HerAnatomy's Biocube HQI 29g

[heranatomy]

Hi there! I have recently gotten back into this hobby. Prior, I had a seahorse dedicated tank and I started a saltwater 20 gallon long with some beginner coral. Life happens, and I got out of the hobby but now I'm back and would like to try my hand at some more intermediate coral!!

I haven't decided where I'm going yet with this tank, but I have begun the cycling process as of April 14th.

I started with some base dry rock from Bulk Reef Supply (a mixture of their Reef Saver Eco and Pukani), got a couple pieces of live rock from a LFS, and then order some beautiful live rock from Sea Life Inc (now called K&P aquatics). I absolutely LOVE their premium cultured live rock. It is covered in beautiful color and I got some great hitchhikers! I also live in Florida, so I did their priority shipping. I think since they are located more in the keys, and I'm in central Florida, it came in 2 days. There was some die-off. It was loaded with feather dusters and each day, I'm finding more things. Some macro algae is growing, as well as a tiny looking coral. I will have to wait until it gets bigger to ID it. It's awfully tiny right now. I highly recommend them! They had fantastic customer service and answered my random question emails during odd hours of the night! I also specified certain sizes, and they really followed through.

Enough of that, here are details:

Tank:
29 gallon BioCube HQI
Stock 150w MH
Chamber 1: AquaticLife Skimmer 115. Installed, but not running during cycle.
Chamber 2: inTank Media basket and Fuge basket (not yet installed, waiting for cycle to complete) (May install and add Chaeto soon) Once cycle is complete, I have filter floss, purigen and chemi-pure elite to place in the media basket.
Chamber 3: Stock pump

Filtration:
20 lbs of Arag-Alive live sand
Mixture of live and dry rock (probably 50/50 lb wise if not leaning towards the live vs dry) (Not sure of the lbs...over 20 lbs)

Accessories:
Hydor Theo 100w heater...currently not installed. Tank runs 79.2-80.0 without any assistance.
Reef Keeper Lite w/ temp probe.
NImble Nano
2 Koralia evolution 550 gph powerheads on alternate cycles, 30 seconds on/off each side.

Lights run from 12:30pm-9:30pm.

I also have a JBJ nano glo LED for the fuge once I decide to get Chaeto.

Tank pics:
<img src="http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f239/ohohheart/Tank/IMG_2067.jpg" width="680" height="906">
I put parchment paper on top to help the colors on the rock adjust to the MH

<img src="http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f239/ohohheart/Tank/IMG_2069.jpg" width="680" height="510">

<img src="http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f239/ohohheart/Tank/IMG_2073.jpg" width="680" height="906">
Right Side

<img src="http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f239/ohohheart/Tank/IMG_2074.jpg" width="680" height="906">
Left Side

<img src="http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f239/ohohheart/Tank/IMG_2075.jpg" width="680" height="510">
Cute little macro algae! ^-^

<img src="http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f239/ohohheart/Tank/IMG_2078.jpg" width="680" height="906">
Great colors on rock. Bottom rock on the top left center has the brown "coral" i'm waiting to grow so I can ID. It looks like it has "polyps".

<img src="http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f239/ohohheart/Tank/IMG_2077.jpg" width="680" height="906">
More color.

<img src="http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f239/ohohheart/Tank/IMG_2072.jpg" width="680" height="509">
Really bad pic of the "coral". It's so tiny, it's hard to get a picture! lol


Feedback/Suggestions are welcome!!

Thanks for looking :lol:

 

[TRENT_G]

Going to look sweet. Keep us updated.

 

[heranatomy]

Going to look sweet. Keep us updated.

Thanks!:spin1:

 

[ange062]

Well done on the scape, looks like you are off to a great start! Welcome back to the hobby and to RC!

 

[killereef]

Nice rock work, whacha going put in there, as far as fish and corals?

 

[heranatomy]

Nice rock work, whacha going put in there, as far as fish and corals?

Thanks!

As far as fish, I'm going to try to keep it low... I definitely want a neon goby. Then, maybe a clown (black or misbar or maybe a skunk clown). And maybe a royal gramma or purple dottyback. I havent decided yet. I'm also considering a lawnmower blenny or starry blenny.

As far as coral, im going to start with some zoas and maybe a chalice. I'm also interested in some acans. I would like at least one maxi mini nem, probably right off the bat so it can settle and i can place my corals around wherever the nem settles lol.

 

[heranatomy]

Here is an updated of my unknown coral hitchhiker:

<img src="http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f239/ohohheart/Tank/IMG_2137.jpg" height="510" width="680">
<img src="http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f239/ohohheart/Tank/IMG_2126.jpg" height="510" width="680">
<img src="http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f239/ohohheart/Tank/IMG_2123.jpg" height="510" width="680">

Any ideas?

 

[jmacc702]

Any updates on your tank? How is it doing?

 

[heranatomy]

Any updates on your tank? How is it doing?

It's doing good! Nothing crazy happened yet, so we're good...

I never owned an AIO before. There is a glass lid on the BioCube HQI that I use to help with evaporation and jumpers.
I'm thinking that my evaporation was great!! I hardly had any!! The level in my tank was consistent. Until I started hearing strange noises from the back... I peeked back there and chamber 2 and 3 were pretty low!!! There is a viewing water level of chamber 3 on the side...but I didn't pay attention. I learned my lesson! My salinity was about 40 ppm, but luckily that was when I only had only a couple snails and hermits in there!!

I've added a few frags and got my bigger clean up crew from ReefCleaners. I must have received 100s of snails!! I think I only ordered 15-20!

So everything is going nicely!

I do have a question for the community though... I dip all my frags in Revive before placing them in my tank. I also inspect them carefully before and after the dip.

Recently, I found 1 frag that has 2 tiny aiptasia growing on it. Since the frag is still in my sandbed, growing out a little...what can I do to remove it? I own Aiptasia X and have used it with great success in the past.

I did add a cleaner shrimp recently. Also, there are only 2 aiptasia-- so a peppermint shrimp isn't really an option to me. No point for 2 aiptasia.

However, the aiptasia seems to be attached directly on my paly "stem". I'm nervous about using Aiptasia X near my wonderful new frag. Does anyone have any recommendations on removing it? I can definitely take the frag out of the display for aiptasia killing purposes if that helps...

Here's a pic: <a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f239/ohohheart/Tank/aiptasia.png" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
One aiptasia is on the frag disk on the left of the frag and the other is obviously right on my paly lol.