Fluval Flex 32 Gallon

Kasrift · Jul 5, 2022

Starting this build thread a bit late. I had been a lurker on various forums for quite a bit of time. For a quick history, I kept fresh water tanks growing up and had a job in high school cleaning FOWLR salt water aquariums and always wanted my own salt water aquarium. I landed on the Fluval Flex since I wanted an all in one and I liked the land scape more than a Biocube.

I started cycling my tank mid/late October. I started the cycle with Micro Lift Nite Out 2 bacteria and a fishless cycle. As an FYI, since I'm overly cautious and paranoid, I bought Tim's One and Only to diversify the bacteria and dumped in the whole bottle about 48 hours before adding any fish two weeks later. I got the typical API test kit, but didn't bother testing the first week since I knew how this was going to go. Here is a breakdown of the first things to get this tank started that I used:

1 bottle of Micro Lift Nite Out 2
1 bottle of Tim's One and Only
30 lbs of Marco rock (a few base pieces, shelf pieces, etc.)
20 lb bag of CaribSea Fiji Pink live sand
3 sticks of Epoxy (one Seachem and two Instant Ocean), the Instant Ocean worked best
3 tubes of Jurassic Gel glue
2 inTank Media trays (I knew instantly reading the forums that the sponges were not staying in there)
Fluval PS1 Protein Skimmer
Fluval Auto Feeder
AI Nero 3
Fluval m150 Heater
Chemipure Blue
Filter Floss

That was pretty much day 1 purchases. It will build on that, but those were pretty much what I knew I needed to get things going, granted I wouldn't need a skimmer or feeder until later.

I drilled out holes for habitat, made it so there would be tunnel room under the foundation rocks and ensured it would be safe for a pistol shrimp and goby. I'd highly recommend spending some time on the scaping aspect since it is really important. Attached is the video of my scape on a box. I measured out the dimensions, made sure there was room on the glass to clean it, and measured out sections for the rule of three for visual appeal. I purposely left the right side of the tank with a more open look since I wanted to put a bubble tip anemone there and I figured it would take some space. Attached is a video of the final scape and here are a few photos of the build of the scape and final product.

Kasrift · Jul 5, 2022

As mentioned, I did a fishless cycle. No lights, a few pinches of fish food and that was it. Two weeks later, I added my first residents, a yellow watchman goby and a candy cane (Randal) pistol shrimp. They were super happy and digging all around.

I had thrown in a random ball of chaeto I bought since I believed I wanted some nutrient export and some macro algae but hadn't figured out the refugium idea yet. It morphed into me buying a breeder box to throw it in to keep it from going everywhere, which worked great for months, but I still regret just throwing in the tank because some spread and it attached to rocks and is difficult to get rid of. As a word of caution, I did a quick fresh water dip to get any pests out and I manually picked threw the entire clump to get rid of some bristle worms that came with the clump. It had some amphipods which I tried to save and put back into the tank, some spirobid worms which I just didn't care about (they are fine and took off in the tank with a normal rise and decline). I'd recommend this if you are as paranoid as I am about trying to control what you introduce into the aquarium, which is also why I used Marco rock instead of live rock.

Also, I had watched several videos on introducing coral early on since theyight be easier than fish. Jake from Reef Builders did a day one coral build, so I got some starter stuff from a friend. I forgot to mention, I used Tropic Marin Classic salt 200 gallon bucket to start.

First corals added were:

Starburst montipora cap
Blue hornet zoas
Armor of God zoas

These did perfectly fine and were quickly followed by some black Friday coral purchases from AquaSD (were I got the first fish and pistol shrimp). These included:

Button scoly
Toadstool leather
WWC Grafted Monti Cap
Dragonball Z chalice

Also at the two week mark I added a sapphire damsel.

You will have to excuse the images, at this point reef photography was not in my wheel house. For the Monti cap, I created a shelf out of one of the shelf Marco rocks. I sanded down the back of it, glued some ceramic magnets (to be reef safe) to the rock and encased the whole back side in aquarium silicon sealant. On the outside, I have the same ceramic magnets wrapped in some of those screen wipes you get when you buy a cell phone screen cover. I glued them to the magnets so they wouldn't scratch the glass.

Kasrift · Jul 6, 2022

I'll keep updating this, just going to be a slow story since I'm typing this on my phone (should upload my photos to Amazon or my computer at some point).

One thing I forgot is that I also received a green branching psamacorra from my friend as well.

At this point I had added some CUC, astrea snails, lightning dove snails, and nassarius snails. A bit later I added three tiny blue hermit crabs and a regular red legged hermit crab. These kept the tank ok, but I started battling green hair algae and a tiny bit of cyano. I didn't stress out on the cyano since I believe it is part of the process and that people that jump to chemicals are just going to run into the same problem later. I did start dosing Microbacter clean which pretty much cleaned things up in 8 weeks (the cyano cleared within a couple of weeks). Post that, it was a little bit of a nutrient battle to not bottom out and cause dinos.

Around Christmas time I bought two separate clown fish as the next residents. One black snowflake ocellaris and one longfin mocha. I hope to breed them and get a longfin snowflake of some sort. Also at this point, for whatever reason the pistol shrimp decided it liked being solo and would actively avoid the goby. I'd catch it swimming around in daylight by itself and climbing on the upper rocks. No idea why. Prior to any fish going in, I did seed the aquarium with this be, apex, and tig pods so the goby would have a good food supply and to help as CUC.

I was kind of in a holding pattern for corals. Things were going great, but I knew I'd have to figure out the lighting situation if I wanted to get serious. The stock Fluval has a great app, but for whatever reason people think it isn't up to par. At this point, it was doing perfect for the corals I did have, but I pulled the trigger and got a second fluval light since my friend gave me a rainbow bubble tip anemone.

I know everyone says you need to mature the system, but I figured the corals were doing great and I did countless hours of research on everything. I purchased a API Reef test kit, Aquavitro Ions, Calcification, and Ph buffer (this bumps alk). I was already dosing Aquavitro Fuel and really liked it. I dosed fuel twice a week, phyto every other day, and Benepets on alternate days. Super tiny amounts since I didn't have the corals to justify it, but wanted to keep pods fed and everything was really happy.

Button scolies are super fun btw and I'm fairly addicted to them. I really caught the bug on buying corals and am about 12 minutes away from AquaSD, so weekly additions became a thing.

Fast forward another 3 weeks after the clowns and I finally found a starry blenny. Up to this point, I hadn't quarantined anything, but I was very concerned about the clowns since they were pricer than a yellow watchman goby and sapphire damsel. I also believe starry blenny aren't really aqua cultured, so if it was wild I didn't want to take a chance. The next purchase was a 10 gallon aqueon tank from Petco, hang on back filter, air pump and air stone, API general cure, garlic, selcon, seachem focus and metroplex. I also forgot to mention I had bought CoralRx for dipping corals. I didn't do copper because it required a lot more testing and everything else, I figured I would if I saw any signs, but everything had been healthy so far. I also got Safety Stop to dip the fish before quarantine.

Although everything was healthy, my yellow watchman goby seemed really stressed out since the pistol shrimp abandoned him. He was a tiny goby and I never saw any aggression from the clowns or damsel. Plus he had lots of tiny holes to go into since I had drilled tunnels into the rock work below the sand. I tried to catch him to throw him into quarantine, but unfortunately he just got skinny and skittish and sometime in February I found him dead with a hermit eating him. To be fair though, I had left the auto feeder and had to leave town for a week for a family emergency, so I don't know the whole story there. He didn't have any ich spots or other disease, so I was worried but not over stressed. As a precaution though, the clowns and damsel joined the blenny in quarantine for a 20 day general cure and observation.

The blenny has a great mustache btw and is named Tom Selleck. This is a picture of him in quarantine next to a media bag I used to fast cycle the quarantine tank. I bought Seachem Matrix and a few bags to stuff in the back compartment of the AIO. I also upgraded the return pump to the sicce silent 2.0.

Other general equipment purchases that were in the beginning of this year were:

Lid risers from Etsy (two lights caused the temp to go up)
Kamoer ATO (evap went up when the canopy was raised)
Kamoer x1 Wifi Dosing Pump (I moved to Tropic Marin All For Reef vs dosing manually)
Hanna Alk checker (just had to dial in alk consumption and trust the other parameters were moving in the right direction, to this day I consume way more magnesium which I think is due to coralline algae growth and have to manually add some)
Some frag racks.

In December I added two skunk cleaner shrimp in the hopes they'd breed, more for a food source than anything else. They hatch almost every two weeks like clockwork and the fish go nuts over the larvae.

I realize starting a build thread so late means the story comes out somewhat out of order as I type this.