My Aquaforest cube, just the way I like it!

[sbeason]

Sorry to hear about your recent troubles. One thing I see in one of your pictures is a metal wing nut on your ATO float. For sure, I would get that thing replaced by a plastic one. It appears it has already started to rust. It is hard to tell if it actually comes in contact with your water or not.

 

[biecacka]

Yeah I have read to let it run for a moment as well. That way we clear out our membranes and filters of any water that might have sat in there since last use.

Corey

 

[Piper27]

Yea my auto flush kit runs water for a min before it kicks water through the pipe into the ato, I would guess that's the same thing. The metal wing nut doesn't come in contact with the water, also it shouldn't cause any problems as long as I keep an eye on it. Rust from a magnet would be different than stainless. Plus I wouldn't trust a plastic nut on a float valve that holds water back from flooding the floor.

I am also going to replace my supply line to the ato because it could have bacteria built up from forgetting to shut off the rodi water and having the float go up and down without running a lot of water at each fill.

 

[Piper27]

By the way I appreciate you guys helping out and giving advice

 

[codydemmel4]

we need an update

 

[Piper27]

Sure thing, I will update in a bit. For now the butterfly is doing great along with all the other tanks and fish. The rodi situation was fixed and things have been good. I finally hooked up the calcium reactor, the comp123 was way to expensive and I wasn't getting any different results from it. Still using some additives from AF though.
I finally got the 8' holding tank going good and have been getting a LOT of nice wild and mariculture stuff. I am going to add a lot of new pieces to the cube too. I will be keeping my favorites from each box of acropora I get since it's been rediculously hard to find ANY good acros around here, and even on the internet. Everything's crazy expensive and the species are not much to choose from.

 

[Piper27]

I am also thinking about adding a bead filter to my filtration in order to catch detritus and bacterial mass and flush it out easily. I have heard they will cause nitrates to rise but I am hoping with a good flushing routine that won't happen, or at least they won't rise much. Detritus and floating particles have been a real annoyance to me visually as well as a nuisance to my corals because it collects in them easily. Also hoping this will help me keep a constant small water change routine going since that is one thing I slack on at times.
Any thoughts on this or experiences?
Also I figured cleaning the beads and filter with muratic acid will be enough to clean whatever pond water and junk is left on them. I am not sure if new beads would be needed or if a certain size should be used.
I will post pictures after I mount the new acros in my display and will take a few of the colonies i have been bringing in that I keep in my holding tank.

 

[Piper27]

Well I have not got much advice on using a bead filter anywhere. I just want one person who has tried it to tell me it causes very high nitrates even when flushed often. I have had one guy with no experience using one before on saltwater tell me it will be detrimental to the sps in my tank because of high nitrates. But I am not convinced it will cause a problem with frequent flushing. Anyways the detritus is already in my tank breaking down somewhere, why not give it a place to get flushed out as well as a place for bacterial mass to do the same? It's an off the wall idea but that's how tired of having debree filled water I have become

So I have been working on my 8' stock tank more than anything recently. Growth has started up good again in most corals but I lost a few and got rid of a few corals I wasn't to fond of. I will be slowly replacing all these colonies from my stock tank upstairs whenever I see something come in that intrigues me. I will get pics of both tanks today. Maybe even our zoanthid tank.
I did make plans on taking the t5 fixture off the right side of my stock tank too, which will be replaced by halides which I have better luck with growing frags out using them. The 4' ATI is coloring up wild and maricultured pieces pretty well so far but if I get the chance I am going to go all halides.
It's been a lot of work keeping so many freshly imported acropora colonies but it seems to be working out good. I will say opening my own boxes full of acros is an amazing feeling, and the smell of corals just makes me happy. I have to check them daily for multiple reasons but it is very fun for me so I don't mind. I am still on the fence about what my overall goal with the 8' tank will be though. Thought about growing them out to provide frags for hobbiests but I want to keep getting things in so I can try and collect what I consider nicer acros.
I did add two more reefbrites to the cube so there is four total, one for each side facing the middle of the tank. I am hoping to get nice even coloration by doing this. Took the t5s off because 4 bulbs wasn't even showing through the two 400w halides. Which I need to change the bulbs out on. And get new ballasts but I don't know which ones yet and would rather get some cheap used ones lightly used instead of paying so much for new ones.

Any advice or suggestions are welcome

 

[Piper27]

Took some quick photos with my phone of all the tanks.

This is my wife's zoanthid tank with a couple mushrooms and lps mixed in there. There is about 15 fish in there right now and a few of my favorite non sps including our space invader colony, litho plate colony and some bounce shrooms.

I made room for some of my favorite stuff to move over to my display so here it is before I add more corals. I also switched to 10k bulbs which make it very hard to see since they are so bright. I am hoping they help things grow in a bit.

This is my frag tank I keep upstairs where I keep all my wild and maricultured acros. I am switching the right side to halides soon to give a little more options for certain corals. Things are just starting to color up from the stress of shiping in the winter.

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[Piper27]

I tried to think of the fish I had in each tank so here is what I saw when I looked. I am sure there are a few hiding I can't remember. I have removed a lot of big fish from the coral holding tank and my tank a few months ago thankfully.

In the 150 gallon cube display...

Yellow tang
Square tail kole tang
Sailfin tang
Ebli mimic tang
2 - male bartlett anthias
2 - female bartlett anthias
3 - black bar chromis
Filefish
Tinkeri Butterflyfish
Flame angel
2 - Bellus angel
Emperator angel
2 - blue eyed Cardinals
4 - big pj cardinals
2 - bengaii cardinals
Mystery wrasse

Wife's zoanthid tank... 3' long 18" tall 20"wide rimless

Purple Tang
Yellow Scopas Tang
Yellow eye kole tang
Indonesian Leopard wrasse
Potters Leopard Wrasse
Yellow Coris wrasse
Nako Fairy wrasse
Lined Dartfish Goby
Bicolor blenny
Lawnmower blenny
Paired scarlet red scooter dragonets.
Chromis
Platinum clownfish
Black and white clownfish
Blackcap basslet

Coral holding tank... 8' long 12" tall 18" wide

Convict tang
Yellow eye kole tang
Hoeven's wrasse
Scarlett pinstripe wrasse

I also put two 250w radium's back on the tank. The 10k were too yellow. I used to suppliment with t5 bulbs which I actually could stand but the blue LEDs alone weren't pushing through. I removed the four t5s I had on the tank because they were not adding much par, just color.
I finally moved over the corals I have been planning to add and also pulled some frags that have been sitting idle for a long time. I got tired of looking at them and am hoping the different light and tank will give them a boost.
A friend hooked me up with some nice halide fixtures to replace one of the t5 fixtures on my coral tank. Me and a friend have to rewire them and I can't wait to see what they can do.

 

[Piper27]

Here is some of the wild figi stuff I added to the display recently. There was a good crab in every acro. I pulled them off to wash the coral and placed them back when I was done. There was one crab that wasn't a bandit and was very small which was cool looking. Here are some pics. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the other stuff when I added it. I will get a new front tank shot today. I also lowered the light fixture since I switched back to 250w bulbs.

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[Piper27]

My phone just does not capture the colors well but it's all I got for now. Here are a few quick pics. Ignore the bubble algae, when the foxface got pulled it certainly didn't.

This red one that's not looking hot came in giving me high hopes. It had a red base with blue tips and yellow tips. It's starting to color back up under the halides finally. I have a pic of when it first came in I will try and get.

This last one I hope makes it. This stag is my favorite but it started to rtn last week and I had to super glue it. So now it's turning a little green. It was blue with red polyps that really stood out. Very sad, but I have my hopes up. Now that I showed a pic it's going to die... That's my luck.

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[Piper27]

Hard to get clear pics with my camera but better than nothing.

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[Piper27]

I found some old pictures of some of the tanks we have had in the past. I will post a few and then take a quick picture of this tank with everything added.

 

[Piper27]

This is what I had in my wife's zoanthid tank before the system crashed.


This is our first large reef, it was a 7' oceanic.


Three pics shot from the same reef each at different points in time.




This was my wife's shallow zoanthid tank I built her with a closed loop on the bottom. Cycling in this picture with our emperator in there growing while the tank cycled. It was the size of a quarter when we first got it. Kept in in there until it started changing.


Same tank being stocked. It eventually was covered in zoanthids, which I will have to find a pic of. The tank cracked on the bottom for some reason. Maybe the 9 holes I drilled


Brings back memories... I can't find the other ones we have had sadly. I will keep looking. I will take an updated shot of my tank when the phone charges.

 

[Piper27]

Here is a few shots of the tank fully stocked. Hopefully a future update will show decent growth.

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[Usernam Invalid]

Love it [emoji7]

 

[Piper27]

Just wanted to share a picture of a mat of sponge growing outside on one of the display tanks overflows, in the tank. There is so much sponge in this system it's really fun to watch them process water while they open and close their tubes. This sponge is about 5x3". The inside of the overflows are about halfway covered with sponge and in the display tanks there are a number of different kinds and colors.
You can see the amount of particulate in the water column in the picture as well. It's an eyesore even though I know it's a good thing that feeds smaller lifeforms in the tank.
If you have cool sponge in your tanks please share!

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[reefmutt]

Hey Paul, those last fts of the cube are really nice. The tank is looking great.
Did you go back to higher k bulbs from the 10k you were using earlier?
What's your current situation with nitrates? Still 5 ish ppm?
Which AF products are you using now?

 

[honkit]

Nice elevated scape and it's interesting to see a US based reefer collecting mostly wild and maricultured SPS corals instead of starting off with mostly frags. Keep us updated on your progress.