Mike's 158g Rimless Glass Box Build
- Thread starter Mike.B
- Start date
Mike.B
New member
Adding water and sand.
The front silicone edge of the tank is my only complaint. For some reason they are not consistent from one side to another or just solid black. Not much I can do at this point. I have been told that structurally it is ok. If anyone has any ideas let me know.
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Mike.B
New member
Aquascaping.
As of this morning.
Tonight I plan on transferring the livestock from the refugium tank upstairs. I also still need to mount the power supplies for the Vortech’s. Once everything looks good and I get the equipment tuned to the complete setup I will start adding more fish and corals.
As of this morning.
Tonight I plan on transferring the livestock from the refugium tank upstairs. I also still need to mount the power supplies for the Vortech’s. Once everything looks good and I get the equipment tuned to the complete setup I will start adding more fish and corals.
Mike.B
New member
Some pictures from last night. I had to pretty much remove everything from the refugium tank to catch all the fish, but they are all in the DT now. Vortech's are mounted upstairs and only a few things are left to do downstairs. I had to add a heater for the extra volume of water.
I am debating on running my 1st Gen Vortech in the refugium tank on the lowest speed or not to keep it from becoming a debris trap and then using eggcrate to section off chaeto. I was also thinking of leaving some snails in there to manage the algae. What do you guys think?
After everything was added.
I am debating on running my 1st Gen Vortech in the refugium tank on the lowest speed or not to keep it from becoming a debris trap and then using eggcrate to section off chaeto. I was also thinking of leaving some snails in there to manage the algae. What do you guys think?
After everything was added.
Mike.B
New member
Update: I moved all the fish successfully to the new tank upstairs. Everything was going good until we found a clownfish on the floor dried out one morning. A trip to my LFS and a Red Sea DIY net cover and that won’t happen again.
After having good success with short untreated observation quarantine periods my luck seems to have run out. I introduced a yellow tang who I thought was disease free. I had my suspicious (light white specs only on pectoral fins) about this fish but didn’t have Cupramine or Prazi on hand so I just left him. A few weeks passed and he looked good as the specs had faded. After introducing him, my royal gramma started looking beat up the next day but also rubbing on rocks. By day 2 he looked worse and rubbing more. At this point I figured there was a good chance something was in the tank from either the tang or the stress the tang had brought upon the other fish as he was the first semi-aggressive fish. Since I hadn’t treated any of the fish before introducing them it could have been either.
Going forward the only way to ensure my tank was disease free was to leave it for 8 weeks in fallow. This also meant I needed a new quarantine setup. The current one was small and very difficult to do any work or even add/remove fish. I quickly set up a couple of new 40g quarantine tanks and used mostly water from display to fill. I took rock I was confident I wouldn’t be using in the DT (well definitely not now) to make sure I didn’t have an ammonia spike.
Overall, I am happy the way these turned out and they will be now used every time I get a new fish. I will be treating Cupramine and Prazi for 4 weeks before anything enters the DT.
Catching all my fish was a nightmare, it was difficult and stressful for them. I had to remove nearly all my rocks, even the ones in the picture below besides the large one on the left.
After having the tank now set up for a couple months I realized that the aquascape I had didn’t allow for coral growth in the future. Even placing a few frags was difficult with some of the shadows I had. Here is the new aquascape. I am much happier with this. There is almost no room for detritus to build up and leaves lots of good space for coral placement. The only concern I have is places for the fish to sleep.
I did move a couple pieces of GSP up in the sand to give it some color. I am hoping by placing on the sand they will be easy to control and cut back as needed. I have no intentions of moving these anywhere near the aquascaping or glass.
After having good success with short untreated observation quarantine periods my luck seems to have run out. I introduced a yellow tang who I thought was disease free. I had my suspicious (light white specs only on pectoral fins) about this fish but didn’t have Cupramine or Prazi on hand so I just left him. A few weeks passed and he looked good as the specs had faded. After introducing him, my royal gramma started looking beat up the next day but also rubbing on rocks. By day 2 he looked worse and rubbing more. At this point I figured there was a good chance something was in the tank from either the tang or the stress the tang had brought upon the other fish as he was the first semi-aggressive fish. Since I hadn’t treated any of the fish before introducing them it could have been either.
Going forward the only way to ensure my tank was disease free was to leave it for 8 weeks in fallow. This also meant I needed a new quarantine setup. The current one was small and very difficult to do any work or even add/remove fish. I quickly set up a couple of new 40g quarantine tanks and used mostly water from display to fill. I took rock I was confident I wouldn’t be using in the DT (well definitely not now) to make sure I didn’t have an ammonia spike.
Overall, I am happy the way these turned out and they will be now used every time I get a new fish. I will be treating Cupramine and Prazi for 4 weeks before anything enters the DT.
Catching all my fish was a nightmare, it was difficult and stressful for them. I had to remove nearly all my rocks, even the ones in the picture below besides the large one on the left.
After having the tank now set up for a couple months I realized that the aquascape I had didn’t allow for coral growth in the future. Even placing a few frags was difficult with some of the shadows I had. Here is the new aquascape. I am much happier with this. There is almost no room for detritus to build up and leaves lots of good space for coral placement. The only concern I have is places for the fish to sleep.
I did move a couple pieces of GSP up in the sand to give it some color. I am hoping by placing on the sand they will be easy to control and cut back as needed. I have no intentions of moving these anywhere near the aquascaping or glass.
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Mike.B
New member
Yep, agreed! It definitely wasn't fun as it was happening, but knowing that going forward I can properly treat everything it is unlikely to happen again. Some things I guess you gotta learn the hard way. You're right, early in this tanks life so better now than later.
