Coralife BioCube 29g Build

homer1475 said:
If you mean Petco water. Its fine while you cycle the tank, I used it. Once you start adding corals and such, it falls very short of their requirements.
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What's funny is, I *just* noticed that auto-correct must have gotten me and changed Petco to "Pet I". ***?? LOL

Thanks for the tip to use it to cycle the tank. Although, since I am going to use "The Package", I may never even want to go there. I got Red Sea Coral Pro Salt, because I read so many great things about it and its calcium levels and benefits for corals. Have you used this? Just curious if the things I have read on it are as good as people have claimed.
 
Only a couple more days until I get back home and can start putting in time and money on my BioCube. This week in Vegas is KILLING me!! LOL

I prepped the wife on the cost of "The Package". She laughed about me phrasing it so that it's HER fault that I need to spend $400+ on the tank so it looks established so quickly... but she *did* say she wants it to look good for Thanksgiving when we have 20+ people in our house. ;)
 
be careful with the red sea salt. I actually had it throw off my values to the point that I had to pull back from it. It was killing off some of my corals and such. I now mix it with reef crystals when I make salt to get some of its benefits but not have it crush my tank.

I think for larger tanks it works awesome but for some of us smaller guys the levels of calcium and alk in it might be a bit much.
 
timfederwitz said:
Only a couple more days until I get back home and can start putting in time and money on my BioCube. This week in Vegas is KILLING me!! LOL

I prepped the wife on the cost of "The Package". She laughed about me phrasing it so that it's HER fault that I need to spend $400+ on the tank so it looks established so quickly... but she *did* say she wants it to look good for Thanksgiving when we have 20+ people in our house. ;)
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Could be worse I guess. When I got my cube I then threw out 3K in one shot for light, apex, skimmer, ect...

For the new tank she has learned to not ask costs. She merely said before you start I better have my new laptop sitting on the couch for me and you pay the monthly fee for photoshop and lightroom for me.

I started with a budget of roughly $3000 and that has now been eclipsed by a decent margin. My rock alone from TBS will roughly be 1K...

This isn't a cheap hobby but it is rewarding daily. Many other things we do with our money is very short term whereas this lasts years.


And finally 400 for rock and sand is CHEAP compared to what you woudl pay at your LFS....
 
soulpatch said:
400 for rock and sand is CHEAP compared to what you woudl pay at your LFS....
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I couldn't agree more, and that's one of the things I mentioned in "selling" her on it. Sent her the link to the thread for that n00b with the BioCube 29 that just posted. His tank looks like it has been up for about a year and it's only been 2 weeks!!! Amazing. I was originally thinking it would take about that long to start looking decent, but it seems like that is not the case with TBS.

Of course, I plan on setting that up and leaving it alone for about a month or two before adding anything to try and ferret out any potential pests that hitchhike.
 
soulpatch said:
be careful with the red sea salt. I actually had it throw off my values to the point that I had to pull back from it. It was killing off some of my corals and such. I now mix it with reef crystals when I make salt to get some of its benefits but not have it crush my tank.

I think for larger tanks it works awesome but for some of us smaller guys the levels of calcium and alk in it might be a bit much.
Click to expand...

Good to know!

BTW, are you in the Philly area?
 
As my tanks sits right now, I'm gathering a guess of around 5k$ including livestock. I'm budgeting 5k for just the setup on my new build, as I will start from scratch and carry nothing over from my biocube.

This hobby certainly isn't cheap, but can be very rewarding.
 
homer1475 said:
As my tanks sits right now, I'm gathering a guess of around 5k$ including livestock. I'm budgeting 5k for just the setup on my new build, as I will start from scratch and carry nothing over from my biocube.

This hobby certainly isn't cheap, but can be very rewarding.
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I try not to think about it HA HA. Though a lot of things can be taken to the other tank. IE my apex, RODI, reactor, ect.

The thing with this hobby is to buy quality equipment that can move onto your next tank when you eventually move up.

Nothing but some of my corals and fish are coming over from the biocube in terms of livestock. The apex and reactor will move as well but I think that is it. in fact I will be throwing out the rock and sand from the biocube when I get the other tank up and running and replace it with TBS stuff in a minimal aquascape as it will become my frag/qt tank moving forward and I dont want the current "issues" in the tank to continue.

Already have totes to put stuff in as I take the biocube offline for the TBS stuff to cycle.

My wife is going to love me when the basement is totes and tanks filled and in various forms of cycling/prepping.
 
soulpatch said:
I try not to think about it HA HA. Though a lot of things can be taken to the other tank. IE my apex, RODI, reactor, ect.

The thing with this hobby is to buy quality equipment that can move onto your next tank when you eventually move up.

Nothing but some of my corals and fish are coming over from the biocube in terms of livestock. The apex and reactor will move as well but I think that is it. in fact I will be throwing out the rock and sand from the biocube when I get the other tank up and running and replace it with TBS stuff in a minimal aquascape as it will become my frag/qt tank moving forward and I dont want the current "issues" in the tank to continue.

Already have totes to put stuff in as I take the biocube offline for the TBS stuff to cycle.

My wife is going to love me when the basement is totes and tanks filled and in various forms of cycling/prepping.
Click to expand...

And I'm not going to move anything over. The biocube will go in my bedroom just as it sits now(including all livestock), it will essentially become my wife's tank for her to take care of(yeah right). I will be starting from scratch on the new build, including new apex and BRS dual reactor(I don't think the mini will work in a bigger tank anyways). I will be piecing it together as I go though, so I'm not planning on actually getting the tank up and running till maybe next summer.
 
soulpatch said:
My wife is going to love me when the basement is totes and tanks filled and in various forms of cycling/prepping.
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That's funny. I was telling my wife that after we refinish the basement and my office goes down there, I plan on having a whole wall of nano reefs and was thinking about doing species tanks for some of the things that don't live well with others.

We would love to eventually have an octopus and sea horses (not together obviously).
 
homer1475 said:
And I'm not going to move anything over. The biocube will go in my bedroom just as it sits now(including all livestock), it will essentially become my wife's tank for her to take care of(yeah right). I will be starting from scratch on the new build, including new apex and BRS dual reactor(I don't think the mini will work in a bigger tank anyways). I will be piecing it together as I go though, so I'm not planning on actually getting the tank up and running till maybe next summer.
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I will probably get apex lite for the cube. I might leave the reactor on it as well who knows. But my clowns, blenny, and acans will all make the move.

No zoas, palys, or other lps will though.
 
timfederwitz said:
I was thinking about getting the Innovative Marine Mini Reactor for the cube. any thoughts? What reactor do you have?
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I have a BRS reactor. If you look at the IM reactor it looks to be a pain to set up and run since you have to manually adjust the levels and such in it.

I am looking at the next reef MR1 reactors for the next tank as they look to be a bit nicer to change out media but I will cross that bridge when I get to it.
 
soulpatch said:
I have a BRS reactor. If you look at the IM reactor it looks to be a pain to set up and run since you have to manually adjust the levels and such in it.



I am looking at the next reef MR1 reactors for the next tank as they look to be a bit nicer to change out media but I will cross that bridge when I get to it.
Click to expand...


Because this is in our living room, my wife wants everything to be very self-contained and equipment hidden. She didn't even want circulation pumps in the display tank!! She says they're ugly. LOL

Anyway, I need a reactor that will fit in chamber 2 with the lid on. I have never used a media reactor before in my life, so it's all new to me. The IM mini reactor seemed like one of the only reactors I could find that were small enough. I watched some videos on it and it seemed easy enough to use, but like I said, I have NO clue. ;)

Any suggestions are welcome, while understanding my limitations.
 
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