Our first marine tank: BioCube 29

Karen

Karen

Copepod
#1
#1
Our daughter has been thinking about setting up a marine tank for a while, and so for her birthday we found a running BioCube 29 system on Craigslist (thanks, Todd!).

It has the stock filtration and the following livestock:

To our newbie eyes, it looks like we could use a lot more rock. Do you all agree?
View attachment 14696

And many of the corals are just sitting on plugs or tiles. This is probably why we lost a couple of Zoa frags in the move. They have landed in crevices, and are still open and alive. We thought we might leave them be a little longer before trying to glue them. Suggestions?

Thanks for reading! I'm sure we will learn a lot if we become active in the club. We will try to make it to meet you all on July 28, but have another commitment in the early afternoon.
 
Karen

Karen

Copepod
#3
#3
After moving the tank contents in buckets and setting up well into the wee hours, our nitrate test was at 60 on Wednesday and again today. We did a 20% water change, swished the top 1/4 of the Bioballs, and added an Acurel nitrate reducing pad over the tray in chamber 2 (over the Bioballs). Maybe we can learn some more natural ways to reduce nitrates. Since we moved the sand in buckets, things got stirred up in a huge way, so we thought we'd try the sledgehammer approach this time.
 
X

xxHLTxx

Detritus
M.A.S.C Club Member
#4
#4
First off, Congratulations on joining the community, and Secondly the tank looks good. Turbos can be rather annoying and destructive, for smaller tanks personally... i would totally recommend going to Elite Reef off Wadsworth and 88th i think, but i like their Dwarf Ceriths. 3/$1 isnt a bad price and i have a ton of them, cant get enough. For small tanks like that this will keep the hermits from trying to kill the snails for their shells and will keep your hermits in check for food. Rockwise, i had a 55g with over 300lb of rock so i personally go with the "never enough rock" excuse, but it all depends on what you want to grow/keep and what 'scape you are desiring, (ie. less rock more open swimming fish/hovering fish like fire fish/banggais, or more rock for more invertebrates and smaller species such as clowns, gobies and blennies)

As far as glueing the corals, i do and i dont, i know alot of people on the forums immediately after QT or dipping glue the corals, but i like to leave them on the plug and either dremmel the plug or cut the end depending on where i want the coral, and letting it take off on the plug rather than restressing of popping off and glueing/securing to a rock. If later on you decide to upgrade lights and change the 'scape that way to allow hard corals to grow up or an anemone to take over a portion of the tank thats also an option, nows the perfect time to sit and look and decide what you want to see in the tank down the road rather than have to fix it later on... in my opinion.

Again, Welcome to the Community, we are glad to have ya and im sure you'll feel right at home here!!

PS. the urchin is a Pink Pincushion... and will pick up whatever it really feels like and carries it around like a "hat." corals, rocks, plants...whatever isnt attached to anything or is light enough to carry, the urchin will until it is covered or doesnt like that object as much and trades it for something "cooler."
 
F

FinsUp

According to my watch, the time is now.
M.A.S.C Club Member
#5
#5
Welcome!
That tank looks like a great way to start off with this addiction... I mean hobby. Yeah, hobby. LOL

If your nitrates are that high, I would do a much larger water change, then 20%ers each day until it drops. But that's just me. Others may have better ideas.

I tend to place corals where I think they'll be happy and see how they do before I glue them down. But if they don't stay put there long enough to see how they like it, then I'll do a 'lite glue' that's easy enough to break loose if I need to. For glueing I like Gel superglue. Regular superglue doesn't work as well underwater.
 
CRW Reef

CRW Reef

Blue Whale
M.A.S.C Club Member
ex-officio
#7
#7
Re: Our first marine tank: BioCube 29



Welcome to the club and the awesome group we have, also glad you have found and and joined us! Anything you need or questions you may have let us know, as someone is sure to have a lead or answer for you.
 
S

searius

Cyano
#8
#8
Karen's daughter here! I'm Elphey. Mom bought me the tank for my 20th birthday.

We've been wanting a marine tank since we had a freshwater ~10 years ago, and never really got around to it.... so, we just looked at a post on craigslist, picked up, and rebuilt a tank all in one night!

We have made a post in the DBTC forums about two ~2' turbos we would like to give up for adoption. They do a great job at cleaning, but are bigger than we would like in our tank and I'd like to make more room for other snails, corals, fish...

We need lots of rock, as I am thinking of building a lot of rock up in the back and gluing all our plugs, disks, and triangles around, but we are going to wait a bit for the tank to balance before adding any new friends.

Thanks for being friendly! We kind of quickly jumped into having real tanks again. I have a 5gal hex with one dwarf frog, Gandalf the Green.
 
sethsolomon

sethsolomon

Hammerhead Shark
M.A.S.C Club Member
#11
#11
in my opinion you need some more rock. If you make the trip up to great white aquatics they have some tonga branch rock in stock.


BTW welcome to the addiction :p
 
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Karen

Karen

Copepod
#12
#12
I agree with Seth - we need to figure out the overall vision and get some more rock in there. We did another 10g water change last night and added Purigen. Hoping we can get the nitrates down soon, since we don't want to subject any new snails or other critters to a cycling tank.
 
W

Walkpraz

Cyano
#13
#13
Welcome! Tank looks like a great start, in addition to adding chemical absorbents (such as Purigen) I would highly suggest doing daily 20% water changes as Cindy mentioned in an earlier post. Being that large water changes are the only sure fire way to physically remove nitrates from the water column. This would ensure a decrease in nitrates if the source of nutrients is the suspended sand bed organics.
 
S

searius

Cyano
#14
#14
We did a 6 gal change on sat and 11 gal on sun.

Today
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 45

So, the nitrate is going down.

Will do another water change this evening.
 
Karen

Karen

Copepod
#17
#17
"Is there anything the rest of you would like to say about the arm that's *supposed* to be pointing to 12:30?

"Yes, Mr. Pistol Shrimp, I'm talkin' to you."

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2
 
S

searius

Cyano
#18
#18
We're up to:

Biocube
2x ocellaris
1x watchmen goby
1x tiger pistol shrimp
1x bangai cardinal
1x royal gramma

20gal
1x pink pincushion
1x yellowtail damsel
 
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