling of nitrates now and a slightly larger bacterial load.
Our CUC consists of 6 Nassarius snails, 2 cerith snails and 5 astrea snails, and 7 hermit crabs (this i got before reading your book).
We are right now 3 1/2 weeks end of cycling.
Thank you for your time
Fern

 

[alberthiel]

Thanks Mr. Thiel for taking the time to look at our progress.
I have kept track ot the temperature for the past three days at varying times during the day. We are starting the day with a temperature of 77, and as the day progresses with the hood partially raised and the lights on the temperature has been climbing to 79 to 80 degrees. The only source of heat is the pump and lights. And we keep the hood up all night.
The recent spike in ammonia and nitrates was caused by overfeeding 5 days straight. By the time we found our peppermint shrimp dead the levels of phosphate, ammonia and nitrites were already zero. the only elevation was the nitrates.
Since that episode I have converted chamber 2 to the refugium and added LRR to that chamber and the cheato. So we should have better handling of nitrates now and a slightly larger bacterial load.
Our CUC consists of 6 Nassarius snails, 2 cerith snails and 5 astrea snails, and 7 hermit crabs (this i got before reading your book).
We are right now 3 1/2 weeks end of cycling.
Thank you for your time
Fern

Glad to read you have a good CUC crew and that you did identify the problem as the 5 days of overfeeding and I am sure you will not repeat that :-o but it happens .. sorry about the loss of the shrimp. It is never pleasant to lose lifeforms but all of us have had it happen. And on that temperature do you think you can implement the blowing fans over the surface as that may get you a drop of 2 degrees or so. And if you can vent the hood you may reduce the heat transfer as well ... not all that easy to do but I believe I have seen others with the same tank do it to let the heat rise out of the hood and not transfer to the water as much. Not much can be done about the pump unfortunately ...

Thanks for the update .. I appreciate it ...

 

[fernb]

Microbubbles in display tank

For the past week or so I have noticed that the water in my display tank was full of microbubbles. My wife also started complaining about the noise the tank was making. Well, finally I realized that when I converted chamber 2 to a refugium that the water from chamber 1 had a long drop to chamber 2, about 6 inches and this was causing bubbles to form and also was making the noise my wife was complaining about. I had read about modifications others had made by cutting the tab between chambers 1 and 2. So I first cut and lowered that tab by about half an inch. This did raise the level in chamber two by about an inch but there were still microbubbles in the system. The following day i cut the tab another half inch and now the drop from chamber 1 to 2 is about 3 inches, the noise is gone and so are the microbubbles. My refugium is also larger and will hold more rubble and chaeto:angel:

 

[fernb]

Mother's Day purchases!!!

My wife and I agrees that this year we would buy each other coral for our tank as presents. I went wild on eBay and purchased the following for Mother's Day: photos poor quality, taken from my iphone

Cherry Sour zoanthids
Dimensions Palythoas
Melting Pot favia
Milky Way favia
Painted zoanthids

 

[fernb]

The reat of Mother's Day Purchases

Radioactive Bubblegum zoanthids
Stained Glass rhodactis mushroom
Sunflower zoanthids
Yellow Kryptonite zoanthids
Clockwork Orange zoanthids (picture will follow when fully open)

Here is photo of my tank now:

 

[fernb]

Macroalgea in display tank?

Why not! when it looks this beautiful!
Just received Flame algae in mail and was able to attach it to a piece of live rock rubble from refugium using super glue gel. It looks great.

 

[Liquid360]

Just a lil input... check out the Kessil A150 with the gooseneck.its a perfect light of the highest quality and perfect for your purpose. I just picked up a biocube as well, but for a seahorse tank. Very nice! Best wishes!