Diamond1
Valuable Member
Well here we go again! This tanks occupants have been around since 2013 when it started out as a 10 gallon nano. The tank was upgraded to a 29 and then after a move it was downsized to a 14 gallon cube. The cube has been running for almost 3 years and is a softie only tank. Mushrooms, Xenia, Zoas and a very large Toadstool leather. I still had the tank and all the equipment to set up the 29 but just never got around to it.
I was looking at the 14 cube and saw that there was no room for anything else, the corals needed fraging and the acrylic was looking pretty sad. Lots of scratches and a slight bowing to the front and sides convinced me that it was time to get the 29 out and get it up and going. I cured about 25 lbs of base rock and got a bag of Caribsea Special grade reef for a very shallow sand bed set the tank up and let it cycle.
For equipment I have an old Lifereef VS24 skimmer and sump and a 700 gph Lifereef HOB overflow. A 4bulb T5HO fixture with a built in timer, a Jebao wp 10 wavemaker, 300 watt heater and a hang on refugium/skimmer. I will be running the fuge without the skimmer since the Lifereef is a beast of a skimmer by itself. The return pump is a 600 gph Ebay special that I will be upgrading to a Jebao dc 3000. I also have an Ocean Revive t247 LED fixture but for now I think I'm going to go old school and stick with the T5s. This is as always subject to change and I may put the LEDs back.
At some point I would like to add some type of controller to the tank either a Neptune classic or a DIY Reef Pi system using a Raspberry Pi as a brain. But since the tank will be mostly softies with maybe a few LPS I figure I can get by with just dripping kalk and doing water changes
So enough rambling and on to some pics.
Here's the first set up of the 10 gallon
Here's the first incarnation of the 29
And finally the 14 gallon cube.
The 29 set up with some frags and rocks from the cube.
I was looking at the 14 cube and saw that there was no room for anything else, the corals needed fraging and the acrylic was looking pretty sad. Lots of scratches and a slight bowing to the front and sides convinced me that it was time to get the 29 out and get it up and going. I cured about 25 lbs of base rock and got a bag of Caribsea Special grade reef for a very shallow sand bed set the tank up and let it cycle.
For equipment I have an old Lifereef VS24 skimmer and sump and a 700 gph Lifereef HOB overflow. A 4bulb T5HO fixture with a built in timer, a Jebao wp 10 wavemaker, 300 watt heater and a hang on refugium/skimmer. I will be running the fuge without the skimmer since the Lifereef is a beast of a skimmer by itself. The return pump is a 600 gph Ebay special that I will be upgrading to a Jebao dc 3000. I also have an Ocean Revive t247 LED fixture but for now I think I'm going to go old school and stick with the T5s. This is as always subject to change and I may put the LEDs back.
At some point I would like to add some type of controller to the tank either a Neptune classic or a DIY Reef Pi system using a Raspberry Pi as a brain. But since the tank will be mostly softies with maybe a few LPS I figure I can get by with just dripping kalk and doing water changes
So enough rambling and on to some pics.
Here's the first set up of the 10 gallon
Here's the first incarnation of the 29
And finally the 14 gallon cube.
The 29 set up with some frags and rocks from the cube.
