strawtarget
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
- Joined
- May 7, 2007
- Messages
- 34
I inherited my friend's 24g jbj nanocube because he wants to concentrate his efforts on another tank. He had been using it as a coral reef tank. I'm going to use it as a freshwater tank, so I'm going to need to do some conversion work. I intend to move my 8 panda cory cats over from my 10g tank, and use the 10g tank as a quarantine tank. Then later I want to add 7 or 8 tetras (probably black neons, maybe cardinals if I'm up for some trials and tribulation) and a golden apple snail (Pomacea bridgesii).
Here's my plan...
1. Clean it.
All I've done so far is rinse it out with the garden hose, getting all the remaining sand out.
1a. There are some white spots on a lot of the plastic surfaces, though. They're either mineral deposits or baby corals or something (pardon my ignorance... heh). Should I be concerned about these? Will they leech unwanted stuff into a freshwater setup? Here are some pics.
1b. The backdrop plastic is covered in "stuff". The stuff smells like the beach. I actually don't mind the look of the stuff... it's kinda neat. But I'm worried that in a freshwater environment, it will degrade and start looking bad, or leech unwated substances into the water, or both. So I figure I'll clean all of the "stuff" off. I was thinking "stainless steel scouring pad" or "steel wool" maybe with some vinegar or surfactant-free ammonia that I have left over from cycling my current tank. Hey, it's a cleaning product, right?
Here's a pic of the "stuff".
1c. Once I get all the big chunks off, I was thinking of just running some water/vinegar mix through it for a few days to clean out the pump and whatnot. Good idea or bad idea?
2. Convert it.
2a. The hood comes with two 36 watt 50/50 reef-oriented CF lamps. 72 watts in 24 gallons might be rather much for the tetras I intend to keep. Everything I've read states that they want subdued lighting. Plus, I want a more natural straight 5000k (or 7500k or whatever) light instead of the 50/50 marine light. I can google for replacement lamps well enough, I guess, but I want to be sure that running lower-wattage lamps with the stock electronic ballast (Fulham) is appropriate. It occurred to me that maybe the wattage or frequency of the lamps must match the design wattage/frequency of the ballast, and I'd explode something if I Just plugged in any old lamp with a compatible socket. What's the scoop on this? Here's some pics of the stock lamps...
2b. The tank has a rather novel filtration system. Novel to me, anyway, since I'm used to hang-on-back filters. It has a quasi-overflow design with 3 largish compartments where you can put stuff like filter floss or bio-balls. Water spills into the first compartment, flows down, then into the bottom of the second compartment, then up to the top/middle of the last compartment, then down to the pump, then pushed up a tube to the powerhead and out into the tank.
I don't really know what I'm doing, but I figured I might try some kind of coarse foam block on top of a wad of filter floss in the first compartment, then maybe an activated carbon bag and maybe some bio-balls in the second compartment. Up till now, I've just used Tetra Whisper filter cartridges (and I've never used bio balls or ceramic rings), so I'm not really sure what the best approach would be with this more flexible filtration setup.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Here's my plan...
1. Clean it.
All I've done so far is rinse it out with the garden hose, getting all the remaining sand out.
1a. There are some white spots on a lot of the plastic surfaces, though. They're either mineral deposits or baby corals or something (pardon my ignorance... heh). Should I be concerned about these? Will they leech unwanted stuff into a freshwater setup? Here are some pics.
1b. The backdrop plastic is covered in "stuff". The stuff smells like the beach. I actually don't mind the look of the stuff... it's kinda neat. But I'm worried that in a freshwater environment, it will degrade and start looking bad, or leech unwated substances into the water, or both. So I figure I'll clean all of the "stuff" off. I was thinking "stainless steel scouring pad" or "steel wool" maybe with some vinegar or surfactant-free ammonia that I have left over from cycling my current tank. Hey, it's a cleaning product, right?
Here's a pic of the "stuff".
1c. Once I get all the big chunks off, I was thinking of just running some water/vinegar mix through it for a few days to clean out the pump and whatnot. Good idea or bad idea?
2. Convert it.
2a. The hood comes with two 36 watt 50/50 reef-oriented CF lamps. 72 watts in 24 gallons might be rather much for the tetras I intend to keep. Everything I've read states that they want subdued lighting. Plus, I want a more natural straight 5000k (or 7500k or whatever) light instead of the 50/50 marine light. I can google for replacement lamps well enough, I guess, but I want to be sure that running lower-wattage lamps with the stock electronic ballast (Fulham) is appropriate. It occurred to me that maybe the wattage or frequency of the lamps must match the design wattage/frequency of the ballast, and I'd explode something if I Just plugged in any old lamp with a compatible socket. What's the scoop on this? Here's some pics of the stock lamps...
2b. The tank has a rather novel filtration system. Novel to me, anyway, since I'm used to hang-on-back filters. It has a quasi-overflow design with 3 largish compartments where you can put stuff like filter floss or bio-balls. Water spills into the first compartment, flows down, then into the bottom of the second compartment, then up to the top/middle of the last compartment, then down to the pump, then pushed up a tube to the powerhead and out into the tank.
I don't really know what I'm doing, but I figured I might try some kind of coarse foam block on top of a wad of filter floss in the first compartment, then maybe an activated carbon bag and maybe some bio-balls in the second compartment. Up till now, I've just used Tetra Whisper filter cartridges (and I've never used bio balls or ceramic rings), so I'm not really sure what the best approach would be with this more flexible filtration setup.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!