Waterbox Marine X 60.2 Build Thread

[Fishy5oh]

Hi all! Finally posting my build thread as I had my tank delivered today, ordered almost 2 months to the day ago. Waiting was hell but I'm so glad it's here.

Current equipment list
Lighting - Redsea ReefLED 90W with RS's tank mount
Return pump - Sicce Syncra 3.0 - I've used their smaller pumps on nano reefs, but reviews of the larger pumps sound like they aren't exactly as silent as the smaller variants, if it's too loud I plan on switching over to either a reef octopus or an ecotec, haven't been impressed with ecotec for the price point but hopefully this tank is the one that I keep for years to come so maybe it'll be worth it.

Heater - for now just a cheap hydor that I had in my brute while my rock was cycling, I have a BRS titanium unit coming next week and will be running an inkbird to control it.

Flow - two Nero 3s, not super impressed with the magnets, went with these instead of MP10s because their max thickness should have allowed them to work well, however I've noticed that the magnets are a little bit finicky. The second I noticed a problem I will be upgrading to Nero 5s

Filtration - running a bubble magus curve 5 elite as I was able to get it cheap and brand new, this is my first foray into skimmers so I'm not really sure what to expect.

Currently planning on running a red sea filter cup in lieu of filter socks, down the road however I may be getting a fleece roller.

I also have eshoppe ceramic cylinder media in the sump as well as my ATO.


The current stock plan is two MochaVinci clowns, a Midas blenny, and a geometric hawkfish. I was originally planning on also adding a Gobi and pistol shrimp, however my sand bed didn't end up being as thick as I thought it would be and I don't really feel like ripping out the scape and redoing it.


This will hopefully end up being a nice LPS tank, planning for a euphyllia garden with acans as well as zoas.


Some thoughts on the build quality as well as the assembly process: it took me about 3 hours to get everything "assembled" however living in Tennessee means that my floors aren't level by any means, after speaking to their tech support in great depth about what my options were after maxing out the leveling feet on one side with a centimeter difference still, I think I should be fine at this point. I really wish that if they chose to use leveling feet they would have just made them longer than the half inch or so that they give you to work with.

The tank and sump are both flawless and the assembly process for the plumbing was incredibly simple for someone who has never plumbed a tank aside from hooking a return up to a pump in an AIO.

All in all I'm very happy with my purchase, this is easily the most I've ever spent on a single setup but I'm looking forward to the process of watching the tank grow over the years. I'll be updating this thread as more developments arise or if I have any questions or hiccups.

 

[P-Dub]

Nice! Keep us posted.

 

[Fishy5oh]

Got it totally filled and have the return pump running, I've been cycling my rock since early December so I went ahead and picked up a pair of mocha vinci yesterday from the coral reef, they are the retail outlet for sustainable aquatics and only about an hour away from me. They're both doing great and have picked their spot in the tank that they hang out the most.

I also went ahead and also picked up a bottle of Fritz turbo start 900, just to help make sure that any die off on the rock is accounted for. because of that, I now have to wait 5 days to turn my skimmer on and let it break in but I don't think that'll be a problem.


My salinity is currently a little bit low just because I ran out of salt and no stores are open yet. Hopefully I'll be able to grab more today, but if not I do have an order from BRS coming in on Wednesday that has salt as well as additional corners for my screen lid kit so that I can build it around the overflow box.

 

[Fishy5oh]

I'll also be picking up a polyblab lens for my phone so that I don't have Windex water in all of my future pictures lol

 

[endy0430]

Good start going to be following along.

 

[Fishy5oh]

Got my lens kit today, I've picked up a few zoa frags as well as a green indo torch, and what I believe to be a branching variant of GSP if someone could confirm.

 

[Fishy5oh]

First water changes in the books! Really loving the ability to swing the Red Sea LED mounting arm up and out of the way, just make sure that you don't look forward when you do it, or you'll feel like the Men in Black just wiped your memory like me. Everyone is doing well, and I think I finally got the curve 5 working how it should. I'll be going to a frag swap in Knoxville tomorrow and hopefully picking up some sweet acans and euphyllia to start the gardens for each as well as some higher end zoas.

I'm debating growing GSP up the back wall, I've got a guy throwing me a solid deal on a huge bundle of it that I could cut up and separate and easily start that process. Guess we'll wait and see what strikes me when I get back.

 

[endy0430]

What lid did you go with. Man I seen some and they aren’t cheap.

 

[Fishy5oh]

Went with a BRS diy lid and a neat aquatics feed portal, I didn't get the measurements spot on so it does have a slight curve upwards, but I'm happy with it for the price. I think eventually if I do what I plan on doing and starting a youtube channel to record the progress of the build I'll eventually get a kraken, everyone else has bad reviews in terms of customer service on fb and reddit even if their products may be decent.

 

[Fishy5oh]

Picked up a lot of acans as well as another couple zoa plugs and a neat bi-color torch at a local frag swap Saturday. I've got the first bits of diatoms/misc algae on the rocks and sand today, so I'll be picking up some more hermit crabs as well as snails, and a cleaner shrimp to help with uneaten food today/tomorrow from the LFS in Kingsport. I've also got a Midas blenny coming later this week through a local guy who has a wholesaler with them, got him for a great deal. Skimmer is finally going well and not underperforming like it was last week. I've got my ULR Hanna phosphate checker coming from BRS in a few days so I can finally test that but my nitrate is sitting somewhere between 5-10 on the red sea test, so hopefully I can avoid the dinos that drove me crazy with my last tank.

 

[sgarron]

How are the Nero 3's working out? Staying put? How's the flow?

 

[Fishy5oh]

How are the Nero 3's working out? Staying put? How's the flow?

So far so good, I'm right in the middle of my diatom bloom and though they're covered they're still running strong. The thickness is riiiight on the edge of what I'd trust, if I did it again I'd run nero 5s or something with stronger magnets. Eventually (long long term) I may look into gyre pumps, maybe run RedSea's to match the LED.

 

[Fishy5oh]

Small update, as mentioned above I've got quite a diatom bloom on my hands, started Monday-Tuesday and I did a small 3 gallon waterchange as I had some left over from the water change I did on Saturday. I also noticed a couple aiptasia on one of the zoa plugs so I've got a peppermint shrimp on order with a local wholesaler.

I was hoping to be picking up a midas blenny this week but unfortunately nobody has them in stock. I'm not really interested in replacing it with another fish, I was debating pistol shrimp and goby pair, but after seeing how thin the sand is up around the rock I don't think I'd want to risk it.

The acans are doing well, I've got a few different frags with this one pictured having several different variant "babies". This monti was swamped by pulsing xenia and browning out but has recovered quite a bit of color since I tweezered the xenia off. The GSP appears to have some hair algae of some sort on it, not sure what. The single headed torch has lost a bit of its "bicolor" to its tentacles but it looks like it's coming back and adjusting well.

I measured nitrates and phosphates and got .05 phos and 5 nitrate, I have an order from Reefcleaners coming on Monday with snails as well as some snails from an LFS to help deal with the diatoms and any uneaten food (I love nassarius but they're aliens I swear). Hoping to have the diatoms dealt with in the next week or so, if not I'll be picking up some Rowaphos to run in my filter sock.

 

[Fishy5oh]

That wholesaler managed to find me a Midas Blenny, he's hiding and super stressed, he's got his green and white-ish blue blotches going now but he's got himself a hidey hole in my rockwork. I also picked up a frogspawn and hammer, both of which look fantastic under my lighting, they're super tiny but I couldn't say no to the cheap deal.

Also my diatoms look a little bit less intense, I think the couple of snails I have are starting to go to work. The rock has some cleared patches and the sand bed is getting turned over decently. So far no coral have been affected.

The clowns look like they're leaving the midas alone, they're patrolling the front of the tank and hanging out in their normal spot in the back left like usual. I've got water mixing that I'll be changing tomorrow morning and I'll be vacuuming the sandbed as much as possible, I've got about 10 gallons made but I'll probably only use 5 and save the other 5 for later in the week.

So far everything has gone fairly well, I'm still really impressed with the clarity of this starfire glass, It's actually rather annoying how clear it is because I notice every little streak or smudge on it but I guess that's a good problem to have.

I'm still thinking about starting a YouTube channel, I'm not really sure I'd be able to spend too much time with it, maybe weekly update videos, but I've known a couple "fish-tubers" and they've all had a blast doing it. Once I get out of this diatom bloom and have a few more coral and maybe my hawkfish in the tank I think I may start putting that together.

 

[Fishy5oh]

Did my water change today, here's the parameters after changing the water, looks like I'm keeping up with just water changes so far, but I'm sure I'll have to look into at least alkalinity dosing in the future.

Nitrate between 2 and 5 on the redsea test
Ph of 8.0 on RS test
Alkalinity of 8.7 on Hanna
Calcium of 450 on salifert
Magnesium of 1390 on salifert
Phosphate a little high at 0.05 on Hanna

Fed the tank a half cube of omega whole mysis, the clowns are fully into frozen now and I only spot feed them and the acans the Sustainable Aquatics pellets once or twice a week, the acans and euphyllia all got direct fed mysis and I even saw the Blenny poke his head out and grab a couple shrimp so that's easily the most surprising thing.

I vacuumed up as much of the diatoms as I could but it also looks like they are receding off of the rocks so that's good.

 

[Fishy5oh]

Looks like the diatoms are really on their last legs. I picked up a dragon soul torch, a personal favorite of mine, and a nice gold-orange lepto. Hopefully in the next weeks I'll be looking at and adding some SPS frags, looking at stylos and digitatas for now. I'm trying to get most of the frags I plan on keeping in the tank and then letting things grow out, that way I only have to keep up with them and not cater any new species.

 

[Fishy5oh]

Almost as soon as the diatoms cleared out, I had this lovely bacterial bloom start. I've done a couple large water changes, ballpark 10g Tuesday and yesterday and it looks to be improving. Fish and coral doing well, but I spotted and zapped a couple aiptasia with aiptasia-x, if more are seen I'll pick up a peppermint shrimp.

 

[Fishy5oh]

Well it's now Tuesday and the bloom has gotten quite a bit worse, this is right after a 10 gallon water change. I could barely see the fish/coral this morning. Alk and PH are both holding stable so I'm not too concerned, though the green torch has one head that looks to be a bit depressed, everything seems healthy. I got a green killing machine yesterday and I'll be running it 24/7 until it clears this bloom up. I'm slightly concerned because I could only find the 9w, I'd have preferred the 24w as the 9 is only rated for up to 50g and this system has just under 45g once fully filled.

 

[Fishy5oh]

The Green Killing Machine cleared it up really well, also figured out a neat way to drip feed dry food into the tank using a pipette wedged between my DIY screen lid and the rim, works really well with pre-soaked Sustainable Aquatics' Hatchery diet!

Also picked up a couple zoa frags from low country coral boys over in SC, a Hawaiian Ding Dang and a mixed frag with some Pandoras, Treehouse on Fires, and Gatorades.

I'm nearly where I'd say I'm ready to let things grow out and not add too much more, I'm really looking forward to seeing how things fill in!

 

[Fishy5oh]

Well it's been about a month, I had a slight issue with some algae that looked an awful lot like Bryopsis, I'm on the 6th day of Reef Flux and it's completely wiped it out. I'll be doing a 30% water change next weekend to allow it to work its way through.

I also finally started dosing BRS Soda Ash, my alkalinity was dropping from 8.3-8.5 to the low 7s over the course of a week and I wasn't really able to make up with 5-10g water changes. I picked up a Kamoer X1 Pro with Wifi on sale at BRS, and after trying to get it connected for the better part of the last week, this morning their customer service was FINALLY able to get me sorted, and I've got the pump calibrated and dosing 2.5ml per day as a starting point, I've been hand-dosing that much for the last week or so to great effect. My dragon soul and green torches were both showing some tissue recession due to the alkalinity drop as well as a bit too much flow but they're both bouncing back quite well now.

Now, for the bad news. I've had a crazy amount of copepods in this system and having kept mandarins in my previous tank that were frozen-trained, figured I'd be able to make another go of it in this tank. Unfortunately I picked up my mandarin from a local shop that has less-than-stellar specimens, I didn't realize just how thin the one I got was until the next day and over the course of a week didn't see it eat a single pod, live or frozen, and found it stuck to my powerhead one morning. I doubt I'll make another go in this tank just because I've enjoyed how easy this tank has been thus far, if I do end up getting any more fish I may go with a goby-pistol shrimp pair.