Deane's Waterbox Frag 105.4 Build

Eric R. · Jan 25, 2023

2023... new year, new update Deane?

I'm picking up a used waterbox 100.3 this weekend I think, to setup a seahorse/soft coral tank. Very excited! I'll make a build thread once it's in my house.

dcal1985 · Jan 26, 2023

Eric R. said:
2023... new year, new update Deane?

I'm picking up a used waterbox 100.3 this weekend I think, to setup a seahorse/soft coral tank. Very excited! I'll make a build thread once it's in my house.

I haven't updated much because I was dealing with a really bad dino outbreak that killed a bunch of coral unfortunately. The fish and softies were fine luckily. I FINALLY got it under control with increased nutrients and a UV sterilizer but it was definitely a pain. I added a couple new fish, a melanurus wrasse and lawnmower blenny, to help up the nutrients a bit.

Gumbies R Us · Jan 26, 2023

dcal1985 said:
I decided on a pretty major lighting upgrade. I was running a couple of Reef LEDs that had originally purchased for a smaller setup. I had everything cranked to 100% to hit the PAR requirements for the SPS at the top of my tank and the white light was really too much. I replaced those with a Reefbreeders Photon 48 V2 Pro and I'm super happy so far. I'm only at 60% for the blue/violet channels and 20% white but I'm getting 300+ par at the top of the tank and around 150 at the bottom.

The lighting upgrade looks great!

dcal1985 · Jan 26, 2023

Since y'all were asking, here are a few fish shots. I got the wrasse from Dr Reef's and added it yesterday.

c_healy · Jan 26, 2023

Beautiful tank.

Eric R. · Jan 26, 2023

dcal1985 said:
I haven't updated much because I was dealing with a really bad dino outbreak that killed a bunch of coral unfortunately. The fish and softies were fine luckily. I FINALLY got it under control with increased nutrients and a UV sterilizer but it was definitely a pain. I added a couple new fish, a melanurus wrasse and lawnmower blenny, to help up the nutrients a bit.

Ah that sucks, sorry to hear about the dinos. Glad they are under control. What corals are doing well still?

dcal1985 · Jan 26, 2023

Eric R. said:
Ah that sucks, sorry to hear about the dinos. Glad they are under control. What corals are doing well still?

All of the softies...mushrooms, kenya tree, toadstool, etc.

Eric R. · Jan 26, 2023

dcal1985 said:
All of the softies...mushrooms, kenya tree, toadstool, etc.

Well, I know it's not as in style, but I'm partial to softies. Setting up a seahorse tank soon, so it's going to be mostly softies, macros, and gorgs.

Did any LPS or SPS survive?

dcal1985 · Jan 26, 2023

Eric R. said:
Well, I know it's not as in style, but I'm partial to softies. Setting up a seahorse tank soon, so it's going to be mostly softies, macros, and gorgs.

Did any LPS or SPS survive?

Sadly, they did not. The dinos I had seemed to be the very toxic kind and I'm honestly happy anything survived.

Seahorse tanks sounds really cool!

Eric R. · Jan 26, 2023

dcal1985 said:
Sadly, they did not. The dinos I had seemed to be the very toxic kind and I'm honestly happy anything survived.

Seahorse tanks sounds really cool!

Bummer. But yes, happy things survived! I would share LPS/SPS if I had extra, but I'm not at that point yet unfortunately. Though I want to get in the habit of banking corals with local reef keeping friends, and doing the same for them, so that if tank issues come up we have back-ups of each other's corals in our tanks. I might be ordering a lot of rock flower anemones soon if you'd want one. There's also a guy in Essex that has RBTAs available for $10 a piece, if you haven't heard and that's the sort of thing you might be interested in.

dcal1985 · Jan 26, 2023

Eric R. said:
Bummer. But yes, happy things survived! I would share LPS/SPS if I had extra, but I'm not at that point yet unfortunately. Though I want to get in the habit of banking corals with local reef keeping friends, and doing the same for them, so that if tank issues come up we have back-ups of each other's corals in our tanks. I might be ordering a lot of rock flower anemones soon if you'd want one. There's also a guy in Essex that has RBTAs available for $10 a piece, if you haven't heard and that's the sort of thing you might be interested in.

Oh sweet! Yeah, I'd definitely be interested. I have one rock flower anemone that survived, and I'd love to pick up some more.

Eric R. · Jan 27, 2023

dcal1985 said:
Oh sweet! Yeah, I'd definitely be interested. I have one rock flower anemone that survived, and I'd love to pick up some more.

Did you also lose RFAs to the dinos?

dcal1985 · Jan 27, 2023

Eric R. said:
Did you also lose RFAs to the dinos?

Luckily, no. I only have the one so far and it survived.

dcal1985 · Mar 12, 2023

BIG update:

I've been dealing with a really terrible outbreak of dinos off and on for the past 6 months or so since my nutrients crashed. I lost pretty much all of my coral in the initial outbreak since they seem to be quite toxic. I've tried everything and they go away temporarily only to return in full force. Raising nutrients, increasing flow, blackouts, UV, dosing: Pods, Phytoplankton, H202, MB7, DinoX...nothing has really worked.

It got to the point where I considered just getting rid of the whole tank but I'm going to try a complete reset instead. I'm either going to go with a rip clean, which I know is challenging with this size tank, or potentially getting rid of the sand and going bare bottom. I intend to update here but who knows if I'll maintain it.

Here is a full tank shot as of now. It doesn't look terrible, but this is after literally blowing off the rocks and sand every day. If I neglect that for even a single day, they are everywhere.

dcal1985 · Mar 20, 2023

Over the weekend I added a new GFCI outlet in my basement and built a simple stand for this 75-gallon tank that will temporarily hold everything while I clean out the display tank. I went with a double because I have some long term freshwater projects in mind.

Time to mix up some salt and get lights, filtration, and the heater running.

dcal1985 · Mar 29, 2023

Well...I woke up this morning to a flooded basement and a bunch of dead fish. Everything had been looking so good and I was getting ready to transfer back to the display tank. I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty gutted.