Carey's 60g Rimless Cube Build

[carey]

On my journeys today i picked up a nice colorful chalice, un-named but very cool and it was only $30.

best pictures i could get, the led's make everything so weird looking. lol

 

[Flreefer]

Cool find Carey, Chalice do look pretty strange don't they! I like them, but like you said, any size able piece is usually pretty expensive. I got a frag about a year ago. Pretty slow grower compared to a Monti, but it's probably doubled in size since then.
Good luck with it!

 

[carey]

I have the MOST exciting news! LOL

I just fed this tank some teeny tiny NLS pellets, mostly for the tiny fish and as I'm watching my mandarin starts freaking out. I've been on mandy watch for the last few weeks, I've become concerned that i dont see her eating the frozen as much as I used to. Well, anyways, to my surprise mandy starts eating the pellets! I'm like no way, maybe I'm not seeing it right but nope, she is for sure 100% positive eating pellets now.

I've been watching her more than usual lately, she has a nice fat belly but i couldnt figure out why she was so fat and not eating as much frozen as usual. Well now I have the answer. She is also munching on the pellets I feed.

I've had her for over a year now and she has been eating fine the whole time. I'm admitting cautious success for now. Still can't believe she eats pellets after over a year.....she is TOO much!

 

[redsea]

Yay, congrats! That's why she wasn't eating as much frozen! I saw a chubby one today at the LFS and was tempted, LOL.

 

[scottayy]

Great! I would be scared to try. (and you said i had more guts to try things than most people here LOL)

 

[carey]

Nothing special but I picked up a red serpent starfish for this tank today. I've been wanting a red one for awhile and $8 was a good deal.

Yay!

 

[redsea]

Cool, pictures are necessary!

 

[carey]

Still acclimating but here he is! lol

 

[carey]

Went on a bit of a shopping spree today, one of my not so local stores was having a huge 40% sale. Also had Julian Sprung speaking today. All in all a good fish/coral day for education and for my tank!

I got a HUGE fighting conch for the 90g, hopefully nothing will try to eat it, the fish in the 90g have pretty much eaten all the inverts I put in. lol

For this tank I got a small torch, fire and ice zooas I believe and some blue zooa's too. I also finally found a nice green lephastrea, it fluffs up and looks kinda like sympodium. It's the coral in front of the torch in the picture below.

 

[Sniperhank]

That thing is really neat!

 

[scottayy]

Carey how are you going to do your zoas? Are you going to stick the plug in somewhere and let them grow out over the plug and then move them or are you just going to stick them where you want them permanently? Or, are you going to stick them in the sand bed to light acclimate for a while?

Kinda curious how others do it.

 

[carey]

I have the new corals acclimating to the light and then I plan on putting the plug on a small rock and then i can move that rock around when I need to. Thats; what I try to do with my corals usually, gives the coral a place to spread and makes it portable. lol

 

[scottayy]

That is a good idea. Like rock rubble small?

 

[carey]

Yep, I use pieces about 2 -5 inches, depends on how big the coral is already. Or of you have them on the sandbed you can put little empty frag disks right next to it and the zooas will spread there.

 

[carey]

Gearing up to do 3 water changes tomorrow so I figured I'd test the water in the 60g cube. I was pleasantly surprised to see the nitrates have dropped to orange in color in the test from red a few weeks ago. This I attribute to the biopellets.

My last water change was almost 3 weeks ago, I was holding off as I was waiting for some results with the nitrates. The phosphates are also lower, not 0 around .4 but thats half what they were.

I figure a good sized water change will get the nitrates down to hopefully 10-20 and the reactor can clean up that.

Wish I had the same results in the 125g, but I think the reactor i'm using in that tank is too small. If the results continue to be good with this tank i may get a larger unit for the big tank.

 

[scottayy]

Yay! Good news with the success. How long do you usually go between water changes?

 

[carey]

I try to keep them done every other week, sometimes every week. It's been at least 3 weeks since the last water change on this tank, could even be 4 or 5 weeks. But it's very encouraging that the pellets seem to work. There is no other explanation for the decrease in nitrates since I have no fuge.

Gonna do some re-arranging today when I do the pwc, I think I am gonna add a brain coral and some zooa's from the 125g.

 

[carey]

Added some things from the 125g to fill up the sandbed. lol Can't wait til all these corals start taking over and I get the "lived in" look in my tank.

Having some trouble with cyano too, have a 4 inch patch of it that disappears at night but comes back when the lights come on. hehe...
Was pretty bored so I took a boatload of pictures. Just anything that caught my fancy. There's lots and lots so watch out. LOL

 

[carey]

 

[carey]