Soulpatch's build thread (ongoing)

Nice plans for the 180. I'll be excited to see how that goes.

Thanks for your perspective on the lights. The radion is just a bit too much of a premium for me when there are awesome competitors out there that are at least as good, except for the web interface. I definitely see the appeal of just "doing it once and doing it right" though.

I'm going to be leaving my hood on mine to keep evaporation down, keep fish from jumping, and because I like the clean, compact look. I know I can probably retrofit almost any if not all of the available LED fixtures into the hood, so I'll probably leave it. I've been pleasantly surprised with what I can fit into the back of my biocube without having to modify the hood.

I can definitely see where you can turn the nano into a Frankenstein monster with all of the auto dosers/topoffs and wiring and HOB parts. I know I wouldn't do HOB in a nano again, especially with how happy I am with my current skimmer (Aquaticlife 115), and I have done HOB in my old 24g since there really weren't any nano skimmers and retrofit kits were in their infancy for nanocubes back then.

Either way, I look forward to seeing how your tank progresses, and your new tank if/when that happens. I know if I didn't live in a small apartment in NYC I would definitely have gone with a much larger tank setup. Best of luck!
 
oh I got the OK from the wife so the large tank is happening. It needs to wait till after track season though so I have time to mess with it. I will start aquiring parts for it this summer and start the build in October most likely. My cube will then be a grow out tank with a few of the inhabitants staying in there like my court jester goby and blenny.

The only reason I would have gone for the radion is for the adjustability though for cost savings I would have given a good look at the rapid led onyx system as well.

I have a tunze 9001 sitting in my stand since it never really worked for me hence driving me to the HOB skimmer. If not for the aquamaxx I could have left my hood alone for the most part. With everything in the rear open I lose about a gallon a day to evap. Not too bad. I imagine going full open top would have cost me an additional 1/5 gal tops.

I love my cube since i have it now but if I were to do it all over again I would have just done a small drilled tank with a seperate sump. that said the learning I have mad thus far with this tank will make the 180 much better...
 
pics you were asking for

pics you were asking for

finally got some pics for you
 

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So I did some general maintenance this past weekend now that I have a working water station again:

BRS RODI unit



My RODI bucket with float valve, heater, and pump. I use this to mix salt at times like this weekend when doing large changes on both tanks. Since I have such small tanks I merely fill up gallon jugs for fresh RODI for my top off container. The Brute is drained and cleaned with RODI between all water changes so as to not have any gunk or such happen. Water can be made and stored for up to 2 days though.



My QT tank needs less water and is currently at a different salinity then my DT so I am mixing a bit more salt in for them.



Here is the QR:



Extra heater during water change as my water was not perfectly at temp yet (75) so this brought it up nicely.



FTS:





Some top down pics:





Note that in those 2 pics above my bryopsis was covering the entire top. It is basically gone at this point save for 3 rocks that have a slight bit left. My crabs are munching on it so I have held back from another peroxide treatment at this point to see if the CUC and my chemical filtration can handle it.
 
Daddy's little helper with the water changes:





A bit closer FTS forgive the water as this was right after topping off and as such stuff was in the water column from the change aqnd dumping water in:





A keen eye who has been following will see the yellow leather on the front middle and that I have moved the one hammer onto the rock to form a hammer,hammer,frogspawn rock. I do have a second acan in the tank on the far right but he was ****ed about the water change and not open for the pics.

I will be feeding the corals tonight so will attempt to get some better pics of the acans.


I will not start to update this thread with my test results starting tonight. Now that I am no longer heavily dosing Tech M mag I need to check in on my calc and alk levels for the corals. I will be testing manually this week each day and dosing to get up to optimal levels. My dosing pumps will be here on Thursday so I hope to be up to proper levels by then so that I can do minimal dosing each day.
 
I am a bit surprised at the lack of growth from my hairy mushroom but my LPS has been growing decently. My polyps are already twice the size of the tiny frags that I got.

I need to get my numbers in check though as I want to put some planets, acros, and other SPS in the tank. I have been building for that level and now need to finalize my params to be willing to jump off that ledge to spend the money.
 
Hey there, just seen your thread and that you are running the aquamaxx hob-1, I have the same one and couldnt help but notice your collection up sits super low, do you skim wet or is that the only spot you get skimmate?

Also how often are you having to clean the cup, I have my cup set pretty high and it skims some dark green gunk, but not a terrible ammount, I have a pretty high bio load in my cube and was just wondering if this thing is just awesome at skimming and there isent much left to skim out or if I need to lower my cup.
 
I have almost no bioload at the moment and I carbon dose so do not have much skimmate right now. After my peroxide dip I had it at highest setting and was still skimming wet since there was a ton of organics in the water.

Right now I skim wet and empty daily. With wet skimming you would arguably get more gunk out of water but you do have to keep an eye on water levels.
 
So since my water change area in the backroom was lit by a single bulb it was a PITA to measure salinity or see eexatly what I was doing.

I had yesterday off so I went to Lowes and put up 2 strip lights in the utility room. One in my tool area where my tool chest/storage racks are and one at the laundry/utility sink/fish water area. Glad that I did. Makes a HUGE difference


Also VERY glad I had the float valve on my RODI bucket as I fell asleep yesterday then went to park for daddy/daughter play date while making water. Normally not an issue with my old unit as it would only do 50 gallons a day but the new BRS unit does 150. My float valve is set to roughly 28 gallons in the Brute bin. While at the park the thought that I had turned on the water hit mid swing push with my daughter.

I dont think she was happy to be yanked off the swing set and thrown in the carseat for a FAST drive home with panic in my eyes. I expected 20+ gallons to be on the floor but the float valve worked perfectly and shut down the RODI and kept the floors dry.

If you dont have a float valve get one as we will ALL lose track of time or forget we had the water on at some point.
 
Yea, a float valve is a must for those large volume refills.

I don't have any area to do my fills, so I run the RO/DI from the sink into a 5g bucket into the shower. If I forget to check the water (which hasn't happened yet; once I knowingly ignored it since I was busy with something else and it overflowed), no big loss, just some wasted water.

This is my first time actually using large volumes of RO/DI. I used to always use NSW from the LFS for the quarterly water changes, and did topoff from a drinking tap 1.5g reservoir, so pretty easy.

Good timing for a reminder though for auto shutoffs! I wonder if it's worth setting a watch/phone timer for bucket-fill ETA going forward?
 
I will probably set my phone to 3 hours when filling for water change. That gives me roughly 18 gallons of water which is plenty for the cube and qt tank changes with water left over for the cleaning of the ATO container.

When topping off the ATO during the week I just put the bucket in the utility sink so overflows are also of no concern for me for that task.

Though I will say it was a nice test of both the float valve and the auto shutoff from the RODI unit. Nice to know things worked though I would have preferred to have known I was testing them and had been there instead of the panic drive home.
 
So my early birthday present comes today. The wife ordered me in the gyre 130 so I am excited to throw that in the tank and get it dialed in.

I have talked to my LFS about ordering me in a nice small brain to grow out in my tank. I am waiting till his shipments come in tomorrow to see what he got. I have a couple acros on hold with him as well as some multi color ricordea that should be in the tank this weekend.

I do need to spot treat 2 rocks for bryopsis that were not dipped before this weekend in my water change but the tank has been pretty stable. I will add some more CUC when I pick up the corals this weekend as my snail population is pretty light.
 
Cabo2008 said:
Ha! You'll like it
Click to expand...

Well I threw it in the tank tonight and overfed the tank to see where everything would go and what deadspots I would get. I saw one so I pointed my RW4 at that spot to help keep things moving.


This weekend I plan on picking up my corals and some new cleanup crew. I will post pics on Sunday when I get them in and clean up the tank...
 
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