My 70gal almost-cube rimless tank (Soon to be SPS Dominated)

[shandy_say]

amazing tank bro! did marlon put braces on the corners or is it black silicon?

Thanks bro! Its just silicon. Tank is rimless and no braces.

Water got kinda cloudy with all the algae growth plus a whole lot of pods swimming around. The algae went sexual on me i think. Hopefully it will clear up when the algae die off.

 

[EvMiBo]

Looking forward to the next picture. What's your plan after the 3 months is up? I can't remember if you mentioned this already.

 

[kenhuang6269]

looking very good,stucking here to see it progress...

 

[shandy_say]

Looking forward to the next picture. What's your plan after the 3 months is up? I can't remember if you mentioned this already.

After the 3 months are up will start running Phosban, skimmer, and carbon. Will also manually remove the algae and add some clean up crews like astrea snails and nassarius snails. Will also add some cheato and hope that the system has enough denitrification base built up already. hehe!

 

[shandy_say]

looking very good,stucking here to see it progress...

Thanks! Hope I can get it to look as nice as many of the sps tanks here in RC.

 

[shandy_say]

5th Stage

 

[mnellis3023]

very interesting....I will be following along!

 

[EvMiBo]

The algae is taking off. The water clearity looks better now. How long until 3 months has been up? Please continue to take pictures every so often.

I've only been in the hobby for a year, I started my first tank cycle with a raw shrimp as well. But like many people have suggested, I took it out shortly after I began to see nitrates rising.. I never had really big algae problems, but the tank was only up for 6 months so who knows. When I know I'll be living somewhere for more than a couple years I think I may give this a shot, I like the idea of having a more consistant and algae free tank because of it.

 

[imarkspeed]

wow i think u need a lot of clean up crew and throw in more rock so u dont have this cycle happen again . and clean out most of it . nice setup btw

 

[shandy_say]

The algae is taking off. The water clearity looks better now. How long until 3 months has been up? Please continue to take pictures every so often.

I've only been in the hobby for a year, I started my first tank cycle with a raw shrimp as well. But like many people have suggested, I took it out shortly after I began to see nitrates rising.. I never had really big algae problems, but the tank was only up for 6 months so who knows. When I know I'll be living somewhere for more than a couple years I think I may give this a shot, I like the idea of having a more consistant and algae free tank because of it.

Yeah water clarity is a whole lot better now but still a little hazy. Hopefully it will clear up once the CUC is in and I manually remove some of the algae. Plus I haven't been running the skimmer yet and I hope that helps remove the floating particles. Tank is now at the 10th week of cycling. Only 19 days to go till the end of the 12 weeks. This is actually the 1st time ive tried the shrimp method too. Hopefully I won't have any problems with algae when I start putting in LS.

 

[shandy_say]

wow i think u need a lot of clean up crew and throw in more rock so u dont have this cycle happen again . and clean out most of it . nice setup btw

Thanks! Yeah I do need a lot of CUC's to clean out the algae. Planning to put like 20 astrea snails and 20 nassarius snails. Will reduce the number of CUC once the mess has cleared up already. As for the rocks, most of it is in my sump. Going minimal scaping in this tank so i setup a dsb with a lot of LR's in the sump for nitrate control.

 

[flying_dutchman]

How many "stages" are there?

 

[shandy_say]

How many "stages" are there?

Well supposedly there is one last stage after the red cyano stage. The last stage is the Black Cyano stage.

 

[finch6013]

I am planning a tank with the same dimensions. Nice work so far

 

[shandy_say]

Thanks! 2 weeks left to go!

 

[cobra2326]

After the 3 months are up will start running Phosban, skimmer, and carbon. Will also manually remove the algae and add some clean up crews like astrea snails and nassarius snails. Will also add some cheato and hope that the system has enough denitrification base built up already. hehe!

An interesting piece of anecdotal thought I've heard is that running phosban will cause your system to become dependant on it. If it's ever removed, algae could easily gain a hold. It seems to make sense as bacteria can and do process phosphate. If your system has excess phosphate during cycling, the bacterial 'base' you've been referring to could build up to process it and outcompete the algae.

Granted, eventhing above is unproven, so take it with a grain of salt. It's something to think about, especially since you're taking the natural approach.

 

[shandy_say]

An interesting piece of anecdotal thought I've heard is that running phosban will cause your system to become dependant on it. If it's ever removed, algae could easily gain a hold. It seems to make sense as bacteria can and do process phosphate. If your system has excess phosphate during cycling, the bacterial 'base' you've been referring to could build up to process it and outcompete the algae.

Granted, eventhing above is unproven, so take it with a grain of salt. It's something to think about, especially since you're taking the natural approach.

Well will be using cheato primarily to eat up the phosphate and nitrates in the tank. Regular pruning of cheato will help in the removal of these unwanted nutrients. However, in case that the cheato does not have enough capacity to take out all the phosphates, then that is when I need to use some rowaphos or phosban to remove the excess phosphates in the tank. Right now I haven't actually added any phosban to the tank yet since its still cycling. However once I start adding livestocks (especially fish) im sure that phosphates will eventually creep up.

May I just ask what do you think I should do? Do you think I shouldn't add phosban or any phosphate binding media?

 

[shandy_say]

Tank is now on the 11th week of cycling. Only 10 days to go!

Water parameters:
Nitrates - 5ppm
Phosphates - 0.5ppm

Added a small ball of cheato last night in the fuge to help eat up the nutrients.

Researching now if I can dose mb7 to the tank even with a dsb fuge.

 

[EvMiBo]

I think with that much algae the phosphate level has to be through the roof (the algae consumes most of it from my understanding). I can't see chaeto alone pulling it all out. I think you said you may try a phosphate reactor with gfo though. I'm really interested in seeing the removal process of all the algae, it just seems like the only way to put a huge dent in it in a short period of time will be removing it manually.

 

[shandy_say]

Will pull out the algae in a couple of days. But hoping that the remaining no3 and po4 will be absorbed by the cheato to bring it down to 0.