45 Gallon Reef Savvy

Jeeper · Jan 30, 2018

I wanted a tank for the bedroom and ended up picking up this cube. I really like it, but if I could do it over again I would have bought a corner tank. The seem in the front is kind of detrimental to viewing the tank from anywhere but right in front.

I eventually turned the tank so that the overflow was in the back corner.

Jeeper · Jan 30, 2018

Tried a few different designs with my rocks until I settled with what I have now.

Jeeper · Jan 30, 2018

I cooked the rock in acid to try and prevent the release of phosphates that I had in my 75 gallon and the hair algae battle that I am still fighting two years later. So far this tank has not grown any hair algae but I do get some bubble algae on ocasion (mostly on the foam guard for my vortech if I don't change it every two weeks). Getting it wet.

Glass was too thick for my MP10 and it would randomly fall off. I ended up picking up a MP40 and it stays on much better. I let it cycle about a month. Used a piece of live rock from my frag tank to help it along but it had some Kenya tree hitchhiker on it and now I have to cut that stuff out every so often. I had a 29 gallon biocube up at the same time on the other side of the room with 2 anemones and my pair of tomatoes. They only had to move about 8' on moving day.

So this is my sump before I moved the reefkeeper, dosing pumps from my bicube over(still cycling). I was cooking a marine pure block in my 75 to go in there too.

MaiReef · Jan 30, 2018

following. Looks good

Jeeper · Jan 30, 2018

I have a room in my garage that is basically a quarantine room/ mixing station RODI reservoir. Not ideal to have them close together but I use a glass top on my quarantine and treat prophylactic and the top of the mixing containers are higher than the QT so I am risking it for space sake (very rarely have anything in quarantine these days both tanks are pretty much full on fish). I helped a club member weld up a metal stand for his tank and he gave me an anemone split so I had it and some of the coral I was seeding in QT.

The room is not temperature controlled so I have to use a chiller and I had a fan set up blowing away from my mixing station.

Fish room is a mess right now (usually have everything organized and put away). Been training the file fish and copperband in QT to eat aiptasia as I am overrun in the frag tank and the 45. Peppermint shrimp have failed miserably. I think I am going to reboot the frag tank once my current crop of clean up crew is out of QT. I have been dropping empty snail shells and old frag plugs with aiptasia on them in the QT for them to eat.

Jeeper · Jan 30, 2018

After its was done cycling I moved the livestock and the frags into the tank.

Jeeper · Jan 30, 2018

So here is the tank today. My green brain has been destroying my rainbow acan and I can't seem to get it loose. I had splits on all 3 of my bubble tips and they would stretch out so long they took out about 6 different sps sticks on the top of my scape. I traded the splits away so I am back to 3 and I may move one or two to my big tank so I can put more coral in the cube. Stuff grows so fast in the cube I have been moving things from it to my 75.

Jeeper · Jan 30, 2018

Mama clown hides from the camera but will bite me if I stick my hand in her tank and she is bigger than the yellow eye cole tang in there now. I have 5 fish in the tank but the kole is the only thing you will ever see as the clowns stay buried in the anemones and I have a red serosa dottyback (also called the hidden grouper for good reason) that hides except to dart out at feeding time and a yellow basslet that behaves the same as the dottyback (maybe a little less shy).