Spendley's 29g Biocube (May'13 start)

[Spendley]

Howdy!

First time reefer here, wanted to jump into something huge via Craigslist (it's way too easy to find a 125g tank!), but settled on the 29g Biocube. Couldn't be happier that I made the choice,

(First pic I have uploaded and I'm on my phone, will have to see if it worked right or is too large/whatever)

So I got the cube in early May. Bought a piece of rock from PetCo (ugh don't remind me. HATE the purple concrete look but it is what it is...), and got the branch / cheato from a friend.

 

[Spendley]

After a few weeks, I picked up two turbo snails and a Nassarius. Really interesting things went down in early June...one of them being a partial basement flood due to faulty AC unit. My tank temps reached 92 degrees with all of the heat / wet vacs and everything going on trying to prevent more mold. Sadly, one of my turbos died. More amazingly is that the other two snails actually survived! After all was out of the basement, I floated ice for a bit to get the temp down (retrospect, I should have slowed this process down, but I was frustrated with +90 degrees).

By this point, my tank was stabilizing. Experienced all the normal ammonia spikes, diatom blooms and whatnot.

I went in on a pack of CUC with a friend of mine, got roughly 20 hermits, 25 cerith snails. Astrea snails were DOA, so had to order a couple more and eventually got 12 Astrea / 20ish tiny Nassarius snails.

At this point in time I also experimented with the Biocube skimmer. Too wet, haven't used it in like two months as I'm not sure I was getting proper benefits from its use.

 

[Spendley]

Fast forward: early July.

Meet "The Hamburglar" and "Mayor McCheese" (names pending).

First off, I didn't even know there were black clownfish prior to seeing my friends tank who had some. Who knew?

Anyways, loved the contrast that I was able to get with a black clown and one that was mostly orange but with some darkness. The fish have gotten along great, guess I've had them about 2 months now and no problems. I'm sensing the orange is the female, due to slightly bigger size and aggressive nature, but am not even sure when they would "choose" their sex?

 

[Duffam3434]

CPR SR3 Protein Skimmer might be a good skimmer to look into? If you were using the tiny BioCube Skimmer IMO their crappy some have had luck.. Not me. But if you would like a skimmer for it check the CPR out sometime. Hope to see more Updates Soon!!

 

[Spendley]

Fast forward: mid August.

Things were going great in my tank, from what I could tell. Naturally, I wanted MORE!!!

Queue: visit to LFS. Wanted another piece of live rock, but theirs was not ready to sell yet (moved locations recently, everything was in flux).

You guys know that it's impossible to leave empty handed, so I bought two more turbo snails (total: 3) that day to help with the build up on algae.

I really wanted some more LR, my tank felt naked and empty. PetCo is too convenient, and I'm not proud but I bought two more pieces of rock from them. When I came home, my tank must have read my mind because the branch rock dislodged and fell from the larger rock, dang Turbos!!

Here is pic of the rock scape I went with immediately after coming home.

 

[Spendley]

Duffman, updates coming all day don't worry. Can't spoil it now but the last three weeks my tank has seen many improvements (equipment / livestock).

Just depends how much I wanna work on this thread vs my actual job today, lol. This thread will win, resistance is futile.

 

[Duffam3434]

Duffman, updates coming all day don't worry. Can't spoil it now but the last three weeks my tank has seen many improvements (equipment / livestock).

Just depends how much I wanna work on this thread vs my actual job today, lol. This thread will win, resistance is futile.

Haha I know how that goes!! Ill keep checking back to check out the updates! Look forward to seeing what you've done with the tank!

 

[Spendley]

Question: what do you ask for your 23rd birthday when you still live at home and you've eaten / slept / breathed saltwater for the past months?

Answer:

Also got the inTank fuge (w/ light), so I have a place to put my cheato instead of having it roam free in the tank.

Also ordered a maxijet1200 for new return pump as well as Koralia600 for some flowwwww. Was pleasantly surprised with the low prices on these products online (vs $50/each I saw in LFS)

So at this point I moved from stock everything to inTank basket (floss / chemipure / purigen), inTank fuge, MJ1200, and Koralia600.

 

[Spendley]

FTS:

Rock 2 from PetCo; looks perfect for a YWG / Pistol!

The other rock I picked up on the PetCo trip, really liked the hole going all the way through and thought it would be fun for my inhabitants.

(^^i think this rock has had some coraline growing on it, will post a new pic once I get home to compare.)

After lunch: introducing corals and some new livestock!!

 

[Spendley]

Went out with a friend to LFS (Rick's fish and pets in Frederick MD), picked up a Royal Gramma.

My friend then sold me an awesome piece of rock covered in zoanthids. Some jokers and two more colorful ones. As well as a nice mushroom in the middle. This is my first piece of coral, it acclimated really well and was fully open within hours of sitting in my tank.

I love that picture under actinics, need to step my photography game up though, still using iPhone.

 

[Spendley]

This past Saturday, I started to get curious about little aptasia buildup on my branch piece of rock. Don't have a picture, but the small white looking aptasia, not sure if its even aptasia? Anywas, I was down after the Virginia Tech vs Bama game and decided some shrimp would probably cheer me up. Went to the store and got three peppermint shrimp.

Hilarious creatures, and incredibly rhythmic dancers as well. Above is Giancarlo, he's a superstar basically. The other two hang out on/in the back rock but Giancarlo is front and center quite often.

 

[Zero Nitrates]

Nice tank! Love the royal gramma.

 

[Spendley]

Labor Day: check Craigslist. See a guy selling a cube with a YWG / Pistol, so I contact him. No response. ; 10 minutes later my friend calls me tells me he's going to check out two guys selling coral.

First guy was about what id expect, 75g tank with a couple frags to sell off. Standard.

Second guy. Most impressive setup I've ever dreamed of. So fresh, so clean. 350g DT, 5x 30g breeder frag tanks, everything and anything you could imagine.

Got a frogspawn and acan from the first guy, and a Zoa rock, 2x monti, and something else I'm blanking on the name now argghhhh

Also, picked up a couple heads of hammer coral from my friends tank.
FTS:

Hammer:

So majestic looking.

Welp, that officially catches us up to date. Looks like I gotta go home and take some more pictures of the coral up close...

 

[Spendley]

Does anyone have experience ordering livestock through PetCo? I asked them about ordering a YWG / Pistol like 3+ weeks ago, haven't heard from them. Not concerned, since between those weeks I have added livestock, and I'll actually be traveling next week so now I want them to wait longer.

Wish list:
YWG / Pistol - Waiting to hear from PetCo / Craigslist
Stand - I want a larger stand than the biocube one, might take time to build my own if anyone knows of any nice builds let me know!
LED Lighting - $$$, $$$, etc. lol

 

[Flameback Pair]

You might try a Tunze 9002 nano skimmer for your Biocube I think that's the one that fits good.

I have 35 pounds of Petco LR in my 50 gallon tank and love it. A lot of the pieces are donut shaped with a large hole in the center and all my fish love to swim through stacks of them and in between the rocks. I bought it one piece at a time from petco. Now I'm going to buy a box of liverock online from them this winter.

 

[Spendley]

Yeah powers, I just don't like the purple look...idk why. Also, the Tunze protein skimmer has been on my mind for a while but I have both the inTank media basket and fuge in chamber two, which is where I believe the Tunze fits. Wonder if there are any ways to fit all three

 

[Breakthecycle2]

You can add the skimmer to the overflow. That's what I did when I had a BioCube

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Great start!

 

[Spendley]

Thanks for checkin it out guys! Here's a pic I snapped last night. My frogspawn was so happy it made me giddy lol

The dimensions of the biocube are really neat. Trying to make it so display from the side and front are unique...just need more corals!!! Ahhhhh

 

[Spendley]

Had to move the tank across the basement. Took less than two hours not bad at all, everything survived the move and what not. Caught the Royal Gramma trying to escape, gave me quite a scare.

Anyways, everything is doing great. Except my pockets at this point, because I just ordered Steve's LEDs. Does anyone have any experience switching from compact fluorescents to LEDs? This is obviously something you do during a lights off period of time, but should I gradually introduce them to the new lights since LED are so bright?