A new start - my 24g cube build

[Bonsai reef]

Thanks!! It's a Red Sea E-260, (total 81g), and I do a 5g water change every week and I dose Aquaforest Component 1-2-3 evry day, (120ml each). I feed Red Sea AB+ once a month. Feed the fish brine, mysis and fish eggs every 3 days.

cool. i have heard good things about AF component

 

[Bonsai reef]

Time for some action...

 

[Bonsai reef]

Water params look good so far with 10% weekly water change. Dosing ESV 2part so far from the leftover I have from previous setup.

Salinity-1.026
ph-8.0-8.3
Alk-7.7
Ca-430
Mg-1280
NO3 ~5ppm
PO4- ~0.2


colors are not that bad (blue only FTS)

 

[Bonsai reef]

Happy with the colors and polyp extension im getting so far. Dosing polyp booster 2-3 drops everyday and reef-riods twice a week.

and a side view

 

[GoReefin]

Looking great so far! What fish are you planning on adding?

 

[Bonsai reef]

Looking great so far! What fish are you planning on adding?

Thank you! I have added one neon goby and a royal gramma so far. Im happy with the temperament of these two. I may add one or two later (in a month). Not decided yet on what those would be. Given the size of the tank my options are limited.

 

[Bonsai reef]

1 month update of adding live stock. Tank doing okay so far apart from little GHA here n there.
Unfortunately lost the royal gramma due to ich.

Neon gobby is alright till now.

Did some coral re-arrangements

 

[Bonsai reef]

Been a while since last updated this thread. The tank is at about 10 months now with a move around 6 month. Its holding up nicely so far. Params are steady at Alk -7.7, Ca-410, Mg-1200.

Below are some pics in blue-

 

[Bonsai reef]

Tank is just over a year now so thought of posting an update. Couldn’t have been happier with the progress. In this build I had no major issues with water chemistry or cyano/dino. Had to deal with pest like aiptasia (few still pop up here and there) and monti eating nudis (dipping didn’t help long term so had to put a sixline wrasse and since then I didn’t see any nudis or tissue loss).

Currently the tank runs on filter floss, skimmer, some bio media and return pump. No other form of nutrient export. Feed the fish 4 times a day with 2x pallets and 2x frozen. 1x Redsea reef energy ab+. I do dose half the recommended dose of NoPox. Dose nitrate as needed to get some reading in the test. This tank has been chronically low nutrient from the start. Had remove the fuge around month 7 for same reason to get my nitrates up.

Dosing ESV b-ionic for big 3 and couldn’t have been happier with the ph boost it gives. Dosing 13ml each of part 1 and 2 currently. I get ph of 8.2+ consistently since I switched to ESV from Aquaforest comp 123. Magnesium i dose occasionally when i need to.

Below are the parameters has been most of the time in the past year

Salinity- 1.026
Alk- 7.3-7.7
Cal-430-450
Mag-1410
Nitrate-0.25
PO4-~.03

some recent pictures—

 

[trsmith18]

Solid work! Love to to see how it looks under the daylights

 

[Bonsai reef]

Solid work! Love to to see how it looks under the daylights

Thanks. I run a lot of white most part of the day. And blue only last couple of hours before ramp down. But I think unless you have large colonies of coral, the tank does not look that good under whites on camera. Lol

 

[Bonsai reef]

Update: One and half years and going strong!

below are some updates for my 24g at about 1.5yrs. Some corals rearranged and not much introduced. Letting the existing grow out. No major issues other than some aiptasias. Added a Jebao SLW-20 wave maker to add more flow as the acros staring to grow n block the flow. Dosing about 12ml of ESV B-ionic daily. feeding the fish 3 times a day. 10% weekly w/c. thats it. Running just a filter-floss, skimmer and bio-media in back chamber.

Current coral list:

Acroporas:

1. Oregon Blue Tort Acro
2. Big R Walt Disney Acro
3. CornBread Maleficent Acro
4. TSA Bill Murray Acro
5. Candlelight table Acro
6. Miagi tort Acro
7. Bali Green Slimmer Acro
8. Blue Stag Acro
9. Jason Fox Sour Twist Acro
10. Game Over Mille Acro
11. Paletta Pink Tip Acro
12. FHC Invader Acro
13. Unnamed green Acro

Other SPS:

1. Milka Stylo
2. German-blue-montipora-digitata
3. Bird-of-paradise
4. Red and Green Digi
5. Forest Fire Digi
6. Bubblegum Digi
7. Orange Setosa
8. ORA Green Birdsnest
9. Spongodes

LPS:

1. Indo 24k Gold torch
2. Pink tip torch
3. Green tip torch
4. Gold Hammer
5. Blue-tip octospawn
6. Red and Purple Blastos
7. Rainbow lord
8. Chalices
9. Scarlet and Grey Favites
10. Candycane
11. Red goniopora

 

[Bonsai reef]

As everything good comes to an end one day, my 24g nano reef did this thanksgiving, just short of 2yrs mark. It was without power for 4 days due to a circuit breaker trip when we were out of town during the holidays. My reef cam was offline being in the same circuit (mistake 1). My neighbor who has access to my home was out of town as well (mistake 2 - not having backup underestimating the short duration as I have left the tank for months on auto pilot without issues).

I could only guess what was wrong. Came home to a dead tank with water temp at 65 degrees Finding it hard to come in terms with this setback. I read so many stories of tank crashes to some accidents and wonder if its inevitable for this hobby with so many single point of failures.

Not giving up though. Determined to have something better and more resilient to such incidents.

Sharing some last photos I took of the build which was very near to my heart --

 

[Sniffingkrylon]

That hurts, it was looking so good. Sorry to hear that. My first tank ran for 2 years I went on vacation for a week and my parents who were watching the tank “turned the lights on” even though I told them they were on a timer. Came back to a fried tank, that was 10 years ago and I just got back in the hobby.

 

[Bonsai reef]

That hurts, it was looking so good. Sorry to hear that. My first tank ran for 2 years I went on vacation for a week and my parents who were watching the tank “turned the lights on” even though I told them they were on a timer. Came back to a fried tank, that was 10 years ago and I just got back in the hobby.

Sorry to hear about that. Good that you are back in the hobby

 

[Andreas' Reef]

And it starts again...!

Long story short...I had this 24g AIO cube mixed reef tank running from from May 2019 to July 2020 and then unfortunately had to take it down as I was not in town for a prolonged 8 months and the LFS care that I was relying on was not going much good.

This time I thought of documenting the build from that start.

Equipments:

• 24g Aquatop AIO cube with nano skimmer and return
• AI Prime HD+
• Jebao OW-10 wavemaker + Fluval sea CP2 circulation pump
• Hygger 100w thermostat heater with Inkbird cooling and heating controller
• Jebao DP-4 dosing pump
• DIY ATO with 2.5g RO reservoir
• Ceramic bio media basket & Marine Pure bio-filter media

Picked up a Tonga Branch Rockscape from local store...will go with a minimalistic aqua-scape this time (the back chamber media basket will be loaded to compensate) plus there would be crushed coral sand bed. SPS dominant tank is the long term view. Thus wanted to go with coarse crushed coral bed over sand so that I can crank up the flow later.


Dec 19th, 2020 - Tonga branch rockscape in empty tank below-

Dec 20th, 2020 - a quick leak test

Dec 20th, 2020 - Ready to get wet

Dec 20th, 2020 - The fish-less cycle begins with Red Sea Salt (blue bucket), Fritz Turbo start and Dr. Tims Ammonium Chloride.

Looks flippin' awesome