We were just supposed to get a Betta at the LFS.... A story of our impulse buy.

[Kycelium]

So here we are. As the title states, we went to our LFS to pick up a Betta for our little one, but as we were checking out I spotted my girlfriend eyeing a lonely tank in the corner. An Aquatop Recife 40 Gallon All-In-One, who was desperate for a home. This would be her first-ever tank, so we had a few hour discussion about everything we would need to buy, the cost, time until we could stock the tank, and daily/weekly maintenance. We also watched several videos from Tidal Gardens, Bulk Reef Supply, and looked at photos and threads on here from you guys! It only took us about 4 hours to decide we NEEDED to adopt this tank. It took a quick trip to the bank, then we were off to our soon to be favorite LFS. It took two trips in our Hyundai Accent with a car seat to finally get everything home.

The tank sat empty for two days while we played with our nearly 100 pounds of dry rock. We had bought 5 pounds of recycled dry reef saver, 30 - 40 pounds of unused reef saver, and a 40-pound box of Artisian Fauth rock. We loved the Fauth rock at the store, imagining the shelves we could build, how it had predrilled holes for several sizes of rods to help scape, but when it came time to build, everything just felt too flat and unnatural. When we finally found a scape we fancied, we had only used about ten pounds of the Fauth artisan rock, and ten pounds of the reef saver. This is what we came up with, pardon the cloudiness of the sand.

We tried to make a few different cave spots for fish and inverts, a few swim through areas for fish in the middle of the tank, as well as ample sand space and low to medium light spaces for corals. However, after seeing how the tank looked once the sand cleared up, we wanted more height on the scape. So we took our fourth trip to the LFS in three days, returned $192 worth of rock, roughly 50 pounds worth, and found our missing pieces. We also purchased the Red Sea DIY Mesh Lid.

Front View:

Diagonal View from the Left

Left Side View:

So we bought our tank on July 2nd and finished the scape on July 5th. I believe we got the tank wet on the 4th as well. As soon as we got the tank wet, we started dosing MicroBacter Starter XLM, which was highly recommended by our LFS in addition to adding a shrimp to get an extreme start on our cycle. On the 4th we had a noticeable amount of ammonia, the 5th and 6th we had a giant amount of Nitrates, more than our salifert test kit could number, and on the 7th we took our water to three different LFS's to get tested. Our home tests showed no ammonia and less than 5ppm of nitrates, which I found to be a little unbelievable. Well all three LFS backed up our tests. We had cycled our tank in 5 days with the use of live sand, a dead shrimp, and MicroBacter start.

We left the last LFS on July 7th with our new addition, NoHo Hank, our Snow Storm Clown. Check him out! We picked him because he had hardly any black on him at all, especially for a Snow Storm.

 

[Kycelium]

I am actually heading out to the LFS right now and will add more to the thread once I am back!

 

[rob s.]

love the rock scape! lots of hiding places and lots of room for corals. looks great so far!

 

[Cell]

Welcome to R2R! Sounds like you are off to a good start!

 

[Wolf89]

I love your scape too!

 

[Kycelium]

We are back!

On the 7th we also got our first frag, a beautiful single head Duncan! I also set up my Radion Xr15 Gen4 that I had saved from a previous build. I ended up modifying the Radiant Color template so it is a little less blue at its peak, lasts a little longer for our viewing pleasure, and I dropped the intensity down to 35%. I also added some old Rossmont movers, and added them to an old Rossmont Waver. I had two MX1900's which are way too strong for this size of tank. Setting up the daily programming was quite frustrating tbh. And even today, two weeks later, I am still not the happiest with the flow in my tank. This is my first cube tank and idk if it is the shape of the tank, the rock work, or what, but I just cannot seem to dial in the flow to my liking. I think the most they ramp up to is 15% power during a random gyre mode.

On the 8th I added a bottle of Apex Pods and some rotifers to hopefully kickstart the pods in our tank. Both Ky and I are really loving the idea of getting a Mandarin later on.

On the 9th I bought a Random Flow Generator and a package of Apocyclopods. I tried and tried and tried to attach the RFG to the tanks return line only to find out that it isn't genuine locline. I ended up having to saw off the default return nozzle since I couldn't manually pry it off, and after figuring out I couldn't attach the RFG I went to the closest LFS that sold RFG's, about 25 miles away. They informed me that the RFG I bought could've been fake, or the printer could have malfunctioned, which kind of sucks. I still had to buy an adapter piece, however, the worker at the store said it wouldn't be a perfect fit. Unfortunately, I had to use some reef safe glue to get it to seal on the tank's return. I am not too happy with how it looks, but I am happy with the flow it provides.
I also bought a nice little torch frag after I returned to faulty RFG. I was incredibly surprised at the price though... I found out that between my last adventure in reefing to now, there was a ban on Indo coral imports, and that's why prices are skyrocketing. I also, once again, added three cups of Reef Stew and three cups of Brine.

Pardon the blue of the videos, but these are the two frags I picked up. The videos were taken on the 11th of July.

 

[Kycelium]

The next day, July 12th, I added a Diamond Goby, Fire Red Shrimp, Hammer Frag, and another Torch frag thanks to the LFS's buy one get one sale on livestock.

Just three days later, I nearly had a heart attack... I saw this happening and thought my Goby had betrayed our trust. Luckily our shrimp had just molted and was safe and sound a few inches away hiding behind some rock.

 

[Kycelium]

Diatoms. We knew we would get them eventually, but were still a little surprised to see them when we woke up on the 16th. We ended up going to the LFS and got 3 baby Astrea snails to start a Clean Up Crew. Unfortunately, this was all that our shop had. They said they've been struggling to get inverts during the pandemic and that's all they had left that could help us.
I couldn't stay away from the LFS and on the 17th, I went to their second location and purchased some friends for both our frags and our clean up crew. What was supposed to just be a run to get some water turned into 2 Nassarius Snails, one of which appeared to be dead on the ride home 1 more Astrea snail, A pulsing Xenia, Maui Gold Cyphastrea, and a small Galaxia coral. Can you tell we love seeing the movement in our tank haha? I glued the Maui gold to our back pannel so hopefully, it'll start covering it.

I made a few more additional adjustments to the flow on the 18th and think I finally dialed it in close to perfect. Check out our Duncan, we think we can see another head starting to sprout out.

 

[Cell]

QT tank is highly recommended unless your LFS has a legit QT/medication protocol and can be trusted.

 

[Kycelium]

Sorry to keep breaking this thread update up, I am having trouble adding text after adding some of these small videos...

Everything was going smoothly until the morning of the 21st.. Since we had the goby I have left the lid off of our tank on several different occasions. I may or may not have been a little tipsy while making our Red Sea DIY lid and maybe I wasn't in too much of the mood to read the instructions. I had no idea that the small clips they gave us were to attach to the glass of the tank so it could have a low profile look. I had cut the metal while making the lid, so it would rest on the plastic pieces that came with the tank to hold up the original glass top. So our DIY Mesh lid is about a half-inch short on some of the sides. The tank also has an unnaturally high water level IMO. Regardless of how much water you remove, the display water level sits less than a half of an inch from the top, and with our water flow in the tank, a little bit of the water seeps under the plastic lid holders that sit on the edges of the glass. Every morning we were waking up to a few drips of water down the left and right sides of our tank, and we would have some salt creep up and dry out around these clips. It was a little distracting so we would take the lid off when we would have company over, and really whenever we didn't want to have to clean the outside of the glass.
We got away with it for probably 4-5 full nights, and several 4-6 periods during three sperate days. Well, during my water change on the 21st, I left to grab some more water from the LFS, about 35-40 minutes, and I returned to a sad sight.

Our beautiful diamond goby was about 16-18 inches away from the tank carpet surfing. I had thought to put the lid back on prior to leaving, but decided I would just be taking it back off shortly, so why not leave it off. Well Mr. Goby decided this would be the perfect time for a one-way day trip.

 

[Kycelium]

QT tank is highly recommended unless your LFS has a legit QT/medication protocol and can be trusted.

The LFS I go to has a dedicated QT, plus they medicate all corals and fish in separate systems. I do still want to set up a QT, I just havent yet. Im lucky so far. What all would you suggest doing to set up a propper QT?

 

[Raege]

Welcome to R2R really like your scape! Love to see more pics as vids aren’t working for me :-(

 

[Cell]

You can get a fine setup for like $50. 10 or 20 gallon Aqueon during Petco's dollar per gallon sale. Aqueon preset heater, marineland HOB filter, some pvc pipe for hiding spots, seachem ammonia tag.

 

[Cell]

DWG's are notorious jumpers. Leave even a small hole or crack in the lid and they seem to find it.

 

[sp1187]

might want to dial it back on the LPS/SPS purchases until your tank has been up and running for awhile.
that island tower is crying out for some xenia, green star polyps or clove polyps. all easy and all will give you movement.
if your LFS has any, I would also suggest a strawberry/tiger conch. great sand cleaners.
welcome to the show.

 

[Kycelium]

So it has been quite a bit since our last update so bear with me. I am going to just lump everything together all at once to get up to date instead of the daily updates like before.

After losing our Diamond Goby we special ordered a Dracula Goby and a Tri-Color Fairy Wrasse from the LFS. Those two should be in later this week. We also set up a refugium using our back middle chamber and a couple of small handfuls of Chaeto. I was using an old AI Prime HD taped to the back for the refugium, however the first two nights it was a little too strong and burned some of it. I've pour rotifers, trigger pods, tisbe pods, and apococylopods or whatever they're called in it as well. we started noticing our glass crawling with pods so just last night we picked up a small Green Mandarin, we also picked up a Pearly Yellowhead Jawfish too.

Coral wise, we have added two rock flower anemones, one of them being an ultra, and when we grabbed the mandarin we also picked up a beautiful Rose Bubble Tip Anenome.

Equipment-wise we took out on of the rossmonts and beefed up the flow from the one remaining mover. We also added on an AquaMaxx 1.5 HOB Skimmer and the skim is absolutely incredible, it almost didn't even need a break-in period. I love it. Most importantly we bought the big Apex bundle that came with the ORP, PH, Temp, and Salinity probe. It was a little more difficult to set up than I thought, and I didn't get to have full apex functionality with it because of the pumps and lights we use, however, I do love it. Last night though my heater did jump up to 85 and I didn't program it right to shut off the power to the heater yet. Fortunately, we didn't lose anything besides a snail. We also bought a Trident, Dos, and Dos container bundle which should be in by tomorrow. I also ordered two containers of Aqua Forest Reef Salt because there isn't a seller in the state, however, it was supposed to be in five days ago, and "Due to Operating Conditions the Package will be delayed" but they haven't given me an estimated delivery date yet. My tank is kind of hurting for a water change too so I hope it is soon.

As soon as I get this water change done, I will take some photos and upload them for you guys! Hope you are all taking care.

-Zac and Ky

 

[Kycelium]

Weekly update time! We finally got our salt in the mail at the same time as our Dos, Trident, and DDR. I have set up the trident and started to manually dos Red Sea Reef Foundation to get a nice baseline dose prior to using the Neptune doser. Since my tank is mainly LPS and Nems, I don't think I will need to do any hardcore dosing anytime soon. I know we do have plans to incorporate some SPS in the near future though.
Since the last post, one of our small torch frags died, however, the other two torches we have in the tank, one that's been in for a while, and a fairly new two-headed long tentacle torch, are doing super well! Yesterday we added a super small captive breed blue mandarin! Our pod population has exploded and I love the fact that he will eat frozen food. The only other frag we have added was a small toadstool.

Oh! I almost forgot, we added two smaller Tiger Sand Conchs that I think we will eventually have to supplement feedings for. They are hungry, hungry hippos that are constantly eating.

Until the LFS gets our Dracula Goby and our TriColor Fairy Wrasse in, I think we're content with where the tank is at right now. We did have another small diatom bloom, however, it is starting to dissipate.

 

[Kycelium]

Here is our new baby fish! Snail for size comparison, he is literally only about 3/4 of an inch.

Here is our new torch. Also there is our Maui Gold Cyphastrea that we glued to the back wall.

Here is a frontal shot of our Pearly Jawfish in his cave, one of our torches, hammer, part of our duncan, and our pulsing xenia that doesnt pulse lol.

Our to Rock Flower Anenomes, one of them is an ultra.

The newest addition frag-wise, our toadstool.

The duncan

And of course, our Rose Buble Tip Anenome has decided he wants to be in the back of our tank after 7-8 days of hiding in one of our caves. I am not sure if he likes the flow here or what, this photo was taken right below where our powerhead is positioned.

And best for last, some Full Tank Shots, first will be a frontal, and second is from the left side.

 

[Kycelium]

I just realized I didnt add any photos of our two clowns and our shrimp I'll add those soon, once they cooperate.