Haggisman14's Oceanic Biocube 29

[jk_s124]

Just caught up on your thread. Sorry for the troubles! I like the positive outlook though. Hope all goes well with the bare bottom transition. I have been looking into barebottom tanks a lot and I think they make a lot of sense. Congrats on the new light too!

 

[Haggisman14]

@jk_s124 Thanks for the post. So far tank seems happy transitioning to BB. It seems that corals are maintaining a fat and happy look, my hammer is doing extremely well, and knock on wood nothing else has died on me. I've also worked in adding a filter pad into the first overflow chamber that I change out every 3-4 days. It's one of the big sheets that I cut up into little squares. It definitely gunks up in that time frame, so I know it's helping to take a bit of junk out of the tank.

One of the other reasons for going BB is that I do notice with the current sand, that I do have a good amount of sand setting on the rocks. Looking forward to that NOT happening once all the sand is gone.

Fingers crossed all goes well over the next 2 months, and come sometime in April I'm thinking of doing a 10 frag acro pack from AquaSD, as well as some new Zoa's and maybe a jack-o-lantern that i've been wanting forever!

After that i'd probably let things grow out for a bit...tank looks a bit too sparse for me at the moment.

Thanks again!

 

[jk_s124]

Nothing more exciting than picking out new corals. I’m with you on the jack o lantern. I love the way leptoseris look!

 

[Haggisman14]

So my b-day is coming up next month, and my LFS is going to be opening up their new shop next month...wife's giving me a bit of a spending spree at my LFS. Super excited for it!

Going to final pick up my first coral dip. I'm not going the route of bayer, but am thinking of getting this:

Brightwell Aquatics
MEDICORAL CORAL DIP

Seems to have some good reviews. Not sure exactly what corals I'll be getting, but my LFS usually has some nice scoly's so I'm thinking maybe one of those, and definitely want to get my SPS game back up.

I did just purchased the Octo Aquatics (@cromag27 ) float switch holder to finally keep my float switches exactly where I need them, my current egg crate and zip tie method just isn't doing the trick anymore.

Thanks for looking!

 

[Ken LeMay]

Would love to see pics of your tank BB....I've got the same tank and am considering doing the same....I am also going to be swapping out my two RW-8s for one of those new Nero's or the H2Pro Reverse Wave pump.....both look awesome.

 

[Haggisman14]

Hey Ken, thanks for the comment! As of now I still have sand on the bottom, but I'd say give it another 3-4 weeks and it will be all gone. I siphon more and more out every weekend.

Any pictures of your tank, or are you just starting out?

Thanks for looking!

 

[Ken LeMay]

Hey Ken, thanks for the comment! As of now I still have sand on the bottom, but I'd say give it another 3-4 weeks and it will be all gone. I siphon more and more out every weekend.

Any pictures of your tank, or are you just starting out?

Thanks for looking!

Here's my tank as of a couple of weeks ago....it's changed a little since then lol, can't stop messing with it. I've had this up and running for going on 3 years....it's been through two long moves, and one crash. Been in it's current location for a year and 8 months now, so it's getting "mature"....I just recently added a lightning maroon and two nems to go with my original maroon....both nems have left their original rock and relocated 2 times a piece to get closer to the light and don't look anywhere as good as the pic....I hope they get settled and start to look better. My next upgrades to this tank is a bigger tank LOL!

 

[Haggisman14]

Lookin good! What kind of light are you running there. Can't tell by the picture!

Also, welcome to R2R!

 

[Ken LeMay]

It's the Nanobox Duo....a couple years old, getting ready to send it in for an "upgrade"!

 

[Haggisman14]

Octo Float switch holder has shipped...can't wait to get it!

In other news, the wife and I just started up a nice home gym because reality is, with 3 kids, long hours at the office, and my "free" time at a premium, there just isn't time for me to get to our local gym for workouts. Our solution, GARAGE GYM! I know this is taking things completely off topic, but just ordered up a nice gym from Titan Fitness. Not sure if anyone on here is into home gyms etc, it's king of like the poor man's intro into the home gym space. I would have loved to order everything through Rogue Fitness, but to get everything I wanted, it'd be close to $2,500. Nice thing with this, is it's going to work for now, and then I can always upgrade things down the road. But a new piece here and there, so on and so forth.

Really excited about it coming (should be in her 7-10 days).

That being said, my little spending spree I was planning on doing for the reef tank for my b-day, has been put on hold now.

I'll update with some pictures once I get the float valve holder in, and then also with growth shots.

Thanks!

 

[Haggisman14]

Side note...it's so dang annoying trying to "fully" get all the sand out of your tank and go BB. I'm almost there, but the stupid sand keeps settling on the rocks, and in all the knoocks and crannies...UGH!

Rant of the day over!

 

[Haggisman14]

So this isn't fish related, but it's my thread, so here goes! Ordered on Wednesday morning, arrived Friday morning, will be put together tonight!

Home gym! YEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!

 

[Haggisman14]

So 3 hours later, and the home gym is complete...first workout tonight! Wohoo!

In other news, I have been having great success with the BRS AB+ schedule with my AI Prime, but I'm going to try a modified version of the David Saxby (preset program from the AI site). Only tweak I made to it, is that it has the UV and Violet channels bumped up like in AB+.

Started running that last night, and will see how things go. I'll try to get a screenshot from my phone and post the current specs of the schedule. My Zoa's have been growing flesh really well recently, but they're not really opening up that much. My acans, and hammer are been doing AMAZING! Still no SPS in the tank.

Thanks for looking!

For those interested, this is a Titan Fitness T3 Power rack with their incline bench, bar, and bumper plate set of 230lbs.

 

[Haggisman14]

So a quick update. Last night I finally got around to adding my Octoaquatics Float switch holder into my tank. Not surprisingly, the quality from @cromag27 is on point! Fit both of my float switches, and finally keeps them level, and allows me to fully adjust the height of the water in the tank with precision!

I also plugged up the bottom hole in the biocube to make sure that the tank only skims water from the top. Doing this also increased the height of the water in the display a bit, as it could no longer suck in water from the bottom opening, but I like it much better this way. I feel it's going to help aide in better surface skimming, as well as making sure the water flows through the filter floss I have at the top of chamber 1.

That's all for now folks!

 

[Haggisman14]

Here's another quick update:

Did another 5 gallon water change today, and finished siphoning about 95% of all the sand out of the tank, and VERY happy with the look, and how the flow is going now. By having the bottom inlet plugged up, anything that's going around the water column gets sucked into the main drain, and then I have a filter pad catching all the debris.

After getting the sand out, I did a little re-aquascaping, nothing crazy just a few little tweaks, and then rearranged my Nero5 a bit. I'm hoping what I did will help my one hammer that's been struggling to recover for the last 2 months or so.

Other than that, all is well in the tank. My LFS is opening it's new megastore in a few weeks, so hopefully I"ll snag a few new frags at their grand opening!

thanks for looking!

 

[Haggisman14]

Little update. tanks been plugging along rather well and without issue. Going to be ordering up a new bucket of salt and think I might switch over to tropic marin (instead of red sea pro).

This past weekend my LFS that has been moving to a new location just did a soft open, and since it was my birthday weekend, I swung by to check it out. Picked up three niced sized SPS frags that seem to be happy in the tank (bubble gum or FF digit; a neon--really really neon green birds nest, and juts an unnammed acro that has really cool iridescent corallites.

When I was getting ready to glue the digi frag, the first bottle of superglue gel had gone bad, and was pretty much just water. Spilt down half of the frag, but ended up being okay. Lets just say I was pretty p!ssed when it happend!

Here are some pics!

As always, thanks for looking!

 

[Haggisman14]

So it seems my tank really doesn't like some SPS all that much. Having some RTN on my bubble gum digi, and my unnammed acro. Birdsnest seems completely unaffected. Time will tell!

I have an order of Tropic Marin salt on the way, as well as some carbon and GFO. I dont' have the space for a reactor, but I do have a bag that Im goign to be placing them in in some high flow areas (best my situation allows for at the moment. I'm hoping that helps bring down my phosphates, and helps encourage SPS growth.

 

[Haggisman14]

Just got updated notification my carbon, gfo and salt all arrive today!

Won't do a waterchange until the weekend, but definitely getting the GFO and carbon going!

 

[Haggisman14]

So everything came last night. TM bucket arrived safe and sound, and got my GFO and Carbon, placed them in my mesh bag, rinsed with some nice clean RO water, and then into the tank it went. Didn't brown the water or anything (in the display). I have been having issues with algae, and issues with my SPS, so hopefully moving forward that all slowly goes away.

Will keep y'all posted, and as always, thanks for looking!

 

[jk_s124]

So everything came last night. TM bucket arrived safe and sound, and got my GFO and Carbon, placed them in my mesh bag, rinsed with some nice clean RO water, and then into the tank it went. Didn't brown the water or anything (in the display). I have been having issues with algae, and issues with my SPS, so hopefully moving forward that all slowly goes away.

Will keep y'all posted, and as always, thanks for looking!

I mix rox carbon and brs gfo in a bag and stuff it in the bottom of my third chamber where water flows in from chamber 2. I change it every three weeks. Hope it works for you! Good luck.