Waterbox Peninsula 15 gallon Build Thread

[lubeck]

He emailed me back today and said that they are currently sold out of live rock. Their inventory must not be updated on their website because it said it was in stock when I ordered, however, he said they are getting more in on Monday. Should have it next week.

I found my new (6 day old Halloween hermit) dead today out of his shell. Not sure what happened to him, he seemed fine and everything parameter wise on the tank looks good. Also my little Mexican Red leg that I had in jail for attacking my other hermits somehow escaped. I couldn't find him on the floor or in the tank, no clue where he went. I seem to have really bad luck with hermits, think I'm probably done trying to keep them until I get the bigger tank because other than being interesting, I don't know how much value they add.

I tried to take some pictures of the tank to get you all an idea of where the live rock is at, but between the lighting and the algae on the glass, it's hard to get clear pictures. I literally clean the glass and within a half an hour I have noticeable green algae film on the glass. It's crazy. Currently have my a360x at 20% intensity, red and greens at 5 and Reef Brites off completely. The pictures are crappy, but you can get the idea of where the rock stands. Here's a video walk around too:

That’s normal. He keeps the live rock in the ocean. He goes out and gets 1k lbs of rock at at a time. he only ships in the beginning of the week.

what’s your filtration again? Have you tried adding pods? Do you have a fuge? Regular WCs?

 

[trevorhiller]

That’s normal. He keep the live rock in the ocean. He goes out and gets 1k lbs of rock at at a time. he only ships in the beginning of the week.

what’s your filtration again? Have you tried adding pods? Do you have a fuge? Regular WCs?

Filtration is a Eshopps nano skimmer, filter floss and activated carbon.

I’ve bought three orders of pods. 2 from reef cleaners so far and one from algae barn. The first two about a month in and another a week ago with the shipment of crabs and snails.

The pods I’ve gotten have all been pretty small. About the size of a pencil point. Not sure if there are larger pods, but I thought I got the biggest ones available, but they look larger online. Especially the ones from reef nutrition who I haven’t tried yet.

I do water changes every 2-3 weeks because my nitrates and phosphates were bottomed out for some time leading to Dino’s. No fuge

 

[trevorhiller]

When are you getting the new rock. Please post pics

I received my rock today. It was supposed to be delivered yesterday, but he never got it out. Shipped 5 pm yesterday and arrived 1120 today, thankful UPS in my area does a good job most of the time.

I got the rock in my temporary QT as quick as possible. Definitely have some die off though. There’s a crab that’s not looking so good and what’s left of a small urchin about the size of a dime as well as a clam that I see that I think is dead.

I found another small clam that seems to be open and closing his shell when I tap it. There’s 4-5 patches of polyps as well. Lots of sponges and lots of coralline.

At this point I just threw it all in the water to try to save whatever I can, but I’m going to go through it with tweezers in the coming days and remove the dead stuff.

Heres some pictures…. I ordered 10 pounds and the box weighed 11.6. Pretty pleased so far. I’m sure I’ll have more pictures as I find things.

 

[lubeck]

Looking great! lots Of life. Are you going to put it all in the tank?

 

[trevorhiller]

Looking great! lots Of life. Are you going to put it all in the tank?

Probably just a piece or two once it’s cured. I filled the Waterbox up with all the Marcos rocks I had on hand to try to get cycled for the Cade 60 gal tank I have on order.

I’m planning to transfer the Waterbox tank into the Cade 600 in a month or so when it gets here. Until then, it’s going to stay in the clear plastic temporary aquarium.

But I would like to get my custom Waterbox scape seeded with some more bacteria, coralline, organisms from the gulf rock in the mean time if I can.

 

[trevorhiller]

A little tank update for you all, Day 153

I added in 2 of the 5 pieces of live rock I got from Gulf Live Rock to help bring some diversity after curing a couple days in a separate tank. I had a bit of an ammonia spike in the bin and did daily 50% water changes for 3 days until no ammonia reading. I figure by only adding 2 pieces if there is any residual die off, the tank should be able to process it. The rest of the live rock will remain in the temporary holding bin until my new tank arrives.

You can really see how much different the live rock is compared to my 5 month old dry rock. The difference in color is night and day even though my dry rock is doing good and is starting to encrust with coralline on its own, I’m hoping this will really tip the scales in my favor.

It’s been a week without dosing all for reef, I shut it off completely as my Alk was finally starting to rise on its own. I’m still dosing saturated Kalkwassser in the ATO and that’s been keeping my alkalinity stable between 9.5-9.9. Nitrates and phosphates have also seem to stabilize around 5 and 0.2. I haven’t had to add any of my DIY solutions.

The clean up crew addition made quick work of he algae in the tank and I’m slowly ramping the light back up. The kessil is at about 40% right now/10 hour ramp schedule.

I certainly don’t want to jinx myself, but it seems like the tank has settled in a bit and is much more stable in its parameters. I think that the high Alk consumption slowing down is a sign of reaching some stability too.

Anxiously awaiting the new tank’s arrival, but for now I’m just enjoying seeing this tank come to stability and watching my fish clean up crew and 2 corals as they all seem to be thriving.

I know this thread has been slower than I expected, but I hope all these updates will be of value to someone starting from dry rock like I did! If not, it’s just a nice journal for myself!

 

[lubeck]

How’s the new rock doing

 

[trevorhiller]

How’s the new rock doing

So far, so good. I haven’t seen any pests yet. I did have some die off and I saw a small amount of Dinos initially from it, but they seem to be resolving already. Phosphate rose up to 0.36 when it’s been pretty stable around 0.1, so I’m monitoring that at the moment. Nitrate readings are still around 3-7.

I think that was because I pulled out a piece of my existing rock to make room for the new ocean rock and probably disrupted the balance a bit, but the tank seems to be snapping back to normal quickly. I haven’t really had any major algae growth.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with the Gulf Live Rock. I do wish some more of the larger organisms would have survived the trip though. I was hoping to get some urchins, starfish, bristle worms, something, etc but I really haven’t seen any of them. Maybe they are in there and I just haven’t run into them yet…

I might order from IPSF when my new tank gets here to get some more diverse critters.