Hannahrain's 60 Gallon Cube

[Hannahrain]

Recently got a great deal on a 60 gallon drilled rimless Marineland Cube. The stand was unfinished, no door. It came with an 18" Building An Obsession Cube Sump, Gen 2 Radions, MP10 W/QD wireless, 2 Jaeboa powerheads, Hydor ATO, Super Reef Octopus Skimmer SRO-1000 INT, and a few other things.

First part of this project was to finish the stand.

Before and After pic:

 

[Hannahrain]

Recently got a great deal on a 60 gallon drilled rimless Marineland Cube. The stand was unfinished, no door. It came with an 18" Building An Obcession Cube Sump, Gen 2 Radions, MP10 W/QD wireless, 2 Jaeboa powerheads, Hydor ATO, Super Reef Octopus Skimmer SRO-1000 INT, and a few other things.

 

[Hannahrain]

We completely re-plumbed everything, as I wanted to go with a Bean Animal overflow setup. The tank was drilled by the previous owner with a Eclipse L overflow box. WOW I didn't realize how expensive it would be to buy all the PVC and fittings needed! It took some messing with to get it tuned correctly, we tried to only drill a hole in the top of the secondary drain elbow but no matter how high we would set it, it would start a full siphon and empty the overflow... Finally bought one of the 1/4" push connect fittings, taped the hole and it worked.

We live in a small house, there is no better place to put the tank so yes, it's in front of a window but the thick wood blinds are always closed and the back of the tank is painted black, no no natural light will be penetrating the tank directly.

I worked on my aquascape on a piece of cardboard cut to the tank size 24" x 24", finally created one I liked and epoxied (I use Instant Ocean Holdfast) most of it together. Well once I moved it to the tank....it was no longer stable and for the life of me even with pics I could not get the non expoxied rocks to fit back with the ones that were epoxied. UGH plus being glass the rocks didn't get a bite in like they did on the cardboard. That was very frustrating. Now I see one of the benefits to using eggcrate in the bottom. Anyway took it all back out and expoxied

We tested the plumbing before with well water for a week just emptied and cleaned it out this past weekend, we have the water mixing.

Currently husband is working on a DIY mount for the Gen 2 Radions. It consists of a decorate shelf bracket with a 1" x 2" board mounted on top, in which the cables for the light will hang from. Previous plans were to use 2 brackets but we didn't care for the look of that.

We hope to have the tank cycling before the week is over.

 

[Hannahrain]

This is only our 2nd reef tank ever, first being a Fluval Evo 13.5 gallon AIO, therefore we are not experienced with a sump and all that goes with a system like this.

Plan for the sump is to have a refugium with Chaeto under the stock Fluval light from the Evo, if Chaeto doesn't grow sufficiently/better than competing algae, I'll invest in a better light.

The return pump is a Sicce Syncra 5.0, we didn't have much room for a manifold but did add 1 connection for a future reactor or other piece of equipment if needed. So far we've been dissapointed with the Sicce in terms of sound. Our 1.0 in the Evo, is silent. This one being much bigger is probably why this one is louder.

We did use nylon hose to connect the pump to the PVC to help with vibration, we also are using the suctions cups and have the pump centered in the return chamber (it is a pretty tight fit though, not much extra room around the pump, though it is not touching a wall). My husband did do a little adjusting of the PVC since we dried out everything, none of the pipes are touching wood but they are being supported by plastic strapping so we're hoping that did the trick and it will be quieter once we add water again.

Update 9/10/2019- The Sicce Snycra 5.0 pump is really quiet, the only noticeable sound from the tank is the water that's discharged from the skimmer, looking into how to quiet that down now, I see some skimmers discharge pipes are submerged to avoid the splashing sound.

 

[Hannahrain]

Added water on 7/25/2018 and over the weekend we added few small pieces of Haitian live rock and some Chaeto to the fuge.

My LFS said I should keep the fuge light running 24-7 and I've seen so many different opinions on this...for now I'm running it 24-7, if anyone is reading this and has any thoughts please share.

BOA sumps claims they don't sell their sump with filter foam in the baffle before the return because it isn't needed, I'm thinking I need it as the return sucks and breaks off small pieaces of the chaeto, just stuck some of the egg crate in there to keep it from getting so close to the baffle.

 

[Hannahrain]

The chaeto died or was dying when I removed it (falling apart and turning brown) the tank had a really high ammonia spike while cycling, I imagine it was too much for it.

Did get some diatoms in the sump around this same time and there was a little gha growing on the sides before I removed the dying chaeto and turned off the sump light.

I had heard different opinions on starting with a fuge at the get go or waiting until the tank was established some, from my recent experience it appears it's best to wait.

I've cleaned up the electrical cords since the above pic, much neater now.

7/29 I added some cycled matrix from the evo and additional new matrix in a mesh bag in the fuge. Could not justify spending more $ to buy Marine Pure instead.

Pods can be seen on the glass of the DT.

Tank is still cycling though, it's been 28 days since it was filled with water.

Parameters as of yesterday were:

Ammonia 0 (been 0 since 8/7)

Nitrite- .25

Nitrate- 60 ish

Bought a Aqualifter for the Hydor ATO and got that going this past week, it's working great so far.

The only set-up thing left to do is make the mesh top, I have all the stuff just hate cutting the frame pieces :mad:

 

[NY_Caveman]

The chaeto died or was dying when I removed it (falling apart and turning brown) the tank had a really high ammonia spike while cycling, I imagine it was too much for it.

Did get some diatoms in the sump around this same time and there was a little gha growing on the sides before I removed the dying chaeto and turned off the sump light.

I had heard different opinions on starting with a fuge at the get go or waiting until the tank was established some, from my recent experience it appears it's best to wait.

I've cleaned up the electrical cords since the above pic, much neater now.

7/29 I added some cycled matrix from the evo and additional new matrix in a mesh bag in the fuge. Could not justify spending more $ to buy Marine Pure instead.

Pods can be seen on the glass of the DT.

Tank is still cycling though, it's been 28 days since it was filled with water.

Parameters as of yesterday were:

Ammonia 0 (been 0 since 8/7)

Nitrite- .25

Nitrate- 60 ish

Bought a Aqualifter for the Hydor ATO and got that going this past week, it's working great so far.

The only set-up thing left to do is make the mesh top, I have all the stuff just hate cutting the frame pieces :mad:

Coming along nicely! The stand came out well too.

 

[Hannahrain]

Coming along nicely! The stand came out well too.

Thank you

 

[Lovemyreef2015]

I like your rock work. And great job on the stand.Following along.

 

[Hannahrain]

I like your rock work. And great job on the stand.Following along.

Thanks!

 

[GoPitt88]

Looks awesome! Great job! [emoji106] [emoji16]

 

[c.poindexter]

Nice build.

 

[Hannahrain]

duplicate post was here can't figure out how to delete...

 

[Hannahrain]

Update:



Wow it's been a year exactly since my last post, totally unintentional as I could swear I posted since then.



The cube has had high nitrates for the past 6 months 80 ppm. We didn't lose any corrals or fish. We did 2 large water changes the past couple of months and added some Brightwell Xport NO3 cubes. I tried manually dosing carbon (Brightwell) the first couple of months and the nitrates rose. Gave that up, as it really made me nervous anyway and soon we will be back to camping twice a month or so and unable to dose daily. The nitrates are now down to 20 ppm, I believe the high nitrates were due to over feeding and not enough regular water changes. I added a powerhead to the skimmer section of the sump to help prevent detritus buildup that had accumulated after the first big water change. Will soon add another in the fuge area as it tends to build up in there too. It's extremely difficult to vacuum the detritus from the sump as it's only about 3 inches above the floor height. I might try a shop vac next go around (read of others doing that on here).



The tank also ended up with hundreds if not thousands of vermitid snails. I put in several bumble bee snails about 3 months ago as they are said to possibly eat them and the vermitid population indeed looks to have decreased quite a bit. I also decreased my feeding quantity and frequency to every other day (only feed frozen) sometimes skipping 2 days. I feed the tang a half a sheet of algae every 3-4 days as it stopped finishing it with my every other day schedule. It picks a lot at the rock and glass and looks healthy on the reduced feeding schedule.



The stocking in the tank consists:



1 smallish yellow tang added 10/12/2018 (bought with knowledge will need to be returned eventually, to tang police: don’t bother)

1 skunk cleaner moved from my nano tank on 9/15/2018

2 phantom clowns (they are paired up)

1 green chromis added 8/29/18 (started with 4 but 1 jumped through small gap the first few days and cooked on top of the mesh lid (poor fish), the remaining killed each other off quickly until the 1 remained).

1 strawberry conk added 9/7/2018 -my favorite member of the cuc, it's constantly busy cleaning up the bottom and moves the sand around as it does.

2 nassarius tiger snails

4- trochas snails

a few certith snails

several bumble bee snails



We lost 1 very large emerald crab a few days ago....possibly to old age? It was just odd because about 2 days later, we lost a smaller one in our nano tank (doesn’t have nitrate or other known issues).



There is some green hair algae on top of the highest rocks, I’ve been manually removing. The 2nd batch of cheato in the sump died a few months ago when nitrates got too high (prior to that I was removing portions often, as it was growing well with this cheap grow light Amazon product). This light has been running 24-7 since 9/23/2018, very pleased with it for the $. The other macro-algae, caulerpa prolifera handled the high nitrates much better. Going to add a 2nd light to the fuge soon, to hopefully discourage GHA in the display.



There is very little coral in the tank, mainly frags that I moved from my nano tank. 1 frag of each: acan, grand paly, hammer w/2 heads, torch w/2 heads, gsp and an unknown frag. We've not added any fish or corals in past 6 months.



I've honestly not tested the other parameters other than salinity and PH since the nitrate issue started as I was focusing on that.... I do look at the fish and corals daily to check for any signs of changes, will test this weekend.



I'm not the most proactive reefer as we have too many hobbies and too little $. LOL… it wasn’t a wise move to get involved with reefing but it’s nice to have an indoor hobby as everything else is outdoors. I will try and get some updated pics this evening and update this post (thought I had some but can't find on my phone).

 

[Hannahrain]

 

[Hannahrain]

This is the mystery coral, any ideas?

 

[Hannahrain]

 

[NY_Caveman]

This is the mystery coral, any ideas?

Maybe a Goniopora, but I am no expert. A goni would have precisely 24 tentacles on each head.

 

[Hannahrain]

Nitrates came down to 5 ppm , now to stick to a regular water change schedule.

Bought a teeny tiny $15 RBTA over the weekend, we never see any a size we can afford, so hoping it does well.

 

[Lorenzo Angotti]

Hi, just to say nice setup and yes the two water parameters that always presents a problem I think for me and many of us is Nitrates and Phosphates. It’s finding the root cause of the problem because there are many factors that contribute, it’s just knowing which one.