My New Cube - Definitely Improving

If money were just paper, we'd all have less cluttered desks!

I put a bunch of LR in the sump for filtration. My hope is to grow out really large colonies and let the corals fill the water column rather than the rock. We'll see how it goes.

 

Thanks! Its a Marineland 115 cube with a custom stand.

 

I give in. I'm giving a thin sand bed a try.

 

niiiiccceee!! just seems to add so much. love it!

 

That is really a nice looking setup..you should post some more pics of it.

 

Thanks for the compliments. I will try take some more and better pics this weekend. The best time to take pics is when the lights are on high and I'm at work for that. This weekend though...

 

The tank is 6 weeks old and Im seeing good growth on birds nests already. It has been cloudy for 2 weeks now, but is finally clearing.

 

It's been a while since my last update because, if you leave out that I didn't expect things to go according to plan, things haven't gone according to plan.

I cleaned my BK skimmer before setting this tank up. Sadly, I put the dispersion plate back on incorrectly. Small error, huge effect. It wasn't skimming properly causing the zeovit to cloud up the tank. Instead of checking the skimmer, I dropped the zeovit and switched to biopellets. That also didn't work correctly. It was only once the green hair algae and red slime started taking over the tank that I finally figured out the problem.

The good news is once I fixed the skimmer the red slime left, and the green hair stopped growing. Water quality was heat but my few frags were still seriously unhappy.

I think it turns out the light is a monster. I have the LEDs down to 20% and the t5s to 55% now. Corals finally seem to be heading in the right direction. Looks like I'm back on track except for a lot of diatoms and lots of remaining green hair.

 

Well, things are improving ever so slightly. The hair algae is slowly coming under control, the fish are doing fine, and importantly, I'm starting to see the first promising signs on SPS.

I've had this guy in the tank for months. On a good week he survives. On a bad, he dies back a little more. The last few days he is finally showing the first signs of encrusting. It's hard to see, particularly with an iPhone pic, so I've used the flash which makes it uglier, but a bit easier to show.



I also added a bird of paradise tester. Every few weeks I add a frag. Few survive the first week without showing signs of stress. This guy looks to actually be improving.



I'm a long way from great news, but I feel like this is the first week in a long time I've had more to enjoy than to fret over.

Oh, I decided I hate real reef rock and so far love the Vidarock from Cerameco.

 

Hey all. Just wanted to post a quick update. Things continue to look a little better. Here's a pic of the two corals above along with several others showing improvement. My phosphates and nitrates are negligible now and running stable.









Some day I'll learn to take decent pics. One step at a time.