biocube 29 mods

Ok, so I have some Phosguard and Purigen coming in the mail this week and two separate filter bags for them. I'm debating about where to place them in my tank. I'm not sure if everyone is familiar with the chamber layout of a biocube so if need be I can go take a picture. I was thinking of removing some of the bioballs and laying the bags on top of those underneath the, i guess you would call it a water dispersion tray, in the second chamber. Would this be a good location?

Also I was thinking of completely removing the bioballs and going for a LR rubble fuge with maybe some cheato. As far as getting the LR rubble, there is a LFS in my area, not big on saltwater, mostly freshwater, that has some rubble rock for fresh tanks. Do you guys think this would work instead? I saw this link, BioCube 29 - inTank, LLC , in a previous thread for mod equipment. Do you guys think that something like their fuge rack and media basket would make a good combo for my plans? And if so would that light they have be sufficient?

Sorry for such a long post but I just wanted to get everything done in one swoop. Thanks in advance.

 

Anyone, any thoughts or ideas.

 

Well, first off, the fresh water rocks should be avoided. They will be most likely silicate based rock. The live rock we use is Calcium carbonate rock. Silicates have been known to cause algae blooms... and algae blooms = bad. My g/f has a 14g biocube and we just took out some bioballs and placed the bags in the bottom of that area. That area is designed to cause a water drip to allow for gas diffusion. If you place the bag on top, the water will likely just fall down the side of the chamber. No oxygen in the water also = bad. It works really well though. I've also seen the fuge in there. good plan if you have the time to maintain it. Hope this helps. GL.

 

you said you got 2 seperate bags, but are they diff? purigen is really small and needs a much finer bag then phosguard. "the bag" i believe made by seachem will have to be used, you can use aquaclear bags for the phosguard.

 

The bags are a type of chemi-bag. Don't remember the exact brand name but I checked the size before I ordered them so hopefully I should be good.

 

I would get rid of the bioballs and use either Seachem's Matrix Biomedia or Live Rock. Bioballs just produce nitrates. They don't get rid of them.

As for the chemical media, I can't help with that since I'm not sure about the layout. You can't go wrong though, since something is better then nothing.

+1 on bag selection. Make sure you get a bag thats greater then 500 micron so the media doesn't find it way out of the bags..

 

I used 20lb of river rock, and 15lb of live rock. I did get some algae/diatom bloom, but it was nothing major, just a regular bloom like young tank.
Going river rock did save me tons of money though.