Jay's 30g Cube

JMoniz · Feb 20, 2020

Hey everyone,

I've been a lurker on this forum for a long time lol so I figured I'd share my latest build. Before I start a little back story, I started with this hobby about 7 years ago with a 75g fowlr then upgraded to a 180g for a while then got out of the hobby due to family obligations and all of that good stuff. Fast forward to about a yeae ago and got a sweet deal on this oceanic 30g cube tank and stand. This whole build is all budget conscious and alot of corner cutting... Where I can anyways lol. Almost everything is Diy or second hand and found locally or through Amazon and eBay. The goal is for a stable mixed reef with a higher bio load that I can manage with both mechanical and natural filtration. Also for coral choices.. I have to make the Boss happy so she has her hand in some of the choices lol. Anyways heres some pics. I'll update as I go.

JMoniz · Feb 20, 2020

I'll post more pictures asap, they're taking forever to upload lol. The tank is in a whole different state then what's posted now. I'm posting the pictures by timeline.

JMoniz · Feb 29, 2020

Originally I wanted to go for an Diy AIO tank within a budget l, but I couldn't keep the water as stable as I wanted it to be. I then decided to add a sump but 5g is all that could fit underneath the stand.. And that just wouldn't suit my needs. I toyed around with the idea of running a 10g behind the couch but I have 2 kids and a dog so I figured that would end up bad. A friend of mine is a woodworker and pretty much figured out if we cut X amount out of the stand from the back we could perfectly fit a 10g Sump without compromising the integrity of the stand and thats what we did and it worked out perfectly. The plumbing is a little wonkey for a few reasons.... I wanted to run a manifold first and foremost, I wanted that manifold to power two reactors, I wanted the doser to be underneath the stand and I needed room to mount my refugium light. So what you see is a product of that lol. On the plus side, that same friend is building a larger stand to accommodate all of these things and we will work the plumbing out perfect for that set up along with better hardware mounting and cable management.