Gunguy's Biocube 29 Rebuild

gunguy05 · Sep 17, 2013

Well, it all started about March 25 of this year. I was surfing the local yard sale facebook site and found a biocube (Oceanic) with LR, 3 domino damsels, 1 yellow goby, and couple snails, a couple hermits, and LS. $100, no stand, and I had to drive about 40 bucks to pick it up. The NC6 LED retro build that I had built had it's pump die and I figured why not, now is the time for a small upgrade. And for a $100, how could I go wrong.

I have added a few things, and am working on getting my nitrates down. Going to add a better stand, and clean out and replace all the sand in the next couple of weeks. From what I can gather, this is keeping my nitrates up a little high (about 20-40ppm).

The person that I bought the tank from REALLY let it go down. They back chambers were nasty, and I cleaned them out the best I could without removing all the sand.. Not a good idea. I wish now that I had taken it down to the bare bottom. Going to take care of that when I get the stand built.

As it sits now I have

Mushrooms, couple different varieties
Frogspawn
Plate coral
yellow polys left from old tank, and in rehab
candy canes

yellow goby
narssius snails
bumblebee snails
blue leg hermit crabs
fire shrimp

The above is from a week or so ago... now to the present.

I built a new stand this weekend, in the hopes of moving the tank. Also, I decided to take out all of the sand, and move everything out of the tank and clean it thoroughly. The last person that had it, well let's just say it was a mess. I should have did a better job at cleaning it when I set it up, but I honestly didn't realize it was in as bad a shape as it was.

Finished, except for the door.

Then some stain

After the stand dried on Sunday, I got finished filling up the tank with new oolite sand, water (new and old), and rocks, about 5:00p

Here was a photo about 3 hr later.

And then about 12 hr later

I REALLY like the looks of the oolite, although you have to be delicate with it or it will become a mess. Nice and clean look to it though.

robbrouse · Sep 17, 2013

Looks good.. Nice job.

gunguy05 · Sep 18, 2013

Finally got things calmed down a bit last night. Sand is settled, and I did a little aquascaping.

SeahorseKeeper · Sep 18, 2013

Looking good!! Keep us posted with your progress!!

gunguy05 · Sep 20, 2013

Fuge light added, not much going on. 9/20/13

Not much going on at the moment. I blew most of the play money this month already on the stand and such. I did add a fuge light to the back chamber since I scraped the back glass before reassembling everything. Got the idea from another forum where a similar thing was done. Just used a waterproof pigtail light socket (it was the cheapest and easiest), a 3 gang box, a plug, a fluorescent light bulb, and a cheap extension cord. Cost about $9.50 plus the bulb.

Just hung it off of the back hinges of the lid. I didn't have any velcro, but will add that when I can get some.

Not much to look at for the moment. But it is coming along nicely, and I like to take lots of photos.. so beware.

FTS

The plate coral

Frogspawn is looking happy

All photos are taken with my smartphone. It actually adjusts for the actinics better than my $400 camera, go figure.

Flameback Pair · Sep 20, 2013

Is that a regular plate coral or a long tentacled plate coral?

gunguy05 · Sep 21, 2013

powers2001 said:
Is that a regular plate coral or a long tentacled plate coral?

It's a regular

Flameback Pair · Sep 21, 2013

Nice pictures, what kind of camera are you using?

skinz78 · Sep 21, 2013

I love the DIY light!

gunguy05 · Sep 21, 2013

powers2001 said:
Nice pictures, what kind of camera are you using?

All are taken with a Samsung Galaxy S3.

skinz78 said:
I love the DIY light!

Thanks, like I said I copied it from another thread somewhere.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

gunguy05 · Oct 12, 2013

Not a whole lot going on at the moment. I have acquired a few more frags in the last few weeks. A couple acan frags, 3 different zoa frags. All of them are looking good. Will try and post some pics in a few. Phone is dead at the moment.

Just trying to let everything stabilize and "take it slow" . Nitrates are down to 10ppm or so, and seem to be steadily creeping down. I had a diatom outbreak after I added the sand, but that cleared up just a few days ago. Tank actually looks the best I have seen it so far so I'm happy with it.

I mentioned more fish to wifey the other night and she said "yeah, you do need some more fish in there"...

No need to speak any more.. we will get fish! Just haven't decided what I want yet. A clown of some sort is probably a given, not sure though. Maybe a pair of picaso clowns, or I might go a different route entirely. I want color, and something that won't dig of that sugar fine sand. The damsels I had in there before were the devil.

gunguy05 · Oct 13, 2013

Alirght... here is a few pics. Picked up a false percula clown today. Also, here are some other pics of the other frags I've added in the last few days.

This guy was a hitch hiker on a rock.. Started off small and looks very happy when the water flow is off of him. Hoping they will spread.

Nothing too flashy or exciting.. But it's what I'm working with at the moment. All seem to be doing well, and my levels are staying good.

gunguy05 · Nov 9, 2013

Just wanted to post an update. I have Steve's LED upgrade in the mail, should be here today and hopefully I will get some time on this long weekend to work on it. Just a few things that I have added since the last update.

Acans

Kenya tree and Devil's Hand (just after I put in the tank and it hadn't perked up yet)

A frag of Monti Cap, and Monti digitata... by my first SPS BTW!

zoas (sorry, I don't keep up with names)

Grape monti frag (still need to mount this one)

3

FTS including the firefish goby that I added a few days later

Spendley · Nov 9, 2013

Sweeeeetttttt just got my Steve's LED last weekend. Unfortunately away on business for a while so will be vicariously living through your updates - don't disappoint!

Hope you got the typhoon controller! I was really worried about acclimating everything to new lights, but with the controller it's so easy to adjust the lights

gunguy05 · Nov 9, 2013

Well, looks like USPS got delayed. No lights till Tuesday... Bummer

gunguy05 · Nov 10, 2013

Correction. It was on my doorstep when I got home from the football game. Guess the USPS man must have thought twice about passing me by:neutral:

funny story to go with it:

So, drove an hour and a half home, and to my surprise package was on front door step. SO!! I grabbed package on front door, got kids inside and got the go ahead to run to staples before they closed. I quickly ran to get thermal paste from staples. As Im standing at the checkout I could tell the girl who was waiting on me was wondering what this tube of small silver stuff was that cost 10 bucks. She said "hummmm what's this for" to which I gave and explanation of "you use it to stick the heat sink in a computer to the processor chip" because I knew the ACTUAL use would just confuse her even more, if that is possible.

She said "oh, so you are building a computer?" to which I replied "yeah, something like that"

Then as I was walking out the door, I realized the "something like that" comment took me from the realm of friendly customer to really sketchy dude who looks like he is building something that will blow up.....

WHICH I"M NOT>> NSA disclaimer, if you are listening.

Back on topic:

Working on soldering everything together now, but will probably be in the morning before I can get much more done. I thought there were supposed to be potentiometers shipped with each of the drivers, but I have checked the box 3 times now and they are not in there. Guess its a trip to radio shack at 10am tomorrow.

gunguy05 · Nov 11, 2013

Well, I got everything installed last night.. late. The colors look insane, and I am very happy with the build. The 3up stars show a little bit of color banding (or they did, more on that in a minute), but not bad, and they really add to the overall look of the tank.

So, the bad part.

I was tinkering with things and noticed the whites (on a double driver) were flickering when I adjusted the pot.. so I eased up on the adjustment on the power supply.. BAD IDEA.

Long story short, I think i partially blew the double driver for the whites, the single to the 2 3up stars, and possible some of the 3 up stars. Now only 1 red on 1 star and 1 cyan on the other star will light up. The others on the 3up stars are dead, and the whites are dim. I moved them temporarily to another driver, and they are brighter now, so I know the problem is the driver.

I hate when I do dumb stuff, and this definitely falls into that category. I have been kicking myself all night and half of the day. Emailed steve's this morning, so hopefully I can get things fixed and running as they should soon enough.

Will post some photos when things get to where they should be. Right now I just have 8 RB and 4 white running to keep things alive.

gunguy05 · Nov 21, 2013

Got a good deal of my LED and driver issue worked out. Bought a typhon and case from ElmoC on the other forum... Got it hooked up last night and it works great.

Still only have half of my whites hooked up. Going to try and work that out tonight.