oceanleaf
Community Member
Hi everyone,
I have been reading posts on the forum for a while but have never posted anything, but I think it's time for a build thread!
I have been in the saltwater aquarium hobby for over five years now.
When I got into the hobby, I got a small snowflake moray eel that I kept in a ten-gallon tank with only live rocks and a bit of macroalgae but no corals.
The eel have been doing really well in my home aquarium and I kept upgrading my aquarium from 10 gallon to 20 gallon and now 40 gallon.
Now that the tank is quite big, I decided to start keeping corals and make the aquarium as a whole more colorful.
I decided to go with a Cobalt C-VUE40 All-in-one aquarium and the accompanying stand for the simplicity of the AIO system.
I really like motions in the aquarium, so I want a softies and LPS dominated tank.
The tank has pretty dense rockwork with the goal that the eel can always hide its entire body behind the rockwork if it chooses to do so.
After about a year after adding the first coral, here is the full tank shot of the display. In this shot, the eel is hiding behind the rockwork. It usually comes out in the morning when I regularly feed and in the evening when the species is naturally more active. It sometimes poke its head out during the day if it feels curious.
The eel is very well-behaved. When introduced to a new tank, it will take sometimes to do its own aquascaping, digging sand and moving rocks a bit. But after it settles, it rarely messes with the corals and I have no trouble keeping the corals with the eel at all if I glue corals to rocks very strongly.
Here is the list of the main equipment
Lighting:
Fluval Marine Spectrum 3.0 36"
Filtration:
1. Bubble Magus QQ2 Internal Protein Skimmer
2. Tunze 9004.000 Comline DOC Skimmer
3. BRS Mini Media Reactor filled with ROX carbon and GFO
Flow:
1. Built-in cobalt return pumps (x2); came with the AIO
2. Jebao MW10 wavemaker
3. hygger Mini Wave Maker
Note that the built-in cobalt return pumps produce linear flow that is too strong for my liking, so I modified the return outlets by adding an additional duckbill to each outlet (connected by 3D-printed Y connectors). This modification really reduces strength of the linear flow, and the flow in the main tank is mostly handled by the two wavemakers that can do pulsing motion.
Another important aspect of a snowflake eel tank is the lid to prevent the eel from escaping. I found that the lid that Cobalt sells is quite expensive and also seems pretty heavy, so I decided to make my own lid from acrylic sheets. I cut the sheets to the dimension of the main display with one piece about 1/3 the length of the display and the other 2/3. Then, I drilled holes to attach 3D-printed handles on them so that they can be easily removed during maintenance.
I have been reading posts on the forum for a while but have never posted anything, but I think it's time for a build thread!
I have been in the saltwater aquarium hobby for over five years now.
When I got into the hobby, I got a small snowflake moray eel that I kept in a ten-gallon tank with only live rocks and a bit of macroalgae but no corals.
The eel have been doing really well in my home aquarium and I kept upgrading my aquarium from 10 gallon to 20 gallon and now 40 gallon.
Now that the tank is quite big, I decided to start keeping corals and make the aquarium as a whole more colorful.
I decided to go with a Cobalt C-VUE40 All-in-one aquarium and the accompanying stand for the simplicity of the AIO system.
I really like motions in the aquarium, so I want a softies and LPS dominated tank.
The tank has pretty dense rockwork with the goal that the eel can always hide its entire body behind the rockwork if it chooses to do so.
After about a year after adding the first coral, here is the full tank shot of the display. In this shot, the eel is hiding behind the rockwork. It usually comes out in the morning when I regularly feed and in the evening when the species is naturally more active. It sometimes poke its head out during the day if it feels curious.
The eel is very well-behaved. When introduced to a new tank, it will take sometimes to do its own aquascaping, digging sand and moving rocks a bit. But after it settles, it rarely messes with the corals and I have no trouble keeping the corals with the eel at all if I glue corals to rocks very strongly.
Here is the list of the main equipment
Lighting:
Fluval Marine Spectrum 3.0 36"
Filtration:
1. Bubble Magus QQ2 Internal Protein Skimmer
2. Tunze 9004.000 Comline DOC Skimmer
3. BRS Mini Media Reactor filled with ROX carbon and GFO
Flow:
1. Built-in cobalt return pumps (x2); came with the AIO
2. Jebao MW10 wavemaker
3. hygger Mini Wave Maker
Note that the built-in cobalt return pumps produce linear flow that is too strong for my liking, so I modified the return outlets by adding an additional duckbill to each outlet (connected by 3D-printed Y connectors). This modification really reduces strength of the linear flow, and the flow in the main tank is mostly handled by the two wavemakers that can do pulsing motion.
Another important aspect of a snowflake eel tank is the lid to prevent the eel from escaping. I found that the lid that Cobalt sells is quite expensive and also seems pretty heavy, so I decided to make my own lid from acrylic sheets. I cut the sheets to the dimension of the main display with one piece about 1/3 the length of the display and the other 2/3. Then, I drilled holes to attach 3D-printed handles on them so that they can be easily removed during maintenance.
Last edited:
