New setup! give me your feedback

[Teleostei]

Hi all,

Just purchased a 29 biocube full setup from craigslist and set it up a few days ago. running for over a year and then the guy had to move. i got it all for a steal and it came with some pretty nice stuff. Its got some frogspawn, nephthea tree coral, kryptonite candy cane, assorted zoanthids and a few mushrooms. i also bought a birdsnest frag.

Here's a fts:

I'm loving it so far. The stock PC lighting has been stripped out and two ecoxotic LED modules put in with inline dimmers. There's a 445/magenta strip and a blue/10000k i believe? white at least, not sure the exact rating.

Right now its gorgeous, but it may still be a little blue for my taste..was thinking of maybe getting a third module in the near future but all 10000K white and get a dimmer so i can adjust it, just to add more white to the tank? and support more sps in the future if i decide to go that route. what do people think??

 

[Teleostei]

pictures dont capture the colors and the light well and dont do it justice..

but anyways, here's some of the coral. most everything has looked great. some of the zoanthids arent opening up much but we'll see.

i have a couple more questions too.. for flow, i've just got the return and i have a koralia nano set on a timer to go on/off every hour. i was trying to create some intermittent flow but wasnt sure the best interval to create this. i can make it as frequent as every 15 minutes, but wasn't sure..im also wondering how this would affect the lifetime of the powerhead? is this enough flow for the tank? it seems like a lot as it is..

also, does this amount of lighting/flow seem adequate for the birdsnest? it was under similar LED lighting at the lfs. most of the polyps are extended although not all of them. also, what type of birdsnest is this? i thought it was green, but its not as rounded as most of the pictures im seeing.

Thanks!

 

[ireef2012]

Man that was a great pick!!! Tank looks great and stuff seems to be flourishing... If he was having success then why change it?

 

[dinthbrgh]

great way to get a start! congrats! that being said...looks like you've got some aptaisia in there, and is that mojano top left? if so, you want to get a grip on that real quick...looks like it's got a firm foothold. good luck to you. i had a guy try to sell me his complete 36g setup for $350 the day after Christmas. but when he couldn't even tell me what type of T lighting he had, i quickly declined.

 

[Teleostei]

do you mean the little yellow guys on the bottom? im pretty sure they're not aiptasia. they're pretty bright yellow and only confined to the two frag rocks they're on.

 

[Teleostei]

as for the top left, not quite sure which thing you're looking at but there's frogspawn up there. no mojano anemones as far as i can tell.

 

[dinthbrgh]

must be the frogspawn. pretty nice growth of it! it's a little hard to tell by the pic. looks pretty good!

 

[biocube14g]

Was he referring the the frags of Duncan at the bottom left and right?

 

[ACBlinky]

Looks like you got a great deal, and you've got some lovely frags! I don't see any pest anemones at all -- the yellow polyps are... well, yellow polyps. Parazoanthus, I believe.

You asked about flow. It looks like right now, the rocks are basically piled on top of one another (the 'rock pile' look, as it were). Nothing really wrong with it, but it does tend to allow detritus to build up in low-flow areas between the rocks. If you used some epoxy to stick the rocks together, you might be able to come up with something more open that would allow for better flow overall, and more nooks and crannies for fish & corals.

To randomize flow, it can help to bounce it off tank walls, rock structures, and opposing powerheads/returns. I have three pumps in my display, all are aimed slightly upward to disturb the surface, but also pointed towards a tank wall and another powerhead/return. The flow is quite random, but it took ages to get it just right.

 

[Teleostei]

yeah, its hard to tell in the pic but there's kind of an arch that was created over the center of the tank. this setup was really an upgrade from the tank i had for my short bigeye that i collected a couple summers ago, so i wanted to center the aquascape around making a nice big cave for him. i had it near perfect the first time around, but when i discovered ich on a sixline wrasse that came with the setup (man was i ****ed) i had to tear it down to get him out and as long as i tried i couldnt quite get it back the way i had it at first.
im going to keep playing with it, im sure, and i might use epoxy to get things to stay where i want them. i just recently bought a tube at home depot, but i do want to make sure its reef safe first... its called JB waterweld, and it says thats its guaranteed drinking water safe and good for use on potable water tanks, so im assuming this stuff is okay for the tank.

thanks for the tips for the flow, im probably going to keep working on that too. is it a good idea to keep the koralia nano on a timer to give it some sort of randomization? is every hour okay for this or should i use a differently interval? does it really matter?

 

[ACBlinky]

I don't use a wavemaker/timer on my pumps, but many folks do. I think it depends on the tank, the rockwork, the corals... If you're using circulation pumps (Koralias, etc.) they're great, but if you had a traditional powerhead set up I'd never recommend it -- I can only imagine what might happen to a critter settled on the intake (or even outflow) of a powerhead that was off, if it suddenly turned on!

I'd try just using the 'bouncing' technique first. You'll be surprised at how much random movement you can achieve just by aiming two pumps at each other. Try putting one on a 45* angle to the center of the front glass, the other on a 30* angle, and have the flows intersect so the entire thing forms a sort of y shape (from above). If both pumps are also angled slightly upward, the surface will ripple, but you'll get a good enough downflow to clear detritus off the sand. It's very hard to explain, but if you play around with it you'll start to get a feel for it.

 

[Teleostei]

thanks for the tips! definitely have a lot to play around with. i have another koralia that came with the setup as well, but its much larger and bulkier and really detracted from the tank so i took it out (i dont remember the exact model, but bigger than the nano. 750 maybe?). i feel as though there's a lot of flow as it is but should i put that one back? maybe have the koralias alternate turning on? that might create some kind of wave effect...

how does the birdsnest look? its my first sps and i want to make it happy. also, is the thin branching shape of it just due to the environment it was in before? maybe higher flow so it didn't grow as densely packed and rounded? or is it a different kind altogether and not just green birdsnest?

one last thing...the only test kit the setup came with was some API dip strips...since i know these are not typically very accurate im probably going to invest in some new test kits. i know Salifert has a good rep for their kits, but they're also $30 a piece, and obviously i'd need quite a few.. (at least ammonia, probably nitrite and nitrate, calcium, alk, phosphate? thats a pretty penny...). are there any alternatives to this? any other brands of test kits that arent priced so steeply? i want something accurate but cant spend over $100 on test kits right now..

 

[Teleostei]

So just a quick update...

everything seems to be doing well and thriving! the birdsnest is looking great from what i can tell. awesome polyp extension and it even looks fuzzier now. i fed the tank a little mysis last night and most all of the lps seemed to eat happily. the candy cane kryptonite and the duncans quickly engulfed some pieces. do frogspawn consume larger pieces of food like mysis or chopped shrimp? i figure they do like many other LPS and they quickly grabbed and held on to a few mysids, but i never noticed if they actually ingested them.

i got a few new additions as well...got a little blue chalice with green mouths. after lights out, he extended his feeding tentacles so i gave him some mysis too.
i bought a small piece of GSP but they're refusing to come out of hiding. they came out shortly after introduction to the tank, but quickly closed up and have been that way for a couple days. hoping they come around as i know they can be picky about changes in their environment but are hardy as hell.

also, i installed the aquaticlife 115 skimmer into the first chamber in the back. in the process i found a huge flat worm! im thinking it was a species in the genus Pericelis. knowing they're quite predatory, i removed him... anyway, im finding a lot is flowing into the skimmate box regardless of how i adjust the flow dial. is this just part of the breaking in period of the skimmer?

anyway, here's some crappy pictures of the chalice (bear with me, taken with my phone). this was after the lights went out and when he extended his tentacles. you can see the mysis shrimp he held onto for a while. can they eat larger foods like that too? or do they prefer smaller far like cyclopeeze or brine shrimp? i never actually saw if he ingested it, he just held it for a while.

 

[Teleostei]

bump...anyone have answers to my questions?

 

[SKurj]

The new skimmer may do that when new, raise the cup as high as you can, and reduce the air while it breaks in.