Cadlights 8: And now for something completely different

terrypercula

terrypercula

New member
Hey everyone! Back again to bring you my bedroom tank build. Let me first explain the title. Just about every tank I've done in the past was started with dry rock amd for good reason. I love dry rock, I love not having to worry about little pests or algaes that come with it. However I really wanted my bedroom tank to be totally different. For this tank I will use rock right from the coast of Florida. It's about as live as live rock can get. Any pest or unwanted algae will be more than welcome in this tank. Any small mantis shrimp, aiptasia, macro algae or anything else along for the ride will be welcome. As will any brain coral, sponge or anything else that comes on it. This tank will be unpredictable and adventurous. Now that we've established what will be different let's move onto the tank it's going in.
The tank is a Cadlights 8 gallon mini. I opted to get the light as well. They claim it's SPS capable so it should be more than enough for anything in this tank since it won't be coral crazy.
Live stock is still undecided probably fish less but if I do anything it will be a small goby of some sort and a lot of inverts. Enough of the talk though here is some pictures.
 
Here's some of my early first impressions. Keep in mind the tank doesn't even have water in it yet this is right out of the box what I think. I'll start with some things I don't like.

1:The foot pegs on the bottom of the tank.

I might just be worrying over nothing but it seems like a weird thing to do. I feel like it puts unnecessary pressure on the bottom glass. I don't know if they've had any troubles with tanks cracking and frankly I don't think it would cause something like that to happen but it doesn't really look good either so it seems like a pointless and dangerous thing to do.

2: The way the glass lid is held on.

This one is more of a nitpick but the way Innovative Marine does this is way easier. These slide onto the lid and then rest on the tank but they don't stay in place very well and there's really no where to grab to get the lid off. It's not a huge deal just something that seems not very thought through.

3: The return.

This is the one that irks me the most. It make ZERO sense the way it is mounted and the returns position. For one the return is non directional and in the middle of the tank so I can already tell surface agitation will be impossible without another powerhead aimed at the surfac. The other thing is it mounts vertically and is screwed into the return. Taking it out for maintenance means unscrewing the return nozzle itself and lifting the whole unit out. It's totally nonsensical.

4: Cadlights customer service. There was a thread posted about it, some mention having good experiences and a few bad. The fact is my personal experience has been terrible and all I've done was bought a tank so far. For one after you buy the tank they will make you pay and mark you've paid but then they don't update you what so ever. I got no tracking information and not even a note on the website that my order had even shipped. Naturally that meant I had questions so I emailed them asking if the order had shipped. I got no response. I called a couple days later and they took 15 minutes just to find my order and after that they were clueless. Customer service is a big thing for me so that made me a little angry.

5: Build quality.

The glass work itself seems ok so that's good. The picture is of the black vinyl they put over the filtration area. This is a brand new tank and it's cracked and peeling off. This just seems sloppy, it makes the tank seem thrown together instead of crafted. All in all its not a huge deal but still annoying to see a proffesional company put out work like that and put their name on it.

I'll go over some of the things I like in a bit. Trust me it's not all bad, all in all I do actually like the tank.
 
I took a MJ600 nozzle and superglued it to the stock output. That way I was able to direct the flow upwards. I've seen a number of people upgrade the pump, but I didn't feel it was necessary since I installed a MP10.
And I agree. It's a stupid place to put a return, especially since there is no directional control.
 
svynx said:
I took a MJ600 nozzle and superglued it to the stock output. That way I was able to direct the flow upwards. I've seen a number of people upgrade the pump, but I didn't feel it was necessary since I installed a MP10.
And I agree. It's a stupid place to put a return, especially since there is no directional control.
Click to expand...

You know I probably have a couple bags of MJ parts floating around. Haha I'm definitely going to do something about it, I just don't know what they were thinking when they did it.
 
Ok here's a few things I like about the tank.

1: Price
You can get these for under $200 shipped brand new from Cadlights. For that you get the tank, the light and the return pump. If you're comparing it to the Nuvo 8 which costs around the same price you get pretty similar equipment except I would guess the light on the Cadlights is far superior to the weak light the Nuvos come with. They claim it to be SPS capable. This leads me to the number 2 thing I like about this tank.

2: The light
As I stated they claim it to be powerful enough to handle SPS. I haven't tried it so I can't comment and say it can or can't but regardless it certainly looks the part. It's got a great uniform color, not terribly spotty and it's got a cool flip up top.
I can see this being useful when doing minor maintenance in the display.

3: Big filtration area
This can be looked at as a positive or a negative. While it does cut into the size of the display a little bit it gives you plenty of room for a reactor or skimmer of your choosing. For me it's a positive it doesn't seem like that much of a loss in the display area.

4: Glass work
The glass work seems well put together, all the seals look great and I'd be surprised if this tank had any issues.

All and all I'm happy with the tank so far. I'm looking forward to getting it running.
 
Looks good, I ordered the same one yesterday after my brand new IM Nuvo 8 cracked. I have the CadLights Artisan II 50g and the build quality is really good, so I expect the same from the 8g. I agree with the customer service remark, I won't give them a negative review but they're not entirely on the ball. I called them and placed an order, which they said they had sent out, but I have yet to get an emailed receipt or tracking #, a bit frustrating...
 
vtluke said:
Looks good, I ordered the same one yesterday after my brand new IM Nuvo 8 cracked. I have the CadLights Artisan II 50g and the build quality is really good, so I expect the same from the 8g. I agree with the customer service remark, I won't give them a negative review but they're not entirely on the ball. I called them and placed an order, which they said they had sent out, but I have yet to get an emailed receipt or tracking #, a bit frustrating...
Click to expand...

The bigger tanks look beautiful. I may have came off a little more harsh than I wanted too. Most of the negative things about the tank are really kind of minimal. Like I said all and all the tank looks amazing and I can't wait to get it going. The customer service thing really bothers me though. I'm in a feild where customer service is everything and if I operated the same way they did I'd be out of a job.
 
I present to you fellow reefers something completely different

LFS got the shipment

And I was one of the first sp I got to hand cherry pick what I wanted and this is the result.
 
Now that it has been running a little bit of time here's a few more first impressions. The tank is very very quiet. No sound of running water and suprisingly even the return pump despite how it is mounted is dead silent. The light has a great uniform color and time will tell how it handles the corals on these rocks. I certainly would think it is plenty of light. As I suspected surface agitation is pretty lackluster. I'll say this though it moves the water up top more than I expected but it still isn't enough. I added an air pump I had laying around to agitate the surface and to stop from any scum that may build up. It looks a little cheesey but it's doing what it is supposed to. Now the plan is to wait a couple weeks do some water changes and just observe the rock to find cool little critters, it's loaded. Hopefully future plans do some small gobies and or blennies.
 
Your tank looks awesome! How many pounds of rock/coral did you put in it from the LFS? And are you going to get a powerhead to increase flow and surface agitation or just leave it? Did you put a timer on your light and how long are you running it per day? Just trying to figure out if there's anything else I need and what I should plan for before it arrives...
 
vtluke said:
Your tank looks awesome! How many pounds of rock/coral did you put in it from the LFS? And are you going to get a powerhead to increase flow and surface agitation or just leave it? Did you put a timer on your light and how long are you running it per day? Just trying to figure out if there's anything else I need and what I should plan for before it arrives...
Click to expand...

It's about 11 lbs so it's absolutely packed haha I probably will add a hydor or something just to point at the surface. My light is on a timer I'm running it on the longer side from 8am to 10pm I may shorten it up.
 
terry I have this tank too. You have the 10 watt light it appears, i had the 6 watt version and got rid of it. Hopefully yours is better. That rock is killer.
 
I turned mine into a straight Zoa tank. I got mine used and it at least has a direction return so I can direct up.
image%2015.jpeg
 
ExpensiveHobby said:
terry I have this tank too. You have the 10 watt light it appears, i had the 6 watt version and got rid of it. Hopefully yours is better. That rock is killer.
Click to expand...

Yea the light really seems to be more than enough for my needs ha I may just rig the return so I can direct it but I may just add a hydor 240 or something. I thought I had one somewhere but I can't find it.
 
terrypercula said:
It's about 11 lbs so it's absolutely packed haha I probably will add a hydor or something just to point at the surface. My light is on a timer I'm running it on the longer side from 8am to 10pm I may shorten it up.
Click to expand...

Wow, that's a lot! I might get a cheap powerhead to agitate it. Looks good though, thanks for the info
 
d2mini said:
The tank looks good and nice coral pickups.

If you haven't seen my thread, you may want to check it out.
I've been down this road and there's some things you may find interesting, i.e. the light, sand, filtration...
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2369928
Click to expand...

So I just read the thread all the way through, great information in there! Many things to consider with this new tank with the lighting and filtration. Not to threadjack, but did you end up liking the MarinePure balls or would you go a different direction in the future? I have no experience with filtration for these little tanks. And terrypercula, what is your plan for filtration?
 
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