Allie's BioCube 29 Build

[fishiegirl]

So I finally got around to getting a second tank to go along with my 18 gallon reef tank. I really wanted an all in one tank because I love having all of the electrical equipment hidden. I wish I had done this with my first tank. I thought of trying to customize a tank by adding a false wall and so on to save some money, but in the end I decided to go with the BioCube 29 and I couldn't be more excited.

I just bought the tank today, so it might be a little early to start a thread, but oh well I have the tank and stand assembled, so now I'm working on figuring out what mods I want to do. The bioballs are already out and will be replaced with live rock rubble and cheato when the time comes. I've also switched the actinic and regular bulb so that the fans turn on with the actinic bulb (which will be the first to come on in the morning). I plan on taking out the false bottom in the first chamber to cut down on detritus. So far i think that's it on the mods.

Some more details for the tank- bottom will be sand; plan on having a reef tank with mostly softies and zoas, maybe some LPS; most of the rock with be dry rock to start; for fish I'm thinking a pair of clowns and some other small fish (but this is all very preliminary, I have months to go before it's fish time)It's to early for pics, but once I got some water in the tank (hopefully tommorrow) I will start adding some.

The last time I set up a tank was with my dad, and this time I'm doing it all on my own . So if any one has any thoughts or suggestions, I would love to hear them.

[fishiegirl]

I decided to add a few pics after all. Sorry they're a little blurred, I took them on my phone so I could text pictures to my mom.

Laying out the screws and such...


Starting to set up the stand....


Finished product with LEDs on...


All the lights on...


So far I like it, the tank fits perfectly between the windows. Plus, I think the LEDs will look awesome at night once there's some stuff in the tank. The only issue is there's a short circuit in the wire for the LEDs, and I need to find a fix for that. I'm calling Oceanic tomorrow about it, but if anyone has another idea, let me know. Thanks!

[cherubfish pair]

Nice start. You've got enthusiasm girl. I'd love to see pictures of your 18 gallon.

[roneil]

looking good.

[fishiegirl]

FTS


Cabbage leather


Purple psuedo and frags

[fishiegirl]

I don't know why some of the pics are big and others aren't... I'll try to figure that out soon. I'm to busy planning what I want to do with my new tank to worry about picture size

[pktech]

I'm likin' it too! Thanks for sharing your handi work

[fishiegirl]

Got my dry rock.... about 25 lbs of it!! So of course this meant I spent hours playing with them trying to figure out the best aquascape. And here are some pics of my favorite.

Front


Left side


Right side


Now it's time to take all that rock back out of the tank and wash it. I'm guessing I'll never get them back the way they are now, but oh well. I'm also washing the tank and all its parts tonight in preparation for.... Filling the tank!! Which should happen tomorrow. Assuming it stays full overnight (no leaks or cracks), I'll be adding saltwater, and maybe even sand/ dry rock on Sunday depending on how quickly it goes. Which means live rock on Monday, and then a super long wait before adding anything else to the tank. Luckily I have my 18 gallon to act as a frag tank so I can start making some purchases for my biocube

[Kevin_Bullis]

nice build you got going, keep it up!

[fishiegirl]

Thanks for the compliments! I'll try to keep this fairly up to date with the tank progress and such. I know I looked at a ton of threads to figure out how I wanted to do this tank, and I know I will look at a ton more for help before I'm done. So, I figure the least I could do is share what I'm up to in case it helps someone in the future.

[maximusmarine]

Nicely done

[robot2222]

looks good . i really like your 18 gallon and i am sure the bc29 will even be better. i will be tagging along good luck keep the pics coming .

[cherubfish pair]

I had a purple psuedo and it was mean. That fish's color is the meaning of the word magenta, nice one too.

[fishiegirl]

Right now he's the only fish in the tank bc I am worried he will harass any other fish I put in. I'd trade him back to the LFS, but I like him to much at this point to do that. Since I'm going to have a new tank up and running in a month and a half I think I'm just going to hold off on getting any more fish. I'd like to add a clown in that tank and my new one. So, my plan is to eventually try a clown in the 18 gallon with the psuedo, and if its an issue the clown will get moved to the biocube.

[fishiegirl]

Sand, rocks and water are all in. Assuming the temperature and salinity are correct tomorrow, I'll be adding live rock. Once the water clears up I will post some new pics.

[fishiegirl]

While I have some spare time, I figured I'd go into some details about what I've done so far.

Dry Rock/ Sand- I have some really cool dry rock (about 20 lbs of it) that I know would make great caves for fish to hide in. The only issue was that all the holes were really low in the rock, so once I put sand in they would have disappeared. Putting the rock on top of the sand wouldn't work; at best it would just settle and cover up the holes and at worst the rock work could collapse and kill livestock. So to fix this I bought some plastic eggcrate, cut a few peices, stacked them on top of each other in the bottom back half of the tank, and then filled it with enough sand to just barely cover the eggcrate. The front half of the tank is only sand, no egg crate to get in the way of any critters. The egg crate raised the rock up about an inch and a half which was perfect. I've got the aquascape done... and I think I like it. But we'll see how I feel about it in a few days. Silly me forget to take pics before putting the water in, and I'm still waiting on it to clear up enough to take pics.

Water- Filled the tank with fresh water first to make sure there were no leaks. There weren't any. Which means I now get to convert about 25 gallons of water to saltwater... in the tank... which will suck. I've been taking out a pitchers of water, mixing in a bunch of salt, and then pouring it back in the tank. I don't want to just dump salt in the tank because I feel like it would take way to much time to dissolve. Though now that I think about it, I'm not sure this way is much quicker. I also needed a way to get water from 65 degrees up to 80. Surprisingly, this happened much quicker than I thought. I bought a marineland 100 watt heater, stuck in the tank, turned the heater up to 86 degrees and left it there for a few hours. I came back and the temperature was just a tad above 80. Much faster than I ever thought I could heat the water. The heater is set at 80 now, although it might need to go down to accommodate heat from the lights.

Pics of everything will be up later/ tomorrow

[fishiegirl]

Without water


With water

You can't tell from the pics, but there is actually a lot more space between the rocks than there seems to be. In person the rocks look much less crowded. Tomorrow when the water is less cloudy I will get out my good camera instead of my camera phone and try to get some better pics.

[fishiegirl]

Dry rock after water was added


The water cleared up very quickly which was nice. So far no microbubbles in the tank which I'm very happy about.

With live rock added


I kinda just put the live rock wherever it would stay, and I'm not loving the look of it. But for now I figure I'll just leave it and deal with figuring out a better aquascape after I've had some time to think about it. The live rock doesn't really seem to have much life on it, other than some feather dusters and bits of coralline algae. So I will probably try another LFS and see if I can find one more really nice piece. A couple more lbs of rock would be useful to cycle my tank faster. Oh, and the thermometer won't stay visible. But for now its easiest to have it there so I can quickly glance at the temp and figure out the best setting on the heater to keep the temperature stable.

What do you guys think of the whole thing so far? Any suggestions?

[fishiegirl]

I've started making a DIY egg crate media rack to go in chamber 2. I know I will be putting filter floss in the rack, but I'm not sure what else to put in. I've heard of people putting chemi pure, purigen and/or activated carbon in their tank, however I don't really know much about any of these products. I'm researching them now, but if anyone has a suggestion on what to use, and what order they should go in, let me know please. I will also being putting cheato in the 2nd chamber at some point, if that makes a difference. Oh and once I'm done I'll post pics and explain how I made it.

[reeftanker3295]

Great job so far!
I started off with a 29 biocube too and I love it, I still have a lionfish in it for fun along with softy frags

[fishiegirl]

Built a simple media rack today. I originally was going to use just eggcrate, but then I realized acrylic would help force flow through filter media. So the plan became to build an acrylic frame, with eggcrate shelves. I was gonna cut up acrylic and use silcone to connect it, but then I found this laying around my house.



It's an acrylic shelf that was in my family's office, but was no longer in use. I figured with a little work I could use it to make a media rack. So I peeled off the magnets on the back, and then scrubbed it clean. I needed a way for water to flow through the bottom, so I started cutting up the bottom with wire cutters I had next to my tank from cutting the eggcrate. It's not the best looking, but hey, it works and there were no special tools needed.



Next, I cut out a piece of egg crate that I could wedge into the rack, as well as a piece of bonded filter pad. Right now there is nothing holding the eggcrate up, because I didn't want to do anything permanent until I'm sure it works.




Here's what it looks like in the 2nd chamber:




The white in the first picture is a piece of dried reef epoxy wedged between the tank wall and rack to force flow into the rack. Eventually I will cut the tab between the two chambers to create more flow.

Also, I will add more shelves later. Since I won't be putting any more filter media in until after the tank cycles, I didn't see much point in adding more shelves yet. I figure I've done enough on the tank for now and can be lazy for a little bit

[fish77]

Your off to a great start! your tanks look nice (18 and 29) Are you planning on using a skimmer?

[fishiegirl]

Eventually I will get a skimmer since I really like having a good skimmer on my 18 gallon. But I figure I don't need one right now, so I'd rather save up some money and get a nicer one in a few months... or maybe as an Xmas present Also, that'll give me time to do a little more research and find out which one would be best. If you have any suggestions tho, I'd love to hear them.

[fish77]

Very smart that you are saving up to get a good skimmer it will save you in the long run

Just copied and pasted from another thread I just posted on sorry if its too long

Biocube skimmer
-pros- cheap,fits into the biocube without any mods to the tank
-cons-never really got this skimmer to pull decent skim, and you have to replace the airstone every few weeks/months (long term fees)
Overall I did not like this skimmer IMO

tunze
-pros- great customer service,great skimmer, good construction
-cons-expensive,sometimes finicky with water levels, and you would have to take out your bioball/fuge you have in chamber 2 to fit this skimmer
Overall this is a good skimmer

Aquatic Life Mini Skimmer 115
-pros-fits into the 1st chamber(not have to remove bioballs/fuge),cheap,pulls good skim,and the water level does not change much in the 1st chamber
-cons- sometimes hard to get the collection cup off without taking off the whole lid,tight fit,and you have to take out the false floor
overall good skimmer for the money.

In the end I think it comes done to a personal choice between tunze and the Aquatic Life Mini Skimmer 115 and what your willing to do mods,more money..etc. If you plan on having a heavy bioload i recommend the tunze. I have a light bioload so I chose the Aquatic Life MinSkimmer 115. so far its worked out for me, I get good dark skim and I still have my bioballs/fuge. sorry don't have any experience with the Remora. All the things I have said are opinions/experiences not facts.
Hope this helps

fish77

[fishiegirl]

Ok thanks a lot, not to long at all. The info is really helpful. I was looking at the Aquatic Life skimmer earlier today, and after reading this I think I will end up getting that one so that it will not take up the whole second chamber. Thanks again.