My Experimental Zoa Cube!

Sfgiants55 · Nov 27, 2012

So I was able to get the 8 gallon rimless nanocube during marine depots black friday sale and just picked it up today! My plans for it are to see what water conditions and addtives will be the most effective in growing zoas and keeping them healthy! I plan on dosing brightwells vitamin c because I hear that this can be beneficial for zoas but also heard that it can mess with alk and ph. I also recently heard that zoas like high mag. So after a month of dosing vitamin c and observing I will then add mag and see if that further increases the growth of the zoas. I will also feed fauna marin zoa and ric food twice a week (this food is proven to grow zoas faster). Since the tank is so small MH would fry the zoas, and a T5 fixture wouldnt look good over it, so I went with a par 38 full spectrum bulb from Ledtric and got a fixture from boost led. The bulb and fixture should be here before the end of the week. I will get pics up tomorrow but I all ready added water and rock to it (5 gallons from my established tank, and 3 gallons of new saltwater). If you guys have any other recommendations as to what could make zoas grow faster or look healthier let me know! I will also try new dips as well as to see what can heal zoas faster to! I am also interested in seeing if a full spectrum led bulb can grow zoas just as efficiently as Mh or t5s. This should be a cool little tank!:bigsmile:

Socoreefer · Nov 27, 2012

Sfgiants55 said:
So I was able to get the 8 gallon rimless nanocube during marine depots black friday sale and just picked it up today! My plans for it are to see what water conditions and addtives will be the most effective in growing zoas and keeping them healthy! I plan on dosing brightwells vitamin c because I hear that this can be beneficial for zoas but also heard that it can mess with alk and ph. I also recently heard that zoas like high mag. So after a month of dosing vitamin c and observing I will then add mag and see if that further increases the growth of the zoas. I will also feed fauna marin zoa and ric food twice a week (this food is proven to grow zoas faster). Since the tank is so small MH would fry the zoas, and a T5 fixture wouldnt look good over it, so I went with a par 38 full spectrum bulb from Ledtric and got a fixture from boost led. The bulb and fixture should be here before the end of the week. I will get pics up tomorrow but I all ready added water and rock to it (5 gallons from my established tank, and 3 gallons of new saltwater). If you guys have any other recommendations as to what could make zoas grow faster or look healthier let me know! I will also try new dips as well as to see what can heal zoas faster to! I am also interested in seeing if a full spectrum led bulb can grow zoas just as efficiently as Mh or t5s. This should be a cool little tank!:bigsmile:

Can't wait to see it !
Subscribed !

turbo21 · Nov 27, 2012

Sounds like a great idea. Have you read this thread on vitamin c dosing? there is a much cheaper way to do it than the brightwell products

https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/zoa-discussion-club-zoa/8931-vitamin-c-dosing-i-am-clueless.html

bob

Sfgiants55 · Nov 27, 2012

turbo21 said:
Sounds like a great idea. Have you read this thread on vitamin c dosing? there is a much cheaper way to do it than the brightwell products

https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/zoa-discussion-club-zoa/8931-vitamin-c-dosing-i-am-clueless.html

bob

Thanks for the link I just read through it a little! It looks like the powder vitamin c will work as well but figuring out the dosage looks kind of hard for an 8 gallon haha

revhtree · Nov 27, 2012

Can't wait!

jbb_00 · Nov 28, 2012

Im excited to see this happen

Swooshjvm · Nov 28, 2012

Pretty much sounds like my 29g cube I run to full spectrum 38's with all in tank hoopla

Sfgiants55 · Nov 28, 2012

Swooshjvm said:
Pretty much sounds like my 29g cube I run to full spectrum 38's with all in tank hoopla

Do you have any pics?! I wanna see how zoas look under this light! Also what are you dosing? Thanks.

Swooshjvm · Nov 28, 2012

I dose zooplankton, and phytoplankton, three times a week. I dose mag and stro twice a week, I keep my ph at 8.4 I dose Marine C by kent daily, I also dose 2ml of peroxide once a week. PM me ur number and I will text you a pic. I cant seem to get a quality pic on site.

Sfgiants55 · Nov 28, 2012

Update just received the full spectrum ledtric bulb and boost led fixture. The ledtric bulb is absolutely amazing! However the fixture doesn't work so I went to ikea and just bought a basic one. The quality of the boost led fixture was really poor in my opinion.

dwilliams87 · Nov 28, 2012

Would love to see some pics.

Sfgiants55 · Nov 28, 2012

The light is so bright that I can't even get a decent pic of the rock work because it just looks like a glare with an ipad camera! This light is way brighter than I thought it would be! I used extra rock that I had laying around. The aqua scape looks better in person haha

Sfgiants55 · Nov 28, 2012

Since the boost led fixture didn't work I bought a fixture from ikea for 8$ and just attached it to an old guitar stand! A little ghetto but it works haha

Swooshjvm · Jan 5, 2013

hows it looking now?

Zoa Junkie · Jan 6, 2013

Yes, any updates with some z's and p's yet?

rako1 · Jan 8, 2013

I copied these instructions from pufferpunk on CR she is very knowledgeable in dosing Vitamin -C which helped me out. So I thought i'd share with R2R

VITAMIN C DOSING CHART
Here are the directions:
Use this product:
NutriBiotic, Sodium Ascorbate, Crystalline Powder, 16 oz (454 g) - iHerb.com
$10 off coupon code: LUL789

To figure out how much to use, decide if you want to simply improve coral growth, spread, and color. If so, then you should dose around 5 ppm twice daily (down to 2-3 ppm works also). If you are having problems with coral or fish health, dose up to around 30 ppm twice daily.

Calculate the total net number of gallons in your tank (minus rocks, sand, etc). Enter that number here ______.

You will now need to do a little math. The amounts below are for 100 gallons of water so if you have 50 net gallons, cut the amounts shown below in half etc.

Dosing amounts using Iherb product:
1/4 tsp=1112 mg.

For every 100 gallons:

5 ppm ----- 1892 mg VC
10 ppm ---- 3785 mg VC
15 ppm ---- 5677 mg VC
20 ppm ---- 7570 mg VC
25 ppm ---- 9462 mg VC
30 ppm ---- 11355 mg VC

After you have figured out how much you want to dose at each dosing, enter that number here _____. This is your dose to be used twice a day.

Notes:
*Be sure your pH and alk are within normal reef limits before starting. Adjust if needed. Monitor weekly.
*Shoot for a ppm of around 5 or lower if only dosing for improved coral growth, coloration, and spread, also for better health/coloration of your fish. Shoot for higher amounts up to 30 ppm if you are having melting zoas or closed zoas and look for the causes of your problems as you dose. Higher doses of as much as 100ppm (for about 2 weeks) for fish illness. Check for high nitrates, pests, zoa pox, predators, and unstable water conditions.
*Dose low amounts and increase the amount slowly over the course of a few days to a couple weeks.
* If you notice an algae bloom (white stringy stuff) or increased scum on your glass then cut back by half until it disappears.
* Watch your skimmer, it will start to skim more.
* Dose the amount twice a day in a fast moving area of your sump or overflow. You may dilute the vitamin c in ro/di water then pour into overflow. If adding to sump, try and add the vitamin c after filtration such as skimmers and reactors. *Keep your Vitamin C bottle in the refrigerator.
* The instructions in this guide and throughout this thread are based on using pure Sodium Ascorbate, not vitamin c pills and other non-buffered forms of vitamin c.