The Ultimate Cube 280g

nater · Apr 13, 2011

+1 on that green. another thing i noticed when plumbing in my small frag tank is that even though it was only 7-10 gallons to let's say 65-70 gallons being my main display is that i saw that my salinity jumped from 1.025 to 1.027 . the mix was at 1.025. i don't exactly know why this happened , but it may be a question to ask around. so figure you mix up that much water for the main display and plumb in the frag system , your salinity may jump stressing corals. tank is sick by the way , forgot to say. i have been watching along for a while. keep up the great work. i know i'm jealous.

cbort · Apr 14, 2011

nater said:
would say 100% most definitely going to see a huge algae bloom in your frag tank and also in the main tank if you do that. i would say you are better off filling the new display tank without plumbing in your frag tank. let the new main display cycle with lights off for at least a couple weeks , maybe 2 or 3. do a few water changes on it some where in the 3 weeks. get the ammonia , nitrite , ect down first. i just plumbed a small 7g acrylic frag tank into my main 90g display. i cycled the tank prior, or so i thought and i am getting this nasty gooey brown algae again. last time i got this algae which was from not cycling a small black egg crate frag rack the algae bloom got out of control and i almost sold off my tank. thankfully i stuck in there and it went away after strict water changes weekly. hope this helps.

Ok, thanks for the help with this! I am really wanting to not disturb my current running system too much, but i know there is going to be some type of bloom/cycle.

cbort · Apr 14, 2011

Greenmaster said:
One thing I would like to add to nater.... when you do combine the systems I would "Mix" the water slowly... unless the water temp/pH/salinity are all exactly the same.... even if they were I would probably take 4 hours of slowly mixing the water... I would turn the pump on for a few seconds to make it overflow for a few (like 30 seconds or so) and then wait for about 2 minutes... then I would do it again and continue with on/off till I felt comfortable with the tanks water being close to the same... that way you don't shock all your frags... It's the same idea as acclimation.

Thanks green master, this is what i had in mind except i thought about maybe having a ball valve on the return and i thought maybe only opening the pump so that just a little bit of water flowed in the display and over flowed the display very slowly.

cbort · Apr 14, 2011

nater said:
+1 on that green. another thing i noticed when plumbing in my small frag tank is that even though it was only 7-10 gallons to let's say 65-70 gallons being my main display is that i saw that my salinity jumped from 1.025 to 1.027 . the mix was at 1.025. i don't exactly know why this happened , but it may be a question to ask around. so figure you mix up that much water for the main display and plumb in the frag system , your salinity may jump stressing corals. tank is sick by the way , forgot to say. i have been watching along for a while. keep up the great work. i know i'm jealous.

Thanks again nater for the input and compliments! I will keep this in mind also when doing the transfer.

cbort · Apr 14, 2011

Ok, so i just installed the lower Closed Loop. Not to happy with the flow. Its very weak! I am using a reeflo dart. With a 1 1/2â€œ drain from the Bulkhead to the inlet. I am using 1â€ from the dart's outlet to the OM. The OM i believe uses 3/4â€œ inlets.

2 of my returns are Y'd into 2 outlets so i have a total of 6 outlets. I know ofcourse if i just take them down to 4 outlets all together flow will be a bit better, but the flow is still pathetic for what i was thinking it would produce. Any ideas? Or possibilities to why?

cbort · Apr 15, 2011

I now have 5 returns from the CL and flow got a little better since putting on 4 flow accelerators on 4 out of the 5 returns. I took both flow accelerators off of my frag tank and jimmy rigged them with these:

They now look something like this and the flow is actually close to equal:

I ended up putting the dart behind the tank, its really quiet! I tested it on my wife. I asked her if she could hear the pump and she didn't notice it until I mentioned it. So it passed the wife test. It will be quieter when the stand is skinned and completed. Here are some shots of my CL setup:

cbort · Apr 15, 2011

And here are some shots of my messy fish room. I tried to take a gradual photo tour as you walk into the fish room...

The first shot is what you see right when look through the doorway:

Next is a shot from within the doorway

Turning the corner just slightly:

A little more:

And finally where my frag table will be setup just before you get to the RO system and to the right of the RO system will by QT tank:

fsu1dolfan · Apr 15, 2011

cbort said:
Last night after i posted these pictures i went down and took about 30 more pictures and came out with about half that look pretty good. I turned the dial to Guide Mode-->Shoot-->Advanced Operation-->Bring More into focus-->F14-->More Settings-->Next-->Flash Mode-->Slow Sync + red-eye-->ISO Sensitivity-->1600. Then i make sure to have all lights off in room besides tank lights. Start taking photos with flash, and shots were coming out with what i would say is the closest ture coloration i have been able to get out of my camera so far.

I am really excited to get home and try some more shots. I don't use a tri-pod and that is my problem for shots not coming it clear, but i like to do top down shots which is impossible to use a tripod.

First - thank you for letting me know the settings...i cant wait to go and test this out. I actually started a thread with some of my pics but they were pretty poor. Yours came out great!!
Second - Great looking build and setup in the fish room. Are you planning on moving everything over to the new tank??

cbort · Apr 15, 2011

fsu1dolfan said:
First - thank you for letting me know the settings...i cant wait to go and test this out. I actually started a thread with some of my pics but they were pretty poor. Yours came out great!!
Second - Great looking build and setup in the fish room. Are you planning on moving everything over to the new tank??

Cool, I hope those settings work for you. My photo taking process takes awhile usually. I will generally take shots in 5's or so and go check out how the pics come out until I find the settings that I like. So far the settings I posted are my favorite and represent the colors pretty well! I am no photographer! :)

As far as moving everything over, I plan on moving most everything over. I debating now on how and when to combine the system. Want to create the least amount of stress as possible.

cbort · May 29, 2011

Still awaiting the finishing of the display tank, but in the mean time i have been collecting a few new corals! Here are a few shots of the frag rack that is filling up fast!

skinz78 · May 29, 2011

Nice looking corals!

omar · May 29, 2011

looks nice

cbort · May 30, 2011

skinz78 said:
Nice looking corals!

Thanks skinz!

omar said:
looks nice

Thanks omar!

I am in a training course that takes up a lot of my time, so i am hoping i can just maintain this frag tank while picking up more corals while i am out and about traveling for training. This should hopefully help my system mature, grow out my frags into small colonies and eventually when i have time again transfer everything over to the display tank!