My Shallow Cube Build Thread

[cham]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13901643#post13901643 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by UrbanSage
If I make up a great story will it help my chances of receiving a frag?


The truth is that you told us earlier

Well look at there! lol

I just happened to see your thread and read/skimmed most of it. Awesome tank and amazing set up.

I'll never go back to "under tank" filtration if I can ever help it. I love the room that you & I both have to work with. Only had 2 or 3 bloody knuckles to date.

After looking at your beautiful yellow & blue/purple millis, we may have to work out a trade . Give mine another month or so to show its true colors and see what we have.

 

[cashman95]

dp

 

[cashman95]

Looks good Cham...sorry to see you give up the small Rimless though!

 

[cham]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13901896#post13901896 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by cashman95
Looks good Cham...sorry to see you give up the small Rimless though!

Hey cashman!
Thank you! Yes, the call of a bigger tank got to me. I filled my cube FULL of SPS in less than 2 months and I kept finding corals that I really wanted!

Your tank is looking awesome too.

 

[cham]

Couple new toys.

I bought a new light fixture because I wanted black and T5's.

I also bought a nano tank. I have some SPS corals and an anemone that are unique and very difficult to get. I want to set this up as a "lineage tank" to keep corals in a seperate system incase of major disater. It will also serve as a quarantine. I'm more than happy to have new arrivals give some small frags some AEFW's rather than my DT. I also ordered an aqua medic ATO system to top off and dose kalk.

Filtration area with two media chambers, I'm going to put carbon and gfo in them. A refugium with light and skimmer.

PC lights and 3 LED blue moon lights.

Skimmer

I like it so much I just ordered another one to be a new fish QT tank.

And the new fixture over the tank. Here I have two pink bulbs, pro color and UVL something or other. I think I'm going to change one out to a Giesmann 11k. I bought that and one extra ATI blue plus.

 

[cham]

Alright, I changed the T5's out a bit. I also have an ATI blue plus but since I'm running Phoenix MH's I'm not going to use it yet. I might put it to use later if I decide to go with a 10k bulb.

I like the Giesmann 11k and ATI pro color. I feel like I have the white, red/pink and blue spectrums covered.

 

[cham]

Forgot to mention that the nano is glass and not acrylic. Love that!

 

[cham]

I also changed the sump around a little. Changed the bulb in the MH pendant to a 20k to more closely match the phoenix's that are in my DT.

Also added a big air pump you see circled in red. It's hooked to my RK ph control and kicks on if the PH falls below 8.05 in the tank. It pumps alot of air to two air stones in the first chamber of my sump.

 

[cham]

I posted a thread about it but figured I'd put this in my build thread too. My trochus snails bred a few months ago and I'm now seeing the babies.

I just noticed the first one yesterday but I've since seen two more. Lord knows how many I have in my RDSB & sump area where I really can't see well.

I'm hearing that it is somewhat rare for Trochus snails to breed and have them survive.

Isn't he cute!

 

[ricefootball]

How do you like your return system (the two holes in the back of the tank vs. through the return)? I'm building a tank setup now that is similar. It's 26x22x22 setup for seahorses pirmarily. It's my daughters dream.

I'm thinking I'll do the gate valve drain approach in the overflow, and do the returns like you have done. Do you have any advice? Size of holes etc? I don't need a gigantic amount of flow for the horses so I was thinking about a 1" drain and two 1/2 inch returns plumbed to the back wall like yours.

Thoughts?

 

[cham]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14227040#post14227040 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ricefootball
How do you like your return system (the two holes in the back of the tank vs. through the return)? I'm building a tank setup now that is similar. It's 26x22x22 setup for seahorses pirmarily. It's my daughters dream.

I'm thinking I'll do the gate valve drain approach in the overflow, and do the returns like you have done. Do you have any advice? Size of holes etc? I don't need a gigantic amount of flow for the horses so I was thinking about a 1" drain and two 1/2 inch returns plumbed to the back wall like yours.

Thoughts?

Hey man.

There are three things to do to avoid that. First you can point your return heads in the tank towards the top like I do. Also you can install a check valve in the return lines. Lastly you can make a "loop" on your return line on the back wall of your tank that goes to or above the water line.

All these will prevent any overflow issues.

I HIGHLY recommend a back up emergency drain!

 

[cham]

Couple of updates.

As with all tanks I've had some setbacks. I had a piece of plumbing (my main drain to be exact) come apart. Luckily it did so as I looked at it and said "huh, that doesn't look right". I pulled on it gently and WOOOOSH. So I'm working on that.

I also seem to of imported some nasty strain of ich/virus/something or other that wipped out almost my entire tank's fish stock. I lost my PBT (that one hurt, I loved that fish), three clowns (almost the fourth one), several chromis, three AMAZING lyretails and a very very colorful super male and my midas.

I immediately QT'ed my fish with copper. I was able to save one clown and three large reef chromis & three small chromis.


I went and bought another nano to use as a new fish QT. It will stay here under my cabinet and be used to treat all incoming fish and as a hospital tank for injured fish.

And my sons nano in his room.

I also bought an aquamedic SP3000 dosing system with float switch to dose kalk and ATO my sons nano as I do plan on trying to keep SPS in this tank. I want a way for my most prized corals to have frag back ups incase of a dreaded tank crash.


Not all doom & gloom. My favorite tabling acro has really colored up. I wish the rest of my corals were coloring up so fast.

 

[melev]

Wow, those blue tips are awesome!!

Sorry about the fish losses. Maybe it is black ich, since you aren't seeing anything obvious. Did you ask in the Fish Disease forum?

 

[cham]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14249556#post14249556 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
Wow, those blue tips are awesome!!

Sorry about the fish losses. Maybe it is black ich, since you aren't seeing anything obvious. Did you ask in the Fish Disease forum?

Thanks Marc. Your tank & your work has been a big influence on my reefing. The tips are a nice blue but the ATI blue plus is really making it pop more than usual. I tried correcting the balance but it really washed the photo out.

I don't like posting photos that misrepresent colors. Here is one with flash that gives a perspective vs the "actinic shot". The coral is darker than this picture but somewhere in between the earlier photo and this one.

I did not post in the disease forum, not sure what I've got here but copper seems to be the cure.

Whats odd is that it was most brutal on my clowns. It really zapped them bad. My PBT held on fine for a long time and never showed stress other than ich like spots and she was eating like a PIG hours before death. I put in a nice piece of nori right before work and watched her tear it up, come home to a dead fish.
I transferred two clowns & chromis to QT and treated with copper. One clown had its fins slowly rotting away and ich like spots on it, the other just alot of ich like spots. After 24 hours the one with rotting fins died but the second clown has pulled through and after about 4 days I see no more spots on her.

Odly, my cleaner shrimp that I've had since day one also died yesterday. I never dreamed that I'd have to take a cleaner shrimp out of the DT but whatever it was it got her too.

Weird.

I'm leaving my tank empty for a month and dosing Zeovit AA's at full strenght (or a drop or two more) to keep the corals happy while I'm fishless.

 

[melev]

I'm not sure, but did you lose any other invertebrates? Perhaps the copper from the fish treatment got into the display.

 

[cham]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14251683#post14251683 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
I'm not sure, but did you lose any other invertebrates? Perhaps the copper from the fish treatment got into the display.

No, thats the only invert I lost. All my SPS and other corals are doing great. Crabs, cucumber etc are fine.

 

[ricefootball]

Cham,

I'm setting up the electrical, question for you. If you're putting together the plugs in your system, which pieces would you put on GFCI and which pieces would you put on a constant line plug? I'm trying to figure out that, and also which items to plug into the profilux 6 plug unit so that they can be controlled by the computer.

Any thoughts you have would really be appreciated. I'm trying to do something here I've never done and I know I'm going to miss something obvious.

Max

 

[cham]

I put everything on GFCI.

I like to contol my lighting, cooling fans & heater with my controller. Anything beyond that is up to you

 

[ricefootball]

Can you see any issue keeping the main return pump "non gfci" so that if something tripped at least it would still be going while your away?

 

[cham]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14413843#post14413843 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ricefootball
Can you see any issue keeping the main return pump "non gfci" so that if something tripped at least it would still be going while your away?

I wouldn't.

For extra safety I run on two seperate circuits. My skimmer, main return pump and filtration all run on one GFCI circuit and my power heads, lights run on another.

Just incase one GFI trips my tank will still circulate water.