First time salty & cube owner

[Rare]

I wanted to get into saltwater by the end of the year & already had planned what I wanted to buy either a 75/90g, the protein skimmer, lights etc. A friend of mine pretty much gave me a big jump start; for personal reason he had to let it go & I took it off his hands. Not what I wanted but this will be a nice start. Came with AI Sol lights but needs a new motherboard -$50. Running the cube lights for now.

Rockscaping is none as we put the live rock inside & also everything else in asap. I believe I got the skimmer dialed in & it's skimming. He had a aquatic life skimmer but with some mods he did in the back is was a pain to get it dialed in & in. So I put back the old skimmer he had from oceanic & seems to be working.

The only thing I bought just yesterday were the hammer coral. I'm wowed of all the life in this tank. I now look at the 130g cichlid tank & maybe it will be a saltwater one soon. lol (j/k)

Took a few pics & now learning new things everyday. What I love were i live is that we are not from from many saltwater aquarium places that have very nice coral piece.

 

[Bectan01]

Looks good! Do you have a test kit? And some flow?

 

[Rare]

Tks, Bectan01.

I have the reef test kit. Before the 5g PWC I just did I tested the water in the cube.

Calcium @ 12=240 (low) correct from what I'm reading. Should be at 400-500

Nitrate is high at 40ppm.


I will let the water cycle & test again to see if the PWC lower the nitrate. If still high I will do a back to back PWC & test again. If nitrate stay high I will start looking for the problem.

For flow is had a Koralia nano till I pivot it too much and broke the stem attaching it to the suction cup. I believe it's the 240 gph. I'm going to get a new one either way so is the 240GPH good enough or should I bump it up to 425? )below that a little too much for the cube.

 

[Easyflip]

I have 2 small koralias blowing around the rocks and an mp10 providing programmable random flow in my 30 gal innovative marine cube and it's perfect.

 

[Rare]

Look like I'm on the right track & more to go. I tend to leave the test bottle after testing to check side by side from before & after. When I'm doing a PWC to see if lvl indeed has gone down from before. After checking the first test tube again for nitrate it was near 80ppm. The PWC knocked it down to 40ppm & another 10g of saltwater it was down to 20ppm.

After PWC calcium went down to 180ppm from 240ppm. I used 2ml of purple up & will check in another hour where it's at.

KH is @ 120/140

I was pretty much thrown into this, but trying my best to get the hang of it and what is needed. Anything you see I should do dont hesitate to point me in the right direction on what I might need or what should I do.

 

[Rare]

I have 2 small koralias blowing around the rocks and an mp10 providing programmable random flow in my 30 gal innovative marine cube and it's perfect.

Do you have the 240gph or the 420gph?

 

[Rare]

Nitrate are down to 0/5ppm. Glad that is over with for now. Calcium lvls are at 380. Phosphate at 0. Magnesium test kit is what I need as well get that sometime this week. Coral look healthy Water temps 79-80

Using seachem reef fusion 2 part system

 

[Rare]

About a few months back I changed the look due to the fact that I didn't like how the rocks & little room it had in the front. I changed it around and still wasn't happy & few weeks later I get the red slime growing on 2 rocks rock & on the sand.

I could factor in my case many possibilities of why it was happening. Old lights, I ordered this first. Over feeding, cut it down & did one day not feeding. I then found a sponge in the back chamber that from the looks of it has never been cleaned. Back to back cleaning I did in the back chambers & the sponge was tossed out. (nasty) Not enough flow so bought a 240 koralias. I cleaned all the red slime off as best as I could with toothbrush on the rocks and siphon it out. Rearranging-rockscaping & allowing more flow through on what I believe were dead spot. It's been a few weeks and looks good and no problems. Will be getting another 240 koralias as well for more flow.

My hammer coral like a very slow flow as well as the torch. The Frogspawn is more forgiving and doesnt mind a more flow. Everything else looks very nice. The star polyps for some reason were always getting picked out by the hermit crabs so they are now coming back nice.

The coral banded shrimp molted & at first that thought it was dead since the lights werent on. lol Good to know that he has what is needed to molt. The back wall is getting covered with coralline algae. Purple & Green and some rocks are growing more red coralline & believe the 240 as a some red on it as well . I did get a few small spots of coralline that were bleached I beleive it had to do with the new lights & I left them on as I was do the PWC & rockscaping.

I will take a few pics of the work. The 130g cichlid tank is starting to look more like a big reef to me. lol!