biocube 29 questions

[fishstick3]

Hi all,

I have been a member of this site for over a year now, but still seriously consider myself a beginner. Up until this point I have been working with a 12 gallon nano cube in my dorm room. Now that I actually have a real place to live I have made my 12 gallon my hospital/ play tank and we recently bought a 29 gallon oceanic biocube, with t5 lighting. I was hoping some of you who have had this tank might be able to help answer a few questions. I love the look and am excited for the upgrade but just need to work out a few of the kinks first.

1)the hood:
on my jbj nano whenever working on the tank there is latch to keep the hood up while you work, this tank you have to lift off the the entire hood and set it down ( considering I barely reach 5 feet tall this is really a chore for me)
Any suggestions?

2) Protein skimmer:
I want to get a good protein skimmer, I have had the biocube skimmer in my 12 gallon and I never really feel it does any good,
are there any small protein skimmers that can really do a good job, and if so where do you place them( where the bioballs go?)

3) lighting:
last but not least, we eventually hope to upgrade the lights to coral level LED lights, how easy is this modification to do( I know how to solder already)


Thank you all so much in advance,

Fishstick

PS: if anyone has any suggestions of stocking a tank this size, all suggestions are welcomed ( we plan on moving our royal gramma in but other than that and some snails that is all we have on the list so far:)

[fshaqrmman]

I ran a 29 Biocube very successfully for 3 years.
I replaced the hood with a piece of clear acrylic and added a 150w hqi halide with led moonlights.
As for the protein skimmer....I did not find one that I liked. I purchased the CPR skimmer that fits in the middle chamber, used it for 2 weeks, and discarded it. I could not get the micro bubbles under control.
Since the tank is on the smaller side, I had very good look with Purigen and Chemipure to replace the skimmer.
If I can find pictures of the top, I will post later this weekend.

[slowwrx137]

1)the hood:
on my jbj nano whenever working on the tank there is latch to keep the hood up while you work, this tank you have to lift off the the entire hood and set it down ( considering I barely reach 5 feet tall this is really a chore for me)
Any suggestions?

There's not an easy solution I've found without just removing the hood. Once everything is setup you wouldn't really need to remove it often would you? I set mine up a couple months ago and dont ever remove the hood.

2) Protein skimmer:
I want to get a good protein skimmer, I have had the biocube skimmer in my 12 gallon and I never really feel it does any good,
are there any small protein skimmers that can really do a good job, and if so where do you place them( where the bioballs go?)

The first thing I did was remove the bioballs, you shouldn't need them if you have sufficient live rock. I've got the biocube skimmer and it sucks, I've read good things about the Tunze 9002 but for right now I just built a media rack running chemipure and purigen along with weekly water changes.

3) lighting:
last but not least, we eventually hope to upgrade the lights to coral level LED lights, how easy is this modification to do( I know how to solder already)

If you know how to solder already its pretty easy, just kind of time consuming. I have the rapidled retrofit kit and i'm very happy with it.



My answers are in red. If you want to check out pictures of the media rack I built or the LED kit you can look through my build post here:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2091380