Dr's 70G Rimless cube Build Log

[bkoo29]

I will be getting 2 rw-8s. Thanks!

[DrPheel]

Originally Posted by Sandrock.e46

What kind of calking did you use?

at first I used some GE but after checking some patent numbers I decided I was not sure enought if it would be 100% fish save so I took it all out again and I used some GE construction SCS 1200. You can get it in white , clear or black and it is what most online fish store would recommend. Most glass / window shop should have this in stock and it cost me about 11$ CAD a tube.

here is a picture for reference :

[DrPheel]

Originally Posted by bkoo29

I will be getting 2 rw-8s. Thanks!

Great choice ! I hope you will be as please as I was with the performance.

Happy Reefing

[Ruskin]

Tank looks great so far. You did a nice job on the caulking.

Do you find your sump is big enough for all your equipment? I'm hoping to start a new tank soon, with similar dimensions to yours and was looking for sump sizes.

[DrPheel]

Originally Posted by Ruskin

Tank looks great so far. You did a nice job on the caulking.

Do you find your sump is big enough for all your equipment? I'm hoping to start a new tank soon, with similar dimensions to yours and was looking for sump sizes.

Thanks for the reply Ruskin ! I do find the stand is not the best footprint to put a sump but I made it work with my setup and with all the equipment I have ( Skimmer - return - 3 reactors ) its hard to move under there but I manage to make it work. I am looking into maybe rotating the sump to make its length run along the back panel to give me better access to the equipment inside the sump. For now all works well and I'm not too annoyed (yet).

[drstratton]

Nice build! The shelf rock is very nice, you will have lots of room for corals. I love the lights, I would love to have the ability for the dawn to dusk setting. I will be following along to see your progress!

[DrPheel]

Originally Posted by drstratton

Nice build! The shelf rock is very nice, you will have lots of room for corals. I love the lights, I would love to have the ability for the dawn to dusk setting. I will be following along to see your progress!

Thanks Dr Stratton ! I will do a update this weekend since lots has happened since but I have had no time to sit down and type a good update the dusk to dawn effect is in fact one of the options that pushed me to fork out a few more bills for some good lights. and with the deal I found online , I could not say no to those lights!

Best of luck to you and happy reefing !

[DrPheel]

Hello RC !

Hope you guys n' gals are having a nice weekend, I have not been that active recently due to other projects but the tank is doing GREAT!

I have only added frags since , and I started stacking them up and buying bigger coral rocks to frag them and sell them off to fellow hobbyist. I hope this will eventually create a small budget for me to buy and trade more corals with a small initial investment. I have decided to sell the ATO as with my central air unit properly configured I can now have less then 500ml of evaporation from morning to night making the top off easy and convenient. I also like keeping this in my routine as It forces me to double check salinity and the overall tank system everyday for something I would find out of line.

I found a great deal on a local forum for a 20 gal long reef with LR , corals , skimmer , pumps , Maxspect razor 160w and a 1/10 HP chiller !! all this for 300$CAD

I gave the system to my friend to run a frag tank so we can propagate corals together and I ended up selling the light and chiller and I was able to double up on my investment I also try to step up my lighting game by replacing one of the 120w razors with the 160w ... It was wayyyy to much light , even after I swapped the middle reflector with a 120 Degree one. The 2x 120w units are more then enough with the 120 Degree reflectors. I also got a few goodies like a PH meter prob, a good quality refractometer, a kent marine pro-scraper and 2x Hanna test kits (phos and Alk) I need to get new reagent for both but I think they are a nice upgrade from the API guessing tests :P

Other then that my rocks are starting to color up with green/brown and I try to do a few water changes a week to keep Phos down from the dry rock I started the tank with. Not sure where my phos is at but I have noticed much less window cleaning since I replaced my PO4x4 after a month of use ( think it was getting saturated ) Skimmer is working wonders although my bio-load is not that much for now so I get a nice 2 inches of semi dry skim every 3-4 days. and all other parameters are spot on ! only testing Ammonia - Nitrate and Nitrite atm.

Hopefully this week I will get some nice pics with my new phone for you guys when I get the big load of frags from a online order and from the system part out me and my friend fragged

Happy Reefing RC

[Ruskin]

Nice, that does sound like a bit of a steal at $300.

Where abouts did you order online from? We as Canadians obviously have far fewer options, so I was just curious.

Things sound good, looking forward to seeing some pictures though

[DrPheel]

Originally Posted by Ruskin

Nice, that does sound like a bit of a steal at $300.

Where abouts did you order online from? We as Canadians obviously have far fewer options, so I was just curious.

Things sound good, looking forward to seeing some pictures though

Hello there fellow Canadian reefer ! Last order I did was trough Canada coral ! They have great customer service and great selection, I was skeptical to place a online order for the first time and I was very happy with the outcome! 50% accurate pictures and descriptions. Why 50% ?? The corals looked so much better then on the webpage pictures , I had to pull up my order to compare and make sure they did not send me more expensive corals .... Not that they could of made a mistake with the great packaging and labeling. Even the 10$ zoo frag I got to lower my shipping cost is putting 80% of my current collection to shame . Great packaging and fast delivery. I would blindly order from them over the phone without seeing any pictures, you will not be disappointed. It is the only online retailer I have dealt with and If I lived in Toronto like you I think my credit cards would be maxed out and id be living in a shed I am from Ottawa and we sometimes rent a car to drive down to toronto and go on coral shopping spree it is a central hub for all imports and the price are so much better !

Stay posted and I should have a update Wednesday morning

[Ruskin]

Originally Posted by DrPheel

Hello there fellow Canadian reefer ! Last order I did was trough Canada coral ! They have great customer service and great selection, I was skeptical to place a online order for the first time and I was very happy with the outcome! 50% accurate pictures and descriptions. Why 50% ?? The corals looked so much better then on the webpage pictures , I had to pull up my order to compare and make sure they did not send me more expensive corals .... Not that they could of made a mistake with the great packaging and labeling. Even the 10$ zoo frag I got to lower my shipping cost is putting 80% of my current collection to shame . Great packaging and fast delivery. I would blindly order from them over the phone without seeing any pictures, you will not be disappointed. It is the only online retailer I have dealt with and If I lived in Toronto like you I think my credit cards would be maxed out and id be living in a shed I am from Ottawa and we sometimes rent a car to drive down to toronto and go on coral shopping spree it is a central hub for all imports and the price are so much better !

Stay posted and I should have a update Wednesday morning

That's fantastic. I'm glad you were THAT happy with them. Yea, Im lucky that I'm close enough to the city that its far more convenient to drive in and pick things out. Funny enough though, most of my equipment/dry goods were purchased online as you can save a decent amount by shopping around, as im sure you are aware.

[DrPheel]

Originally Posted by Ruskin

That's fantastic. I'm glad you were THAT happy with them. Yea, Im lucky that I'm close enough to the city that its far more convenient to drive in and pick things out. Funny enough though, most of my equipment/dry goods were purchased online as you can save a decent amount by shopping around, as im sure you are aware.

Indeed , most of my stuff comes from pets n' ponds in Strathroy, Ontario ! the stuff I buy local is what I need right then and now and some livestock Unfortunately our dollar is not that strong and with the custom changes on import you either end up loosing or close to what you pay locally or at a Canadian online retailer. That deal was in fact a steal for 300$ but the seller on the forum had one request ... that the deal for this price would also provide a good home for his 7 year old matted and spawning clowns and the possible shipping of them to BC when he settles in next year in his new house. for now they are in my friends frag tank and we will try to setup a small tank with a clay pot and try to get them spawning again

What shops do you like to go to in the GTA area ?? idk like to know and look them up for my next trip !! and where do you get your online stuff ?

[DrPheel]

Hey RC !! was kind of busy lately so here is a nice update on the Cube !

Nothing is new in the fish department other then a small purple fire fish , One of my favorite fishes. It was chilling in the open with the clowns but as soon as the gramma saw him it was a territorial game. I did see him a few times bolting for him when he seems him out in the open but if it gets too aggressive I will try and trap him out

Fire Fish and clown :


Fire FIsh ( I hate that he is now afraid to be in the open like this ) :


Sometimes my darwin thinks hes a hermit :



As for corals tho , I have been a little more active. I found a online retailer that offered good prices and shipping to Canada so I decided to buy for about 300$ of frags ranging from 10$ to 30$ (most of the ones over 20$ were for my personal display) but I sold all the others for 20$ a pop and made a nice profit that I could spend back at my LFS for some more interesting stuff. I had some leftovers that no one wanted but my LFS bought them back for in-store credits . I found out I have a addiction to acan's (lords only) and chalices , Have a few new ones also that I will update close to the weekend once they are acclimated to the LEDS! and I also got a new phone that takes much better pictures of the tank so please enjoy them and I will post again before the weekend to let you guys see what i'm up to!

Most of what is on the sand is what I had for sale / trade and the frag rack is to acclimate my corals slowly to light before placement in the tank :





Some nice chalices:

same one munching on some reef roids !




Full tank shot :

[DrPheel]

Hi RC ! Long time no post :P and also happy Thanksgiving to my American readers.

Things have been going great with the new fish, The royal gramma is leaving the purple fire fish alone now and they are sometimes in the same areas of the tank with no sings of aggression. I have had a few bumps in my road as I had my Refractometer die on my for some unknown reason, lucky for me I was able to pick it up quickly before I could do any bad water changes. It somehow always reads 1.027 no matter what water I test (not RODI obviously). It all started after I sold some corals right after my last water change and the last time my meter has worked , I had to use my tank water to bag the corals since I had no premix. I then topped off my sump to my regular 9in line to know i had compensated for evaporation and that I had the correct salinity and then I could just mix up salt and compensate for what was used in the coral sale. after adding half the salt to my WC bin , I then tested the water and notice it was already at 1.027 ... strange thing was I only had half the salt in, so then i tested my tank water ... also 1.027. At that point I knew something was wrong because I was supposed to be at 1.025 or less. I then pulled out my trusty hydrometer and I was indeed at 1.024. Try to calibrate the refractometer and still reading the same after :/ Oh well! time for some new tank gear :P I have also noticed a few patches of GHA on my base rocks. It is not spreading but it seems to have secluded itself to 2x quarter size patches that I pull and brush when I do water changes. I have since then changed out my Po4x4 and started to skim a little wetter to help control the growth I know my system is not 100% phosphate free ( from what the test kit cant see ) so I try to do regular RODI water changes and keep my sand bd stirred and I blow my rocks with a tucker baster. Other then that I have not did much then to let the frags grow and placed them a bit on my workwork as I try to remove plugs and glue them to the rock because I dislike when you see the plugs in the rockwork. I will soon start setting up the top mound and place all my SPS that I am keeping. Here are a few update pics so please enjoy and stay tuned for more

Acane's / Micromussa / Chalice / Rhodactis / Zoos / Goniopora


Few Chalices and a Cyphastrea

[DrPheel]

Happy New year RC ! Hope everyone is doing well and had nice holidays

I have not got anything new for the tank at the time being. Still trying to keep my Po4 down and I was able to get them from 0.40 to 0.10 since the last post (Hanna checker). Now you will say OK you got you Po4 under control with some snake oil and strange voodoo rituals but the real question is what got it in the tank in the first place ? well a few months before the issue I started feeding my corals 2 times a week with reef-roids and polyp booster to initiate feeding responce. I was also soaking my fish food in Selcon around the same time i started the reef-roids ritual. I was also not rinsing my frozen food to thaw it and I was told this is also another source of Po4. I have since cut down the feeding of corals to once every 2 weeks but i still dip my food in 2 drops of Selcon before feeding every other day.

As for media / mechanical solutions I notice that my Po4x4 was not tumbling that much in the BRS dual reactor. I proceeded to up the flow causing a mild simmer of the media on the surface and making sure it does not move too quickly but still stays in motion and not clumping. My second modification was to up the flow in my BioPellet reactor as well. I noticed a dead spot in the back that I was not able to see without jamming my head all the way in the cabinet. If I don't see it drop constantly over the next few weeks I will try and put a bag of Kent Po4 sponge media in the sump and try to export some excess po4. other option will be Phosphate RX to bind the po4 and extract it with good skimming and water changes. I did start to skim a tad wetter than what I'm used too keeping a close eye on salinity level.

Hopefully this was just a few bad habits and the parameters will fall back in check in the next few weeks

That's it for now RC ! Happy new years and best of luck and health to you , your families and reef tank projects

[rattler]

I just read your journey and I really like the set up you have there!

[DrPheel]

Originally Posted by rattler

I just read your journey and I really like the set up you have there!

Thanks for the reply ! I'm glad you enjoyed the read and tag along for some more great updates

[jraker]

seems to be coming along nicely. keep up the good work

[DrPheel]

Originally Posted by jraker

seems to be coming along nicely. keep up the good work

Thanks for the support mate

[Solevento]

Looking good!

[DrPheel]

Happy Monday RC ! Past few weeks have been a nice improvement on the phosphate issue. I was able to rid the tank of all algae and get my phosphates at a stable 0.05 (Hanna Egg Checker) and here is what I did to get everything back as it was. I started to change my filter sock every 3-4 days instead of every 7 days when I did my WC. I also manually siphoned and scrubbed all visible algae and took out movable rocks to brush them in my WC bin. I was able to get rid of 99.0% of all algae in the tank and this led to a boom in P04 since nothing was consuming it now that the algae was gone. The Po4 shot up from 0.10 to 0.24. My Po4X4 went hard at binding the extra nutrients available but ended up exhausting at around 0.16. I had this media for the last month or so and I decided to swap it out for a fresh batch. I was able to source my media fairly quickly and I did notice something interesting.... In my mind , PO4x4 was a dark pellitised media that REEKED of a disgusting smell... well in fact I think that was just a bad batch since this is only the second 500ML bag I buy and my initial thoughts on the product were the ones I made on the first purchase. Well I think it went bad or it was just a bad batch as the new media I got was very light in color and also did not smell nothing !! I swapped out for the same amount (1 cup) set the flow , and left it there for a day. After my testing the next day ... WOW .. already at 0.05 !! Now i truly know this was a media issue and my first batch was total garbage Oh well , the more you know :P it has only been a few days since and I have not tested P04 since. I will wait for my scheduled water change tonight and test tomorrow

I also looked a the Maxspect Gyre XF130 in action at my LFS. I was doing all the flow in a 6x3 feet shallow SPS tank. Got me thinking about a possible future upgrade if I can sell my 2x rw-8's

I celebrated with a few new frags from the LFS ! I got a few nice SPS and also a nice green monti w black polyps. Please enjoy the pictures and a nice comparison shot of my chalice over the last few months. Stay tuned for a end of week update on the P04 battle

SPS Frags :





When I got it :


Now:

[DrPheel]

Good Afternoon RC !

We are now at 0.02/3 for phosphates after 3 days. I'm seeing good results with the new media and I assume the rest will be processed after the next week with a good WC. I'm also suspecting that the rock and sand are releasing PO4 slowly in the tank as I seem to have had a exponential removal of phosphate but I seem to have hit a plateau and not able to get down to 0.00. I have not seen signs of Nitrate so I assume my pellets are on top of the job and since there is no nitrates they don't consume phos either so I think my algea outbreak was caused by lots of bacteria die off since they now have nothing to feed on thus me removing lots of them. I'm seeing people dosing nitrates to get the pellets going and to mimic a higher bio load but I don't think this is the right way to do so. I'm planing on removing some pellets again untill i can see some nitrates . I'm shooting for low nutrients but it still want some traces for my soft coral, now the pellets are making it very low not processing them equally like they should. Since I don't think my bio load is very big I will maybe start adding a few fish untill i see traces of Nitrate and let the pellets go from there. Or depending on what I decide , I may take em offline completely until I have a big bio load that needs carbon dosing to keep in check.

Its great to lean how things work and sometimes no matter how much research and reading you do you kind of end up learning on your own at the end :P

Have a nice weekend RC

[DrPheel]

Quick entry in the build logs !

I went on my local LFS hunt this weekend for any good deals as I was looking to get a few nice SPS colony to frag and sell on my local forum. I did not find nothing to my liking so I ended up going back home and forgetting a bag of salt for my next water change. For the salt, I usually go to a large surface store that has a few saltwater items and tanks for livestock but I always find the selection and quality of fish very questionable. I noticed a sale for 20% off marine products and fish, I grabbed a box of IO salt , some replacement blades for my kent scraper and got everything back to the cash. I decided to head over to the tank area and look at what they have in stock for fish as I was actively looking to up my bio load in hopes of geting a light Nitrate reading to give the BioPellets a kick at processing the rest of the phosphate. Not expecting to be impressed I was blown away when I saw all the SW tanks full of fish! The clerk told me they had just got a order in before the big sale that started Friday.... but barely nothing was sold since they did not have much selection in the past and they are much more specialized in fresh water. I took a good 30 mins to scout all the tanks... Wrasses, gobies, clowns, fox face, cardinals, eels I could not believe how many strains of each genus they had in stock. I wanted to get 2 fish as they seemed very under priced and I would also be getting 20% off each of them. I had my choices narrowed down to 5... 6 line wrasse, canary wrasse, lubbock's fairy wrasse, high fin red stripe goby and a orange stripe goby. Knowing that I wanted 1 wrasse and 1 goby I chose to pick the smaller high fin goby because the orange was much larger and would of been bigger than most of my fish. For the wrasse I ended up choosing the canary wrasse because of its interesting sleeping habits and the fact he is a open water swimmer that I will see more often than the goby. Took a long time to acclimate them since the salinity at the store was very low according to the clerk. Fed the tank after 2h30min of dripping and I also dropped a few pellets in each bag to see what they would do with food. The wrasse was eating like a pig but the goby was not in the mood. Introduction went well but the gramma was causing trouble as usual, nothing major as I doubt he phased the wrasse. The goby used the distraction to excavate a open corner close to my frag rack. He later found a nice burrow at the back of the tank close to the overflow box.


Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to grab a few pics in the open for you guys and see how they respond to feeding.

Have a great Saturday RC

[DrPheel]

Hi RC ! TGIF

Everything is great since the new fish addition at the end of last month! The Goby is still MIA but i'm sure he will come out eventually. The Wrasse on the other hand is out and about everyday and living well in community. I have seen the gramma showing sings of hostility but it does not seem to phase him at all. Still no signs of Nitrate after 2 weeks of the new addition so I decided to run with 1/3 cup of pellets instead of 1/2 a cup. Hopefully in the next few days I will see a bit of nitrate and get the pellet bacteria eating again. Algae is completely gone and when i see some its either on the glass or on the rock where I can blow it off easily with a turkey baster since the water has low PO4 the algae has no grip to the rocks and is very weak. Corals are doing great , fish are doing great and I fragged a few SPS over the week to sell to local reefers ! should make a few bucks with this over the weekend and be able to go grab more nice pieces at my LFS and frag them again Gotta love a self sufficient hobby

I also have been doing some testing with Yellow and orange Flash gels for taking pictures. If you take a camera flash gel in those spectrum of colors , you can take pictures with full actinic's on and the gel will absorb the blue out of the picture. I will post up some pictures in my update next week as I think I will have nice stuff from the LFS to show you guys.

Have a great weekend and happy reefing RC

[mgoulding]

Following along