Slice of Ocean Build - 48g Fiji Cube

[certain_code]

And right on time, after so many delays, the tank is here. UPS/TForce freight delivered and was so so so much better than the original freight company. They only would deliver to my buildings shipping dock but everyone involved was super nice and wanted to know more about the tank and hobby which was awesome.

Photos to come but after delivery around 5pm yesterday, I now have the stand and tank set up and in place. Over the next few days I am hoping to fit in the plumbing and cleaning of the tank to do a test with fresh water.

Overall the tank looks great. I do not currently see anything that gives me concerns over the build quality. The sump is awesome and I am excited to get that set up as well. So far the biggest pain is pulling the protective film off of the sump and overflow, time to pull out the hair dryer.

 

[Zoacoral]

And right on time, after so many delays, the tank is here. UPS/TForce freight delivered and was so so so much better than the original freight company. They only would deliver to my buildings shipping dock but everyone involved was super nice and wanted to know more about the tank and hobby which was awesome.

Photos to come but after delivery around 5pm yesterday, I now have the stand and tank set up and in place. Over the next few days I am hoping to fit in the plumbing and cleaning of the tank to do a test with fresh water.

Overall the tank looks great. I do not currently see anything that gives me concerns over the build quality. The sump is awesome and I am excited to get that set up as well. So far the biggest pain is pulling the protective film off of the sump and overflow, time to pull out the hair dryer.

Glad to hear that, but i dont believe you till you post pictures lol!. Just kidding. Cant wait to see some pictures though

 

[Kimosobey]

Have you put the stand together? It kicked my butt getting those doors lined up. Looking forward to seeing some pictures!

 

[certain_code]

Have you put the stand together? It kicked my butt getting those doors lined up. Looking forward to seeing some pictures!

OMG EXACTLY THIS! I have the doors about 98% aligned but cannot for the life of me figure out how to align them. Any tips?



Longer update to come with photos once I prep just the last bit here. The short of it is a series of events to get me to the point of the last remaining bits before adding the first fish. It's already been a bit of a journey to get to where I am so the next post I make will likely be a significant update. Apologies for the wait to anyone following along.

 

[certain_code]

Large updates are fun!?

TL;DR:
The tank is almost ready for fish. I had a floor flood due to a stupid oversight. A circuit breaker trip on the only day I was away from the tank. Rock has been cycling for nearly a month and a half as I struggle a bit with the sotcklist and making cabinet doors even.

The Long Story:

Tank Delivery (finally):
After weeks of delays, FijiCube finally shipped a new tank through a new freight company. Being tied to UPS somehow, the overall process was so much nicer and delivery was actually supposed to happen a day earlier than expected. Of course I was out of town so I delayed and have delivery scheduled for the following day. Overall the packaging was on point and the tank was in perfect shape. Even though I expected some imperfections with the tank as others have mentioned here about the FijiCube tanks, there are none that I can see now with my tank set up. Overall I am impressed with the cabinet and tank quality for the price. Shout out to my building maintenance guys who couldnt help me but were excited to talk about the tank, provided a cart to move the tank up to my apartment, and just generally helped make the delivery super quick.



The first few days:
My office was a mess of old and new equipment. My girlfriend wanted to help so I walked her through kind of what I had planned and gave her a job of getting everything set up which was awesome. I love sharing hobbies and sharing it with someone I live with and can hopefully enjoy the tank is awesome. I did not take much pictures during this time as it simply wouldn't provide any value to see amessy room. That being said, the tank was on the stand by the end of day 2 after delivery and I strted getting an idea of sump position and plumbing.


Dry plumbing set up. I ended up fixing the slope in the main return line and added a union to the backup drain as well.



End of day 1, a tank stand with poorly aligned doors, dry plumbing below, RODI line run for ATO and AWC systems, we are ready to glue and leak test.....or so I thought....


I ended up going to grab dinner on Thursday after gluing the plumbing and feeling accomplished. I came home after a few hours with a very wet carpet. It turns out that the RODI line that was sitting in the tank ended up falling out, creating a siphon, and nearly draining 25 gallons of fresh RODI water onto our floors. I spent the next two days drying the carpet out, moving all our furniture, renting a carpet cleaning machine to suck as much water up as possible, and explaining to my girlfriend that this is a first and last time thing.

After 5 years of owning a previous tank, never with any leak detection, I have now invested in a few leak detection devices and alarms. Lesson learned.


Cool lil things I'm proud of:

I got some inspiration and used my 3D printer to make this little tubing holders. All the others I could find online had exposed screws which is gross. So I dusted off my 3D modeling skills and made these crude little holders where the middle tube hides the screw that mounts it to the wall.



So when mounted, it's a pretty clean look despite dirty baseboards.



I also did something similar when trying to figure out how FijiCube intended the ATO sump bracket to work. It's mounted super high and had a hole that made no sense to me. So I 3D printed a shaft and little ring that pressure fits the shaft in place. I then printed two float switch holders I found online to get a little set up going.



And with it installed in the sump...




And if you amde it this far, you are awarded with a terrible night shot when I felt inpatient and wanted to fire up the Neptune Sky to see this thing in it's glory.



Next up on a long-ish list of things to do still:

- Cable cleanup and build of controller false back to put into the controller cabinet.
- Fix the door alignment...so difficult but it needs to happen
- Stock list
- Look into tank net top options (Not available from FijiCube)
- Mount and final set up of ATO and AWC systems (DOS and ATO pump arrive Friday)
- 50-60% water change to clean up Nitrate before first fish arrive. (ideally via AWC to test the system)
- Fine tuning of waterflow
- Plan for small carbon/gfo reactor(s).


Oh, and Instagram will be certain_reef for anyone that wants to follow. Nothing there yet but soon I will start updates there as well.

What does everyone think for stock list? Excited to get this really moving now.

 

[Zoacoral]

Glad to see you got it finally and nothing wrong with it.

Could you measure the overflow boz? Curious how big it is.

 

[ladz]

Nice! Glad to see you got it in good order. As for the door it took me a bit as well but I got it eventually.

How’s the sky?

@Zoacoral from Fiji when I asked about the overflow dims….~8.78" Wide and ~4.13"

 

[certain_code]

Glad to see you got it finally and nothing wrong with it.

Could you measure the overflow boz? Curious how big it is.

I’ll grab the metric specifics tomorrow for ya. I’m happy with the tank and the stand is top notch to me. The doors are a pain right now but otherwise it’s great.

Nice! Glad to see you got it in good order. As for the door it took me a bit as well but I got it eventually.

How’s the sky?

@Zoacoral from Fiji when I asked about the overflow dims….~8.78" Wide and ~4.13"

I have one door near perfectly aligned with the bottom of the tank but the other is lower in the middle by about a quarter of an inch. Its so frustrating that I can’t seem to figure it out but my kitchen cabinets are no problem. Haha

So far the Sky seems great. I don’t love that it is treated as a second controller completely from my classic apex in the app or not having any real quick way to change to a specific mode briefly. I wish you could have a one tap temporary mode with the physical button on the sky itself or something to trigger photo mode or maybe you could customize it to your liking.

I’m generally a big proponent of physical buttons over running everything through an app. Water and touch screens drive me nuts sometimes. Future thoughts of finding a few cool buttons to trigger water change, feed mode, maintenance mode, etc are definitely happening already.

 

[certain_code]

Forgot to mention that I did a brewery and LFS crawl this past weekend. San Diego has an interesting area that contains a few great breweries and two local shops which is dangerous but awesome.

We stopped into @AquaSD and then down to Aquatic Warehouse. Both impressive in their own way and awesome to have so close by. Funny to think I had ordered from AquaSD when I was on the east coast and now they are a 15 minute drive away. Always great to support local shops.

 

[Kimosobey]

I think we are over due for a update
Jealous you got AquaSD right there. Dangerous

 

[certain_code]

I think we are over due for a update
Jealous you got AquaSD right there. Dangerous

Yeah, I can appreciate you calling me out on the lack of updates here. I set out originally to take this project on slowly and, while that has been a challenge, I have made some pretty good progress overall on the build. Frankly, I have been working like crazy over the last two months which has slowed things down a bit but here is a general update of where things stand currently. I will get some new photos uploaded as well this week but for now, this is where things are.

- General: The tank is running and everything is pretty stable at this point. My temp swings back and forth about .5 degrees with redundant heaters and PH is in a good range. I am starting to see some signs of algae so I will have a snail-only clean-up crew here later this week from ReefCleaners. I am running my lights every other day, for now, to keep some growth down but enough to feed the incoming clean-up crew.

- Storage/Apex Cabinet: I ended up getting two additional cabinets for my Apex and some storage. While I would have loved the simple setup of everything being in the stand it was already obvious how crowded things would have gotten not to mention error-prone due to water in such close proximity to the electronics. I ended up with 2 cubs and taller Ikea EKET cabinets that I drilled some holes in the back of, added some ventilation, and did a basic setup of the controller. I'm 90% done with that currently and just need to figure out the controller board itself to mount the controllers to for a nicer finish.

- DOS Auto Water Changes: While I have the Neptune Dos running for auto water changes, I honestly am unsure how long I will have it set up. I don't love how loud it is overall and it seems to have such minimal impact in terms of the amount of water it's changing out. Currently, I have 1.3 gallons a day spread out being changed but it's literally just drops when it's running which seems like nothing. I might end up experimenting with "push-button" changes at some point but for now, I want to keep things stable.

- Livestock: I picked up two premium platinum frost-bite Clowns and a Spotted Yellow-eye tang. They have been in the tank for over a week now with no crazy spikes of parameters. I noticed some spotting on the tang today which I am going to treat with some SeaChem MetroPlex when feeding as it somewhat is looking like Ich but it's difficult to say for sure. Either way, the fish seem to be doing well otherwise so this is mainly precautionary at this point and I will mix in some GarlicGuard to build up their immune systems as well and reduce any stress.

 

[certain_code]

Apologies for not much updates. I have been struggling lately on two aspects of the tank and trying to resolve them has left me less excited about the tank since they are putting any other plans on hold.

Problem #1: While I overall am not concerned much with my current elevated levels of Nitrite and Nitrate, I am getting a little worried that I cannot get the levels of nitrite to 0 and maintain a consistent nitrate level at all. Even with regular water changes, including AWC system and the 2 80% water changes I have done in the last 2 weeks, Nitrite and Nitrate continue to be at levels I really just dont like. For now I am letting thigs ride out and see if the cycle has sort of just stalled for some reason.

Problem #2: Yesterday I lost one of my clowns and it seems that my tang has a bacterial infection. The clown overall seemed to be fine until it started flaking some skin and not eating. After treating for 3 days with Ruby Reef Pro nothing really changed and the clown ended up dead. I am now seeing some additional red on the tang indicating likely a gram-negative bacterial infection. I started with an 80% water change yesterday and dosing metro today. I am getting Kanaplex in tomorrow to add that as well. Really hoping to turn things around on this as I do not have the space to run a proper QT tank at this point which I have never had a problem with in my previous 10 years of owning a tank granted that these are fish coming from Ca when my other tanks were coming from MA. Either way, really frustrating and I will hopefully solve this and only go with QT'd fish from proper sellers moving forward.

All in all, this is the disheartening part of the hobby for sure. The tank seems to be doing well otherwise but I need to work through whatever is going on with the livestock before doing anything else at this point. I have never had to chase getting Nitrites down in a tank that has already gone through 3 months of a seemingly successful cycle and I am sure that unexpectedly poor water quality is not helping the fish health currently either.

 

[certain_code]

Just a quick update on the tank:

The ugly stage is in full effect currently. Nitrates and Phosphates are under control so far but my rock work is brown and ugly and the water is a little bit cloudy. For now, I am letting things run their course as long as the tank livestock looks okay.

A few wins since my last post:
- Nitrites have finally fallen to .1ppm. While I was not specifically waiting on anything related to this happening, it was so odd to me that it took so long for them to fall. The main thing for this happening is that I am now confident in reading Nitrates (currently at 1.2ppm) which are a bit elevated for such an unstable and new tank but I can work on getting those down slowly.
- Fish health seemed to have improved over the last few weeks. I have noticed a bit of the light brown spots coming back on my Tang though so I have started dosing Kanaplex in feedings and dosing Paraguard daily again. I will continue to keep an eye on things to make sure they improve over the next few weeks again. My clown seems to be doing fine and is patiently awaiting another mate. As long as the Tang is seeming to improve, I mat introduce my next round of fish while dosing medications as a way to quarantine in the D/T.
- I have finally got around to taking the measurement and ordering a tank lid from Matt at Octo Aquatics. My last stage of livestock will include notorious jumpers so this is crucial. Expecting to have this by the end of May or the start of June.
- I have replaced my 5-year-old heaters from my last tank with more appropriate sized ones that fit perfectly into the FijiCube sump holders and got the correct o-rings to hold them in place. Much cleaner look. Just a safety thing to prevent failures in the coming year or so.
- I sent out an API OCP test and hopefully will have my results in the next week or so. This will give me a good baseline of not only my personal Hann testing accuracy but will also call out any issues with my RO/DI source water or anything else going on. I may just be paranoid but I feel that something weird is happening with my freshly mixed saltwater that may be causing the livestock issues. Either way, the OCP results should help me out so I am excited to get the results back.

I am going to try to post weekly moving forward now that life craziness has slowed down a bit. There is not really much going on with the tank other than taking time for everything to become more stable and ride its course. My next post will hopefully have some updated photos of maybe a bit less ugly tank.

Until next time. I hope everyone is having a good April.

 

[certain_code]

I hope everyone is having a nice week.

A few updates:

I got my ATI ICP test results. They can be found in full here:

RO results: https://lab.atiaquaristik.com/publicAnalysis/170425
Tank results: https://lab.atiaquaristik.com/publicAnalysis/168699

Overall, my RO water has elevated Silicon levels but when tested in my tank, they are within range and actually lower meaning either a testing error is at play or something is consuming or filtering it out of the tank. No concerns on that front.

Manganese is reading high at 78.35 µg/l as well as Iron at 25.74 µg/l which leads me to believe that something is leaching into my tank. Since my tank is overall really simple, the only real possibility is likely my powerheads. Luckily, I just picked up 2 AI Nero 3 pumps that will be getting here next week. I am going to continue to read up on how much of a concern these levels should be and slowly try to correct them if needed. Water changes should theoretically take these levels down as well as long as the salt is not the source. Right now I am unsure how concerned I should be here honestly.

Beyond those two levels, everything else makes sense to me, given a new tank. Phosphate and Phosphorus are elevated as I am riding through the ugly stage currently and Nitrates are measuring similar to what I am getting on my Hanna checker.

My DKH is low and in fact, is lower than what the Tropic Marine Reef Pro salt should be mixing at per the bucket. I am going to test a bit more and see if I can eventually get this up but not chase any numbers. I plan on dosing with a GHL pump once I get into corals but ideally I will have a target Alkalinity level before getting there.


Lastly, I added a new Orange Storm Clown who is doing super well a few days in. It is seemingly getting along really well with what was my remaining Frostbite Clown making for a visually awesome pair.

 

[certain_code]

And in the event that anyone is curious about current parameters:

Salinity: 1.024
Alkalinity: 6.1dKH
Nitrate: 1.1ppm
Phosphate: 0.03ppm

I cleaned up the first post here as well with everything that was done to date since I made some changes to the original plan.

 

[certain_code]

The tank has been rounding the corner on its initial ugly stage with the help of some Microbacter Clean. While I wanted to go more of the natural route and let things run their course, it was becoming obvious that the tank placement next to a massive window was not going to let that happen. After 2 weeks of dosing the more aggressive dosage, all the GHA is pretty much gone now and the tank looks "healthy clean". I also upped my CUC with some snails to keep up on the cleaning which will help as I now slowly start ot lessen the Microbacter Clean dose. Starting this week I am moving from 2 caps/day to 1 cap/day for 2 weeks. If all is still looking fine at that point then I will lower the dosage to 2 caps/week until I am through any nutrient swings and as I add more livestock.

The two Nero 3s have been holding up well. The initial noises/clicking have subsided and the pumps are now near silent below 60%. I realized that the 2 Nero 3s were not providing enough flow though so I added back in one of my newer Jebaos. I will likely look at either dual Nero 5s once I get into SPS but right now detritus is staying suspended really well.

Lastly, I got to 3D printing a few things to support what I wanted to do with my GHL doser. Photos show pretty much where things stand but I ran the Red Sea dosing line kit, designed and printed some tubing holders, printed mounts for 800ml Voss glass bottles, and printed C-shaped brackets to hold the doser itself. Overall I would say I am 95% satisfied with how this turned out from how I envisioned it originally. I was originally planning on a custom 4-part dosing container to sit next to the sump but with this setup, I have a perfect spot to fit a Neptune Trident under the dosing containers and next to my sump. I am waiting on a BRS order to run rigid tubing into the dosing containers and finish up that installation which should be here this week.

I am still waiting on my custom lid to arrive (ordered 6 weeks ago but I know Matt at OctoAquatics will bless me with my lid soon. Haha) before getting the remaining fish. Once I have those and I can restabilize the tank again with the added nutrients then will come some tester SPS and dosing.

I have also been debating switching out the Dos for the Versas. Other than availability, they seem like they will work much better for my setup with AWC. I am currently running 20% water changes a week which is only 12ml/min on the Dos but it is still just so so loud and I sit next to my tank for 8 hours a day. If I can get the Versa to match dosing amounts at next to no noise and have the option to increase the amount of water changing it's a win/win for me. Not to mention the colors will work perfectly with my setup as well.

As always, I hope everyone is doing well. Thanks for following along.

 

[certain_code]

In a quite hilarious turn of events, my Octolid shipped today and should be here Thursday!

My BRS order gets here tomorrow that has a few last bits for my dosing setup and the kit to suspend my SKY from the ceiling so that is the plan for tomorrow so that the lid can go on when it gets here. So excited to finally get some more livestock and start the transition to tester SPS.

 

[certain_code]

4 Month Update

Overall I feel that the tank is settling in nicely.The Kole Tang and two clowns are doing great and all systems are running nicely now which has made daily tasks overall minimal. I have ordered what will be the last set of fish from Dr Reef to ensure there are not any further health issues as best as I can considering I do not have a proper QT system. My lid from OctoAquatics arrived last week and fit perfectly so that led me to mount the Neptune Sky from the ceiling as well since I did not want to have a cutout for the light mount in the lid itself.

Today I added Pink and Purple Live Coralline from ARC reef to help seed the tank. I realize this is the more costly option and honestly, I don't have much expectation that it will work this early on in the tanks life but while I wait for my last stock of fish and to let the tank mature further I figured it would be helpful as a sign of stability in the tank before getting some tester corals. Fingers crossed I start to see some Coralline growing in the next 6-10 weeks.

Most recent params:
Alk: 6.44 dkh
Mag: 1215 ppm
Phosphate: 0.04 ppm
Salinity: 1.024
Temp: 78.5 - 79.5 with roughly 4 hours between min and max
PH: 7.8-8.1

AWC:
Currently changing 5300 mL/day which is roughly 9.8 gallons per week. This runs every 12 minutes at a 12 ml/min rate. This is the max I can change without the Neptune Dos becoming unbearably loud as I sit next to it 8 -10 hours a day. I will likely be swapping out the Dos for an Ecotech Versa once they become more available again.

Dosing:
The plan is to run BRS 2-part once needed. Currently, I am manually dosing via the GHL Doser 2 only as needed.

Daily:
Clean glass
Check filter floss (replace roughly every 3-4 days currently)
Check skimmer cup (clean once a week currently)
Feed Rods frozen food and Formula Two pellet food

Weekly:
Test Alk and Nitrates (not chasing numbers)
Clean bare bottom
Check pumps
Check ATO and AWS containers, fill as needed

Monthly:
Test Salinity, Cal, and Mag
Check and top off BRS 2-part
Check and clean Neptune Sky, as needed
Check and clean Wavemakers, as needed


Fish Stock List:
1 Male Lyretail Anthia
1 Lawnmower Blenny
1 Firefish Exquisite
3 Blue Green Chromis
1 Lineatus Fairy Wrasse (Male)
---
1 Kole Tang
1 Premium Frostbite Clownfish
1 Orange Storm Clownfish

 

[JumboShrimp]

I bet your lid is nice. Photo?

 

[certain_code]

A small update:

Salt: While I was running Tropic Marin Reef Pro (German only) I started to notice a fairly bad smell coming from my salt mix container. Looking at the container, there was a fairly thick brown sludge across the inner walls and covering the RO line and pump placed within. I have drained and cleaned the container and now have switched to Brightwell Aquatics NeoMarine for the foreseeable future. Generally, it seems to not be as well-reviewed of a salt but given all of the recent issues with Tropic Marin I am going to take the 'risk' for now.

Alkalinity: While I am still dialing it in for stability long term, and that will change with the eventual addition of SPS, for now, my salt mix change has my Alk hovering around 7.5dkh which is what I want to target long term. So good things there.

Livestock: My two clowns and my tang are doing really well now after so many issues in the beginning. I am awaiting my order from Dr Reef which should be ready in the next week or two. Once they arrive I will monitor and make sure the tank can keep up. Currently, my skimmer is oversized and I think struggles to be effective with the fairly low bioload of the tank. I'm really excited to have more movement in the tank as the clowns hang out in one corner and the tang nicely spends his time picking and looping around the rockwork. I figure the Chromis, Anthia, and Wrasse are going to add a lot of nice middle water movement while also having the blenny do some work on any algae that might try to pop up.

As always, hope everyone is doing well. Happy reefing.