23g CCC build (the CCC stands for cheapy chinese cube)

So.........impatient from waiting to get my fingers wet and seeing all you guys lovely reefs on here. Coupled with pier pressure from my girlfriend.

"Oooooh but why cant we have those pretty pink bubble coral things in your big tank Luc?"

"That coral there is soooo pretty. Please can we get one for your tank!"

Ive succumbed to the dark side. Ive decided to set up a reef tank. :

However........ i wasnt going to risk financial ruin or heartache by making my (still yet to arrive) 250g tank into a reef. So a compromise was made.

She said i could buy a new tank, as long as i make it extra pretty and she chooses what livestock goes in it. But it has to be reasonably small.

She wanted piddly little goldfish bowls barely able to hold 2 gallons of water. I of course was trying to push my luck with 80 gallons +. SO another compromise was made. We decided on a 18" rimless cube with rounded corners that holds roughly 23 gallons. A happy medium me thinks

As for the rest of the equipment we just got it from the same shop, under recommendation of the person serving us. (sounds bad idea i know. But the stuff was sooo cheap and i didnt have enough time to faff about looking at all the products that i just went along with what she said. Besides she seemed knowledgeable enough)

I wont say the names of the stuff, as a lot of it is in chinese. So i just took pics instead.

Here is a crappy pic of the tank (i forgot to take a pic of just the tank on its own ) Cost - 55rmb


Heres the little skimmer (so far seems like a bag of cr@p tbh) cost - 50rmb


Here is the supposed "wave maker". Im yet to see it do anything different from a traditional pump. But hey....again it cost chuff all. Cost - 35rmb


Now this baby im impressed with. Three 24w 10k and one 24w marine blue T5's. Seems lighting costs a bit more than the rest of the stuff you can get at the market here. Cost - 400rmb



Here it is all 'set up' and ready for the next stage.


Ive done a freshwater, dare i say, 'dry run' Tehehe, and the skimmer is.......well........pap. But ill give it a chance as ive never actually set up a skimmer before, so it could be my lack of experience. (But at that price..i doubt it. lol)

Cost total: 540rmb = $79 us or 47.80 gbp. So well chuffed with that. Could have only just got the tank for that price in the uk.

What this space for updates.

 

Nice! The good thing about this "compromise" is that the tank is going to be hers, but I fore see you taking care of it......lol



Luna

 

lol......Oh, no doubt about that. Girlfriends/wives eh. Bless em

 

Wow.. $79 total? Nice deal... send me one to the states lol j/k
Cant wait to see water!

 

No kidding $79. I would have one in every corner of my house at prices like that.

 

good on ya Luc

I have the 6 x 80 watt Aquajapan canopy - swapped out the tubes to named brand ones which cost a bit more (peace of mind)

but the unit has been runing since Feb with no issues, so I am happy with it

the skimmer wont work in Freshwater, Luc , it might be a POS but you wont know until you have it in SW

the wavemaker - They are good also - they send the water out over a wider radius than normal power heads - so you get a lot of flow but well spread out

good shopping

Steve

 

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggghty oh. Well i feel a right t!t now then. hahahahah.

Good to hear the light i chose was a good'un. Do you think that amount of lighting is adequate for keeping some easy corals so i can shut the misses up?

 

I do indeed , shrooms, Zoanthids, leathers, colts, GSP, yellow polyps, LPS like bubbles, torches, etc - you'll be ok for a variety under that lighting

post the question on the lighting forum and you will get even more options Im sure.

Steve

 

Okay. So here is the progress so far. After filling the tank on friday night. I added the salt (currently stable at 1.024 sg).

I added the crushed coral sand saturday morning after rinsing it thoroughly. (Not live sand or anything. Just plain ol regular crushed coral)

This afternoon i went on an interesting little adventure to get some live rock. After searching around all the shops for some. No one had any in stock. One store was very helpful however and drove us to their headquarters/warehouse where they assured us they had some live rock. Oh boy did they have some live rock! There was a live rock storage pit in one of the warehouses almost as large as an actual ocean its self hahah. Unfortunately they wouldn't let me take any pictures. Booo!
But hey. nevermind. Ill be going back there to get more rock for my big tank, so ill do some undercover surveillance then. :-X

Oh...and once more. It was a brucey bonus! only equivalent to $1.40 per kg! So i came away with 22kg of it today. Well chuffed. ;D

Anyway... i've wasted enough of your time with words. HERE'S THE BIT YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!

Full tank shot.


a slightly closer shot of the rock work


Close up of the stuff stuck to rocks


some green stuff. (anyone ID for me please )


A hitchhiking snail of some sort. (fell/jumped off the glass when i went near to take close up pic of him)


Oh and i also picked this fella up from the store. He doesnt seem to move much though. :S do you think hes ok?


Oh and here's the skimmer in action. From what you guys can see. Does it look like A; ive set it up correctly. B; is it doing its job? There is a little bit of browner water in the up since i added the rock. So i presumed its working correctly. Only problem is. Im getting thousands of micro bubbles entering into the tank. Is that right?


Over all, im pretty happy with the set up so far. Ive spotted quite a few other hitchhikers apart from mr snail. About 3-4 tiny crabs that are too small and too fast to take pics of. Few tiny worms poking their heads out the rock. (again,too small for my camera to focus on ) And a funny little doodle bug earwig thingy, which was whizzing around the tank like her was on speed. So fascinating!

Any comments or suggestions of what ive done so far (right or wrong) will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Luc
(vice president of cube-land)

 

wow very impressive start. I am a huge fan of the aquascape. good job.