60 Gallon Cube; Starting Over.

Let me give a brief background on my experience with aquariums. I first got involved in this hobby when I was 7 or 8 years old and I told my dad I wanted an eel (I was going through an obsessive eel phase). So, of course, my dad goes out and gets a 55 gallon aquarium with some instant ocean, an HOB filter, about 10 pounds of live rock, some really old freshwater fluorescent lighting, and a cheap heater. A few days later he went out and got this eel from a small local pet store and put it in the tank. Keep in mind that my father had never touched an aquarium in his life. Luckily for us, that eel was practically immortal. He slowly grew so he decided to upgrade to a five foot 110 gallon tank using the 55 gallon tank as a sump in the other room.

Eventually as I got older I got more interested in the actual care of the tank and started getting involved in online forums. I realized that a water change hadn't been done in years and that eel could poop like crazy (there was no skimmer at this time, just some chaeto). Upon testing the nitrates they were way beyond the api chart which goes up to 100 ppm. From this point onward I slowly brought the nitrates down by doing 20 gallon water changes and bought a reef octopus protein skimmer and bought an RO/DI system. The eel died over a year ago after having it for about 7 years. Doing some research on the eel a long long time after it was bought I found out that it was a Brazilian moray eel. It was 2'6" when it died.

Participating in online forums and such I fell in love with the idea of building a reef tank. When I was 12 or so I got a 75 gallon drilled tank off of craigslist and used a 30 gallon tank I had laying around as a sump. I started out with a Bubble Magus skimmer, sicce voyager powerheads, and some DIY LEDs I bought off some guy in Pennsylvania. It was a tank with a very small budget and as a result I cheeped out on and half assed a lot of things. The tank actually did pretty well and at its peak I had a variety of corals, a few invertebrates, and a few fish. As a result of a few accidents and overall neglecting the tank, I now have a tank infested with bubble algae and all I have living in it are two percula clowns, a deressa clam, a few zoas, a brittle star, and a variety of hermit crabs and snails. I've been fighting the bubble algae for a really long time and it is simply hopeless. I didn't crack down on it until it was too late. Oh and did I mention that tank has a ton of scratches and that stand looks like crap and wobbles when people walk by?

After a lot of consideration, I'm downgrading. I am now 15 and this time I really want to start things off right and create a successful reef. My logic behind getting a cube and also downgrading is that 1) I find the cube look very attractive 2) smaller tank means less filtration, less light, and less flow, meaning I can get much better results within the realm of this tank with only a slightly higher budget 3) a smaller tank will be much easier to fill with color, which I look forward to.

I'm sorry for the terribly long background, I just wanted to explain the situation leading up to this point. Down to business. The tank is a Marineland 60 gallon black silicon cube with a Marineland stand and is fully plumbed to accommodate its 10 gallon sump and 10 gallon ATO reservoir. For lighting I have one gen 1 Radion with no TIR lenses, for flow I have two MP10s, and for filtration I have BRS filter bags and a small Reef Octopus skimmer. All of the rock is dry rock from Marco Rock. I REALLY don't want to end up with a bunch of unwanted pests this time round so I'm being extremely careful with what I add. I've introduced bacteria through live sand and Doctor Tim's One and Only (which I've used in the past and it works great). I'm planning on getting a ReefKeeper controller mainly to control the heater and monitor the PH, as well as store some reminders and other things.

The tank has been up and running for 2 and a half weeks now and the cycle is coming along nicely. I put in a piece of frozen raw shrimp at the beginning and have been testing ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate almost every day since. The ammonia slowly reached around 1-2 ppm. The nitrite took a while to show up but quickly shot up to about 2 ppm a few days ago and the nitrates have been consistently going up. From my tests today the ammonia is almost completely gone, the nitrite is down to around 0.4 ppm, and the nitrate is around 12 ppm. I'm hoping that the cycle will be over and that the tank will be available for life within the next two weeks. I'll keep testing.


Here are some pictures to give you guys an idea of what's going on:










Need to get the wires in order. :x




Any suggestions or advice are much appreciated.

 

WOW... i have almost the same tank. Mine is rimless and my sump is 20 gal. I also went with the Radion lights which i love! I went with the Jeabo wave maker cuz i was running short on cash!!! I love the tank. It has been running for about 6 months now and i am also adding things very slowly and carefully. If you do a build thread i will certainly follow!! Good luck! it will be nice to follow my "twin."

 

Thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to getting this tank going and I'll make sure to keep you guys update on pics and everything throughout the process.

 

tank looks great! You write very well given that you're 15! welcome to 3reef and looking forward to your progress.

 

Welcome to 3reef! Tank's looking great so far! I have a 45 gallon cube which is the same dimensions, except it's 6 inches shorter. I love the room to scape and it really gives fish room to swim. What are your plans for stocking?

 

Welcome to 3reef looking good..

 

I don't want to stock too heavily on fish.. Obviously I'd be moving my two clowns over from the other tank but before I do that I'd want to get a fairly cheap hardy fish to put in the tank first to make sure that it's habitable before I put my fish that I've had for two years on the line. I was thinking maybe a yellow hogfish. I had one in my other tank for a while and it was great fun to watch and ate really well but somehow managed to jump despite my screen lid. :| Other fish I was thinking maybe a diamond watchman goby, and a wrasse of some sorts. I don't want more than 5 or 6 small fish.

 

I just tested the nitrite and it appears to be completely gone. I've never had nitrite disappear so quickly. I'll be testing ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate tomorrow just to double check everything and make sure I wasn't getting a bad reading. I'll be running carbon for a few days to get any gross stuff out that might have ended up in the tank while I was setting it up and then hopefully I'll go and get a fish within the next few days. I'm certainly excited.

 

Sorry I haven't updated in so long. Last sunday I picked up this little guy and only a couple days ago was able to get a good picture.



I had some diatoms during the cycle that seemed to go away pretty quickly but now I'm getting quite a bit of brown and green microalgae on the rocks and sand. I moved a few snails over from my old tank and they have been munching on it but they can't really keep up so I might go out and get some turbo snails. I also tested nitrates and they seem to be nearly undetectable which is odd. At the end of the cycle the nitrates were nearly 20 ppm and over the past two and a half weeks they've slowly dropped to 0. Could the algae be sucking it up? The protein skimmer's been pulling a ton of gunk out of the tank but I know that wouldn't cause to the nitrates to go down. Also I'm using a salifert test kit for nitrates and it's always been extremely accurate so I don't think it's a bad reading.

 

Sound like you are doing all the right things blarg, including monitoring the nutrients. Have you done some water changes? Sounds like you are right that the algae/diatoms may be harboring the nitrates unless you've done alot of water changes. Also, anaerobic bacteria living in the rock can denitrify to some extent, though I'm not sure how big of a part that plays.