T's Rescaped Custom Cube

tmantaylor18

tmantaylor18

Active member
This setup is about 1.5 years old now and is growing and healthy. I've been having some issues with pale corals and am working on that. I've also been "cooking" this huge rock I managed to zip tie and putty together to use in my aquarium. I cooked this rock for around 5 months and the phosphates weren't coming down fast enough so I decided to grab a phosban reactor, add the rock to my tank, and hope for the best.


Day 2 after having the new rock in the tank and the phosphates jumped up to .37. Not good at all. I added the phosban reactor the next day and took some results a few days later. After 3 days the phosphates are down to .1. Tested a day later and down to .09.

I will continue to test daily for phosphates to make sure Im not stripping them all out. So far I've noticed a few pieces of SPS are coloring up really quickly.


Having such a small footprint with this new setup is great. To get any detritus out all I have to do now is slide the main rock forward a little. This is where all of it builds up now.

I still need to glue down a few frags but other than that everything is looking good so far.

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tmantaylor18 said:
Thanks, its 24x24x14. I built it myself and am thinking about making a new one thats a few inches taller.
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Looks like you did a good job. For my next tank I am looking into the reef savvy overflows instead of an overflow box. It should help to give me more space in the tank and take away the detritus trap that my overflow as become. I really like how reef savvy has taken the bean animal and redesigned it slightly to make it better. I read that they are expensive though.
 
LOL! I just noticed you have a glass-holes overflow.

My bad. How do you like it? Can you get it silent? My Herbie overflow is dead silent but it requires 2 drilled holes.
 
cpllongjk said:
LOL! I just noticed you have a glass-holes overflow.

My bad. How do you like it? Can you get it silent? My Herbie overflow is dead silent but it requires 2 drilled holes.
Click to expand...


I'll have to check out reef savy next time.

My overflow now has been great, the only noise I get is from the water draining into the sump. No other issues to report.
 
tmantaylor18 said:
I'll have to check out reef savy next time.

My overflow now has been great, the only noise I get is from the water draining into the sump. No other issues to report.
Click to expand...

With a full siphon overflow, ie. herbie method and bean animal, you don't even hear the water draining in the sump. It is dead silent. You would love it and think "how could i possibly live without this?"
 
cpllongjk said:
With a full siphon overflow, ie. herbie method and bean animal, you don't even hear the water draining in the sump. It is dead silent. You would love it and think "how could i possibly live without this?"
Click to expand...

Yeah, definitely checking this out!

LoJack said:
Looks good. That RBTA looks pretty sick with your fancy schmancy clown in it
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Haha thanks, I really like that contrast of the white on the red too.
 
Going to be completely honest in this thread. The main rock I put together ended up leaching a ton of phosphates. I should have checked before putting it in my tank. I lost 50% of my SPS if not more.

I took the big rock out and did a big water change. I now have my old rock that i kept in my sump in the display. At this point I just want to keep my fish alive. Corals are easy to replace.

Anyone done a custom order from BRS? I want to order some live rock with some flat pieces to make a cool aquascape. I would of course cycle it for a while before adding it to my system. You guys have any pointers to adding newly cycled rock?
 
tmantaylor18 said:
Going to be completely honest in this thread. The main rock I put together ended up leaching a ton of phosphates. I should have checked before putting it in my tank. I lost 50% of my SPS if not more.

I took the big rock out and did a big water change. I now have my old rock that i kept in my sump in the display. At this point I just want to keep my fish alive. Corals are easy to replace.

Anyone done a custom order from BRS? I want to order some live rock with some flat pieces to make a cool aquascape. I would of course cycle it for a while before adding it to my system. You guys have any pointers to adding newly cycled rock?
Click to expand...

Sorry about the loss of the SPS. That sucks.

With regards to adding new rock to an established tank here is what I would do:

1. In a separate vat/tank place the rock with saltwater and add a skimmer if possible.

2. Measure PO4 levels and treat with Lanthanum Chloride until the levels reach 0.05 or thereabout. Dont dose any LC after a water change to see just how much is being leeched out. You want the rocks to leech no more than 0.05ppm or so.

3. Change 100% of the water weekly whilst treating with LC and make sure to swish the rocks hard to get any LC particles off the rocks.

4. Once the levels reach 0.05ppm etc, start treating with regular GFO. Once the levels reach that similar to your tank or around 0.03ppm you may transfer to your tank. If possible, you might want to place in the sump for a week or two just to get the bacteria colonised well on the rocks.

5. Having the rocks colonised with bacteria IME helped reduce nuisance algae growth.

Hope that helps.
 
Everything is recovered now and is healthy other than the diatoms Im getting on the ceramic rock. Some people have reported of the rock leaching silicates into the system which explain why the rock is covered in diatoms. It actually looks like its getting better now though which is a good sign. None of the corals have been affected by this luckily.

My fish and zoas were unaffected by my crash while I lost every piece of SPS. I added a cheap frag of SPS after getting things settled to make sure I was ready to get back into it. Since then I've added some of my favorite pieces. I have a few spots left to fill which I will add in the near future.

Here are some pictures of what I have now. As you can see, the zoas have been doing very well.

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Just wondering how many snails you have for clean up crew?

One thing i learned from going to a tropical ocean climate is that there are a s**t load of snails. Giant turbos all over the rocks cleaning. At least where i went. They will help a lot with any algae.
 
Chris Lakies said:
Awesome tank man!

I'm guessing you didn't use Muriatic acid on the rock?
Click to expand...

Thank you! I have never used it but did look into at one point. The new rock is the ceremaco vida rock that was supposedly to be completely clean. I crushed up a bunch of my good live rock from before the crash and have it in the sump.

Bello said:
Digging the new scape :thumbsup:, what are you running the mp10's at?
Click to expand...

Thanks! I have them at around 60% right now.

Chris Lakies said:
Just wondering how many snails you have for clean up crew?

One thing i learned from going to a tropical ocean climate is that there are a s**t load of snails. Giant turbos all over the rocks cleaning. At least where i went. They will help a lot with any algae.
Click to expand...

I'm at three turbos right now and its finally making a significant dent on the algae. I still have some from reef cleaners but they never leave the glass for some reason.
 
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