Return to Reefing

Ezreal · 01/20/2019, 12:48 PM

It's been a long time coming (at least 4 years now) but the break was much needed!

Let's just jump right in to it. 14g Coralife Biocube.

The hood was gutted and I cut a hole in the lid and put a piece of flat glass designed for a T5 and hung a Kessil 150w ocean blue over it. put some ceramic bio whatevers (little tube looking porous ceramic pieces) in my "sump" chamber. Smashed the majority up and made a mesh bag out of cheese cloth and the rest left whole for micro fauna. Waiting on some chaeto morpha which should be here by monday. Took my old reef rock bleached it a while back and cleaned the hell out of it and then let it sit in fresh water with a pump for a few days to make sure everything was reef safe.

Chucked it in then took 14g of salt water from a long established tank and used that along with a dead fungia plate that was sitting in his sump (it came with a clam that buried its self in the rock)!

Added 10 pounds of Fiji Pink Arag-Alive sand and started dosing microbacter 7. Been adding some old dry phyto a little juvenile fish food and reef chilli.

Tried testing for N but my API nitrate test kits are too old so I have to get some more. But that's about it so far. This has been up for about a week now. 0 changes so far. The clam is doing fine too which tells me a good deal, I feed him the dry phyto and reef chilli directly but he seems to mostly come out when the pumps are on which makes feeding a little difficult.

Will be adding a clown (+ small cleanup crew) in the next few days as likely my only fish for at least a year. I'm not a fan of fish aside from Shrimp Gobies and Mandarins and the tank just isn't close to ready for either of those.

I hope to eventually cater to NPS SPS and softies maybe a few LPS.

Ezreal · 01/20/2019, 01:00 PM

Probably gonna do a 1g water change today then do a higher dose of microbacter7. People say not to water change during a cycle but theres dust I need to remove from the sand and adding new water gives me a cleaner cycle. The cycle already should be EXTREMELY soft because of the established water + sheer amount of live bacteria and dry rock so I'm not too worried. I got a BRS value 4 stage RODI system for that nice 0 TDS fresh water for topoff and changes. Using Instant Ocean Sea Salt instead of their crystals. The crystals had a lot of negative feedback but the Sea Salt has some good reviews and has a nice amount of desired specs. Probably will get Red Sea eventually but this is good for now.

Any thoughts?

01/20/2019, 12:48 PM	#1
Ezreal Registered Member Join Date: Feb 2015 Location: Florida Posts: 1	Return to Reefing It's been a long time coming (at least 4 years now) but the break was much needed! Let's just jump right in to it. 14g Coralife Biocube. The hood was gutted and I cut a hole in the lid and put a piece of flat glass designed for a T5 and hung a Kessil 150w ocean blue over it. put some ceramic bio whatevers (little tube looking porous ceramic pieces) in my "sump" chamber. Smashed the majority up and made a mesh bag out of cheese cloth and the rest left whole for micro fauna. Waiting on some chaeto morpha which should be here by monday. Took my old reef rock bleached it a while back and cleaned the hell out of it and then let it sit in fresh water with a pump for a few days to make sure everything was reef safe. Chucked it in then took 14g of salt water from a long established tank and used that along with a dead fungia plate that was sitting in his sump (it came with a clam that buried its self in the rock)! Added 10 pounds of Fiji Pink Arag-Alive sand and started dosing microbacter 7. Been adding some old dry phyto a little juvenile fish food and reef chilli. Tried testing for N but my API nitrate test kits are too old so I have to get some more. But that's about it so far. This has been up for about a week now. 0 changes so far. The clam is doing fine too which tells me a good deal, I feed him the dry phyto and reef chilli directly but he seems to mostly come out when the pumps are on which makes feeding a little difficult. Will be adding a clown (+ small cleanup crew) in the next few days as likely my only fish for at least a year. I'm not a fan of fish aside from Shrimp Gobies and Mandarins and the tank just isn't close to ready for either of those. I hope to eventually cater to NPS SPS and softies maybe a few LPS.

01/20/2019, 01:00 PM	#2
Ezreal Registered Member Join Date: Feb 2015 Location: Florida Posts: 1	Probably gonna do a 1g water change today then do a higher dose of microbacter7. People say not to water change during a cycle but theres dust I need to remove from the sand and adding new water gives me a cleaner cycle. The cycle already should be EXTREMELY soft because of the established water + sheer amount of live bacteria and dry rock so I'm not too worried. I got a BRS value 4 stage RODI system for that nice 0 TDS fresh water for topoff and changes. Using Instant Ocean Sea Salt instead of their crystals. The crystals had a lot of negative feedback but the Sea Salt has some good reviews and has a nice amount of desired specs. Probably will get Red Sea eventually but this is good for now. Any thoughts?