Scryllarus
New Member
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2024
- Messages
- 8
- Reaction score
- 20
- Location
- Kansas city
- What state or country do you live in
- Missouri
Figured after about a year or so of very little posts, I figured I would make my first build thread.
I will say in advanced I like to type out every detail of everything that's happened, so this thread may be a little wordy.
This is my second attempt at a saltwater tank - my first attempt failing catastrophically when a tube worm of some sort built a tube in the pump chamber of my little AIO against the pump cord. Over time, and many vibrations later, had caused the tube to wear through the insulation of the cord and effectively electrocuted the tank. Came home to a dark tank and tripped breaker. Confused, I reset the breaker and found smoke coming from the pump chamber, and with the lights on, I realized everything was cooked. Except for my clownfish who miraculously survived. Tore everything down rehomed my clown, and gave up for a while. Now I'm back, due to Instagram constantly showing me pictures and reels of macro algae tanks. (Particularly tigahboys)
Tank is a 15x15 rimless cube, filtered with a sicce shark adv 800, and lighted with an ecotech radion xr15 g6.
Figured since there's no chamber and very little wires in the tank at the cost of aesthetics was worth the lowered risk of another fish and coral fry.
Initially used the Redsea ATO but it wound up being so finicky - preforming worse than the 40 dollar Amazon atos - the wack decision to use a siphon breaker rather than a plain old check valve, and the fact that finding replacement parts was rather hard irritated me so much that I went and bought a tunze osmolator nano 3. Night and day difference in ease of use.
Initially used dry Marco rock and caribsea ocean direct, but upon receiving a shipment of "seed rubble" maricultured Marcorock had me replacing almost all the dry rock due to the size of the live.
Tank was cycled with turbo start, dosed with ammonia, then seeded with copepods. Currently dosing microbacter purple m, to which I'm noticing is causing the water to be significantly clearer.
Macro algae:
Caulerpa sertularioidies
Caulerpa prolifera
Gracilaria sp. (Red ogo)
Laurencia iridescens
Purple fauchea (Fauchea sp.)
Rusty red ribbon (unknown sp.)
(Waiting on some halymenia stipitata)
Coral:
Pterogorgia anceps
Pterogorgia citrina
Random zoanthus that looked much better at the store than under my whites
Random rhodactis, also looked a lot better at the store than under whites
Livestock:
6x astrea snails
Lysmata amboinensis
Upon set up:
Dry rock swapped out for live rock - arrived same day as the macros and gorgonians:
The light shade is one I designed and 3d printed myself with a mylar liner glued in. Has a surprisingly noticeable (positive) effect on brightness and color in the tank.
And now the beginning stages of the ugly phase.
Diatom out break ticked off my purple pterogorgia anceps, causing it to shed, with 3 of the tips dropping some tissue. Granted these tips were already rather damaged from shipping - but having kept sps and seeing them experience rtn, and then seeing the gorgonian peel and drop tissue is rather alarming. Luckily upon further research it seems that it will bounce back quickly enough.
The pterogorgia citrina closed up completely upon the initial outbreak.
Prompt water change and addition of more tsibe and apex pods seems to have helped the gorgs recover some, though the diatoms are still showing up at a rapid pace.
24 hrs later from the initial onset of diatoms:
That's it for now. Tanks only been up for about a month. More than likely I'll swap out the gracilaria ogo for hayi, or something more compact.
Looking for suggestions on fish. Thinking about a little school of green tiger gobies with some sort of swimmer, or shrimp - goby pairs, with some sort of swimmer. I've thought about a trio of pajama cardinals but the tank is a little small for them. Would love to find a tanakai wrasse or white banded wrasse but those seem rather hard to come across. Hesitant on getting clowns again due to the aggression.
Thanks for looking!
I will say in advanced I like to type out every detail of everything that's happened, so this thread may be a little wordy.
This is my second attempt at a saltwater tank - my first attempt failing catastrophically when a tube worm of some sort built a tube in the pump chamber of my little AIO against the pump cord. Over time, and many vibrations later, had caused the tube to wear through the insulation of the cord and effectively electrocuted the tank. Came home to a dark tank and tripped breaker. Confused, I reset the breaker and found smoke coming from the pump chamber, and with the lights on, I realized everything was cooked. Except for my clownfish who miraculously survived. Tore everything down rehomed my clown, and gave up for a while. Now I'm back, due to Instagram constantly showing me pictures and reels of macro algae tanks. (Particularly tigahboys)
Tank is a 15x15 rimless cube, filtered with a sicce shark adv 800, and lighted with an ecotech radion xr15 g6.
Figured since there's no chamber and very little wires in the tank at the cost of aesthetics was worth the lowered risk of another fish and coral fry.
Initially used the Redsea ATO but it wound up being so finicky - preforming worse than the 40 dollar Amazon atos - the wack decision to use a siphon breaker rather than a plain old check valve, and the fact that finding replacement parts was rather hard irritated me so much that I went and bought a tunze osmolator nano 3. Night and day difference in ease of use.
Initially used dry Marco rock and caribsea ocean direct, but upon receiving a shipment of "seed rubble" maricultured Marcorock had me replacing almost all the dry rock due to the size of the live.
Tank was cycled with turbo start, dosed with ammonia, then seeded with copepods. Currently dosing microbacter purple m, to which I'm noticing is causing the water to be significantly clearer.
Macro algae:
Caulerpa sertularioidies
Caulerpa prolifera
Gracilaria sp. (Red ogo)
Laurencia iridescens
Purple fauchea (Fauchea sp.)
Rusty red ribbon (unknown sp.)
(Waiting on some halymenia stipitata)
Coral:
Pterogorgia anceps
Pterogorgia citrina
Random zoanthus that looked much better at the store than under my whites
Random rhodactis, also looked a lot better at the store than under whites
Livestock:
6x astrea snails
Lysmata amboinensis
Upon set up:
Dry rock swapped out for live rock - arrived same day as the macros and gorgonians:
The light shade is one I designed and 3d printed myself with a mylar liner glued in. Has a surprisingly noticeable (positive) effect on brightness and color in the tank.
And now the beginning stages of the ugly phase.
Diatom out break ticked off my purple pterogorgia anceps, causing it to shed, with 3 of the tips dropping some tissue. Granted these tips were already rather damaged from shipping - but having kept sps and seeing them experience rtn, and then seeing the gorgonian peel and drop tissue is rather alarming. Luckily upon further research it seems that it will bounce back quickly enough.
The pterogorgia citrina closed up completely upon the initial outbreak.
Prompt water change and addition of more tsibe and apex pods seems to have helped the gorgs recover some, though the diatoms are still showing up at a rapid pace.
24 hrs later from the initial onset of diatoms:
That's it for now. Tanks only been up for about a month. More than likely I'll swap out the gracilaria ogo for hayi, or something more compact.
Looking for suggestions on fish. Thinking about a little school of green tiger gobies with some sort of swimmer, or shrimp - goby pairs, with some sort of swimmer. I've thought about a trio of pajama cardinals but the tank is a little small for them. Would love to find a tanakai wrasse or white banded wrasse but those seem rather hard to come across. Hesitant on getting clowns again due to the aggression.
Thanks for looking!
Last edited:
