25 gallon cube reef in progress

razorskiss · Jul 29, 2022

So I'm starting my first into keeping coral with an invert-only reef in an 18-inch acrylic cube. The tank will sit in a corner and be visible from the front and audience left. I've started on the rockwork in three pieces and would love feedback:

My tentative thinking is to start primarily with zoa's on the center island and a few mushrooms that I can kind of move around based on whether they get along with the zoa's or not. If I see success there, I was kind of thinking of starting a micromussa garden along the arch on the right, some kind of euphyllia garden on the pillar to the left and will leave the high rockwork open for the possibility of introducing "beginner" sps way down the road.

Tuffyyyyy · Jul 30, 2022

Looks great

razorskiss · Aug 9, 2022

Forgot to post updates along the way, we bought a jbj pedestal stand and painted it in a bone inlay style since the tank is going to be in our dining room. I forgot to take pics of the sides before moving the tank, they're not completely visible anymore but we wanted to paint the sides in case we ever moved the tank. Here's a shot of the top which we painted as practice since it's not visible under the tank.

Then filled the tank

The front panel we wanted to spend extra time painting so it's off the cabinet currently.

Finally added a pair of pioneer ricordea a week ish ago and they seem to be doing well. Based on how the orange closes at night it seems like it opens fully, not entirely sure about the other one. Even in the frag tank at LFS it and others like it all look extra wrinkly so I'm not sure if it's happy or not

Now I'm just getting ready to trim the plugs and glue them to the rockwork on an island intended for shrooms and zoa.

Getting ready to pick up some more at Reefapalooza this weekend!

razorskiss · Aug 9, 2022

I'm trying to decide what to try next, I have some zoas coming from the tidal gardens summer sale, but I've also heard that some zoas can be finicky. Some lps that I want in the medium term include euphyllia (probably a mix of hammers and frogspawn because I want them to be able to grow into each other), either Blastos or micro lords, maybe a micro goni, and a candy cane.