JBJ Cube Build + DIY

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So here it goes, this is my first salt water tank and its about 4 months old now. In that time I finally got enough interesting things to put in there and enough pictures to keep all of you interested. :lol: So here we go.


9/9/11
Purchased my JBJ 29g with advanced LED lighting + stand
(but unfortunately the stand came without door hinges to the door)


In the meantime I tested the LEDs to make sure they work


Moonlight

Dusk/Dawn

Daylight (jeez this one is bright)

This is what the kit came with

9/10/11
Returned stand


9/14/11
Got the stand back and set up the tank in its place

Leak test with tap

9/15/11
Leak test complete and tap water drained

9/16/11
Purchased the live sand, live rock and water

 

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The live rock (I love the textures and the coraline algae on these)

Live sand in the tank

Rock, Sand and Water

Sand Settling Down

After the sand settled down, here is the original aquascape


Front

Left

Back

 

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Right

9/19/11
Re-aquascaped to make sure the rocks were on bottom of tank


9/20/11
The cycle has begun with a diatom bloom

9/25/11
Water test with parameters stable enough for the CUC

CUC of 6 hermit crabs

9/30/11
Purchased 3 turbo snails and 2 Super Tongan Nassarius Snail

Snails doing their magic on the algae

 

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Turbo Snail Close Up

Turbo Snail Camo

Lots of algae bloom and some cyano

10/4/11
Rock work collapsed


10/5/11
Purchased base rock and new aquascape


Front

Left

Right

 

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10/7/11
Purchased some livestock


A tank bred clown

Battling with algae and lots of cyano

Possible issue:


Too much light coming through

OR not enough water flow


10/15/11
Purchased powehead


FTS - cleaned

More CUC


Snails

Blue legged hermit crabs

 

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10/21/11
Purchased Phosphate Removal Pack


Hermit Crab hitching a ride on a Turbo Snail

10/28/11
Purchased more of the CUC


4 Nassarius snails

And my first coral - a zoa frag with 3 colors


Under daylight

Under moonlight

FTS

Better placement for the Zoa colony

11/4/11
More goodies

- Algae magnets (one medium, one small - to fit in the places where the rock work is too close to the glass)
- New carbon pack
- A spin-stream jet tip to create random waves


Testing the algae magnet


Before

After

 

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Spin-stream tip

it rotates as the water passes to create a more random wave pattern


FTS

More Zoa pictures

This is the power-head I have

and the heater

New tank buddy - A tuxedo urchin by the name of Mr. Bow Tie


On the way home

Acclimating in the bag

In the tank

 

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A tank shot with critters in view

- Zoa's
- Mr. Bow Tie
- Turbo Snails
- Hermit Crabs


Clown Fish in the moonlight

Her name is Nema


11/7/11
Purchased second spin-stream and a candy cane (or maybe a trumpet) coral


Acclimating of the coral

FTS - 11/7/11

Coral in its new spot along with Mr. Bow Tie

Close up of coral

This guy finally came out of hiding after 4 weeks in the tank hiding

One final resident of the tank - a peppermint shrimp by the name of Sgt. Pepper

It seems like I have the algae and the cyano under control, the tank is coming along well.

 

[subielover]

Nice start, I also have a jbj 28 gallon cube. What are your plans for livestock?

 

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Purchased a Duncan Coral

Close Up of the Duncan Coral

The newesr aquascape


Front

Left

Right

Here is the Duncan after it had acclimated to the tank

And a close up

The Candy Cane doing better too, at this point i still havent gotten in to feed, but it was puffing up during the day

This little guy loves picking everything up, here he is on a walk with his hermit crab buddy.

One day after class, I came home to find that the urchin had snagged up a little frag of the zoa colony onto himself

 

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I had a dilemma, I didnt want the zoas floating around freely and landing somewhere on my main rock work to later spread like wild fire, but then again, I didnt want to just kill the few polyps that he yanked off. Luckily at this time I had started doing some research on fragging corals (although I wasnt planning to do any myself any time soon).


I guess it was time, so I headed to the LFS, grabbed a frag plug and some glue and was on the way home to frag my first coral, with the help of the urchin


I used tiny tweezers and grabbed the piece of rock that was attached to the zoas and the urchin, gave it a little tug, and the zoas were free, I was careful not to damage the soft tissue and release any toxins into the tank


Here are the zoas drying on the paper towel

The rest of the things

A little dab of glue and they were on

Here they are back in the tank

And they're open!

Shortly after that (probably 2 days) I found my peppermint shrimp attacking the duncan coral. Ive spotted him bullying the coral once in a while during feedings, so I didnt think much of it, but in front of my eyes, the shrimp ran up to the Duncan, yanked 2 tentacles off and pierced one of the heads with his claw.


The guy had to go, luckily someone local decided to take him off my hands, along with the baby zoas and even traded me one of his frags.


He gave me these stunning Captain America Polys

Once again, I had to move the rocks around... this time it wasnt because I didnt have anything better to do with my hands, but I actually thought of some of the future corals I plan to have and decided I need more/different rock space. So, during one of the days for Thanksgiving break I went ahead and moved them around.


The newest and current aquascape


Front

Right

Left

You can see the Candy Cane is recovering nicely and getting its stripes back

It also started sending its feeder tentacles out (although at very random times still, lol) one day they'll be out during the day, and others they stay shut until hours after the lights are off.


My last purchase was another Candy Cane, this time a crimson/teal one

Close Up

This guy just loves carrying rocks around, sometimes he'll keep them for so long algae starts to grow

 

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The corals are doing so much better now that they seem to be splitting/seeding heads


The Captain America's

Its hard to see in this picture but there is a little bump building in between the polyps


The Duncan

I believe the two protrusions on the left polyp are new heads about to grow


In case you guys are interested, here is what I feed to these guys, I do various combinations or alterations of these 3 foods, usually just in a random order (because in the wild their food source would be random too)


We have the Phyto Feast

Thats for the Captain Americas and Zoa's once in a while, I just broadcast some into the tank


Then the Oyster Feast

Everyone loves this thing! One thing to keep in mind is that it tends to clump up when it hits the water, so I put it into a pipet and shake the pipet over the coral, while pressing down just a little, and the oyster feast then comes out mixed into the water... For this one, I like to turn off the water circulation, to let the polyps and heads eat it before it gets blown away. It also really brings out the color in all the corals! Amazing


And lastly, we have the Arci Pods

Probably one of the best small food out there. This one I feed to the clown as well


In addition to all of those I have some frozen brine shrimp that I feed to the clown and the bigger corals.


Keep in mind, I dont feed every day, and I dont feed all 4 of them at the same time, I alternate, I mix, I match:toothy12:


And here are the results of the feeding


Candy Cane after feeding on the pods

The other Candy Cane after feeding

The Duncan after food

So today in the morning I woke up and the lighting was just right in the room so you can get the blue and still have the tiny camera on the cell phone recognize the colors. Usually the cell phone gets washed out and all blue, but here you go guys


The Zoas

Duncan

Captain America

The Candy Canes

And the FTS

 

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with the lights

and a wide shot

 

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My urchin cruising around the tank

Here he is on my Candy Cane bonsai tree

The Candy Cane is taking off in its new place

Then I got these guys as my holiday present from my parents


A ricodea mushroom (actually a pair :Cheers

Some amazing colors

The Ric's in their new spot

I also got a frogspawn as a present

Its mouth's

The frogspawn in its new place

And in the blue light

The new guys are neon!!!

 

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Some cool fancy shots of the tank while playing with the perspective

And then feeding time

And its crazy in the blue

And lastly tonight I checked out a new fish store by my house and got one of these guys


A coco worm

And him out and about

A shout out to the guys at Coral Collection because I got into a discussion with the guy about whether my tank could sustain SPS's and he gave me a frag of a Montipora coral for free to see how it weathers:mrgreen:


Initially I wasnt a big fan of these corals, but seeing it under the LED's and under the moonlights, it is awesome!!!


Anyways, here is the free frag in its new place

 

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The monti when I first got it

Update (2 weeks later)

My kitty watching the tank

I bought 2 small acro frags from a local reefer at $5 each


the green slimer

Slimer in the blue

And the tri-color acro

the tri-color in blue

 

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After I bought the two Acro's and since I was on break from grad school, I decided to redo my aquascape once more...


I moved the rocks so that the rock with the mushrooms is all the way on the bottom, and turned the other rocks to give a little bit more surface area to allow for more corals in the future. I also secured the Acros in place and created a lot more caves than before (in preparation for more fish in the future)


Here is the end result,


The FTS

And some close ups:


You can see that I gave the Captain America's its own dedicated rock so that it can grow out and be fragged later without spreading to the main rock work

The Monti and the Tri Color

Caves and Mushrooms

Another project I took on is fragging my zoa colony because after a lot of research and inspection it seemed that the frag rock they were on made it difficult for them to spread out and grow (the zoa's would be stuck in the grooves of the rock and when new polyps would grow, they would either die off, or choke out the older ones)


You can see the grooves in this picture

WARNING: Fragging Zoa's could be extremely dangerous because of the polytoxin they release, so if you take on the challenge, make sure to wear gloves and protective eye wear (in my pictures you dont see the later, but I had the glasses)...


The tools

Close Up

What we have: eye protection, gloves, 2 tubs, hammer, nail, a blade, and glue


The Colony

Sorry there arent pictures of the fragging process, but I didnt want to get any polytoxin on my phone or anywhere else for that matter, so I did not take pictures during the fragging process. Basically, I put the nail in between the zoa polyps and hammered down slowly until the rock chipped apart, then I used the blade to cut any polyps that were not loose.


Here is the end result

Some Close Ups

I used the glue to fold over and attach any of the polpys that were not attached to the rock and but just attached through the tissue to other polyps


You let the frags sit in the container for about 15 minutes so they can stop releasing any polytoxins, then move it to another container and do the same. Do this with the water from the tank to minimize stress on the polyps

Keep in mind, that you still want to keep your gloves on until you've completely finished moving the frags into the 2nd container (I took pictures here because I took one glove, but still used only one hand with the glove to move them). While the frags are resting in their 2nd container, clean up the whole area and rinse off any tools thoroughly. Polytoxin is water soluble, so it will wash away, but just as a precaution, do not reuse the gloves, or the tubberware (you can save the tubs for future fragging).

 

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I went ahead and pulled out the rock that I was going to glue my frags to...

The frags glued to the rock

Some Close Ups

And then back in the tank

The next day the polyps started to open up

It really seems like the problem was that the polyps were crammed because the next day the polyps that were not open for a week opened up the next day


And here is an update on my Duncan which is growing new babies

And the other heads are just starting to do the same, in a little there should be a ton of new heads :mrgreen:

 

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Oh man, do I have a DIY project for you guys!!!:bowdown:


I got a 12.5 Stunner LED Strip in Magenta/Blue as a Christmas present from my friend


The goodies for the install

Testing the Strip

Looks so awesome


Sand down the piece of plexiglass which the LED will attach to

Mock up of the strip

Attached blue tape to protect the plexiglass from breaking

Ready to put a little hole for the screws

Blue tape fail

OK, time for plan B


The hood before the mod

I had to unscrew the top to fit the plug in the extra space

Kitty cat helping me out

So plan B is to use double sided tape to attach the plexiglass to the hood and attach the light to that


First attempt to attach the double sided tape ended up with a waxing

Attached the double sided tape to the plexiglass

Cut off the extra tape with a blade

 

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Remove the second tape

Attach to the tank hood

Gauging where to place the LED

This is how it will look

Cut the double sided tape on the LED in half, in case I want to reattach to a new place

Peel the tape cover

And stick

Put the wire away

To make the space for the cable wrap some sandpaper around the screwdriver

Start a little notch with the blade

And go to town

How the wire will sit

Since I was doing this, I decided to do the same on the other side for my pump

End result

Clean up the wires