Sue's 14 gallon BioCube Adventure

sueandherzoo

sueandherzoo

Active Member
The addiction continues -- I came home with a 14 gallon BioCube the other night so hope to learn from the masters here and end up with a gorgeous reef tank some day. I already have a 46 gallon seahorse tank and a 55 gallon FOWLR tank so this one will be dedicated mostly to "reef" with perhaps a pair of clowns.
How's the aquascaping? I tried to give all the rock the most light exposure I could while still leaving plenty of room to put corals and yet still have a cave or two as well as an area of flow-thru across the back (no dead spots). I think I like it - any constructive criticism, comments, suggestions? (Attached are 2 front shots, one right, and one left)
Sue



 
[ronnie]

[ronnie]

Member
tank look sgood, however i did my aquascaping like urs when i did it first time around and everyone told me i have it stacked against thew all to m uch..
try moving it around and play with various aquascapes and see what you like better..
 
sueandherzoo

sueandherzoo

Active Member
Originally Posted by Whisk
http:///forum/post/2900293
hopefully this tank wont be a cursed fish killer

LOL I'm impressed you remember! That cursed tank beat me, d@mn it. I swore I would NOT give up until I found out what was wrong in there but I finally waved the white flag and tore it apart. This BioCube is the replacement, and I gave all the rock that I transferred a fresh water bath to see if anything "killer" came out of there. Nothing did, but now that I have die off it'll help the cycle on this new tank.
If things die in this one then we'll know it's ME that's cursed!
Sue
 
sueandherzoo

sueandherzoo

Active Member
Originally Posted by [Ronnie]
http:///forum/post/2900297
tank look sgood, however i did my aquascaping like urs when i did it first time around and everyone told me i have it stacked against thew all to m uch..
try moving it around and play with various aquascapes and see what you like better..

Wow, I actually thought I was ok with keeping the rock off the wall. There is plenty of space on the front, left and right and there's even quite a bit of flow-thru room across the back except for the top piece. The bottom-most one is close to the glass but not against it - snails and flow can still get back there.
However, I noticed an aiptasia peeking it's head out of one of the rocks so I'll have to remove that to kill it. And you KNOW what happens once you stick your hands in there and start moving rocks!
Sue
 
jmill

jmill

Member
Originally Posted by SueAndHerZoo
http:///forum/post/2900703
Wow, I actually thought I was ok with keeping the rock off the wall. There is plenty of space on the front, left and right and there's even quite a bit of flow-thru room across the back except for the top piece. The bottom-most one is close to the glass but not against it - snails and flow can still get back there.
Did you move your rock? Just wondering cuz I have mine set up very similar to yours. Just wondering if I should do some re-arranging as well.
Is the consensus to basically have one large island of rock in the middle that is not stacked against the back and is a-ways away from the glass???
 
mtbenino

mtbenino

Member
Sue,
It looks great,how are the parameters going? Mine just had a huge bloom of brown algae. My cycle is going good though.
 
sueandherzoo

sueandherzoo

Active Member
Here we go again. I took ONE rock out of the tank so that I could kill an aiptasia I spotted and when I went to put the rock back I wanted to "adjust" the others a little. Well you know how THAT goes! I ended up taking them all out and starting again. Unfortunately after a few hours of that it got late and I hated it so I turned off the lights and went to bed. Today I tried re-doing it -- I'm not crazy about it though. Too late to take pix - I'll see how I feel about it tomorrow and either learn to live with it or start all over.
The cycle was going pretty good - the ammonia was coming down while the nitrates were going up but now that I've had the rock out for a while and the sand has been stirred up I'm sure I'm going to have an ammonia spike again. That's actually a good thing at this stage of the game so I may as well do all my rock playing now while cycling.
Brown diatoms are good - it's usually an indication (at least in my experience) that your tank has cycled. It's still way too soon to think about adding any livestock, though.
I'll check my water tomorrow night and post my parameters.
Sue
 
sueandherzoo

sueandherzoo

Active Member
OK, I'm guilty. I tore it apart and started again but hey - while waiting for time to pass so it can cycle properly, there's nothing else I can do with the tank so let me have my fun! (actually it always turns out to be frustrating and maddening but we keep doing it anyway).
Two front shots, right side shot and left side shot. I think I'm keeping this one. I can get the MagFloat on both sides and the front, there is flow-thru room across the back, and I've got the "slope" fromtop to bottom so any corals I put on there should get pretty good exposure to the light.
A keeper, yes?
Sue



 
subielover

subielover

Active Member
That would be a keeper. I like it and it looks like it will work nicely for coral placement as well
Good job, now back away from the tank slowly.
 
mtbenino

mtbenino

Member
Looks good Sue, now don't mess with it again, LOL
I have mine up and going, got some green grass algae growing and some brown algae, not sure what to do about these but I will be doing some research.
 
sueandherzoo

sueandherzoo

Active Member
Thanks guys. I will heed the command to "Slowly step away from the tank, Maam"
The other bonus is these rocks are solid (no teetering or wobblers) so if and when I get a burrowing critter in there I don't expect anything will move or shift.
Now that I've stirred things up (for the last time) I will see how the water parameters are tomorrow. I was kinda surprised to see that yesterday (before aquascaping) they were pretty much the same as they have been for a week - nothing changing. Maybe I should start ghost feeding.
Sue
 
sueandherzoo

sueandherzoo

Active Member
It's been a month since my last update and, of course, I've reaquascaped again.

The only things I have in here are a pulsing xenia, bubble-tip anemone, frag of zoa, frag of green ricordea, leather coral, and a few snails. Heading out today to pick up a Valentine's Day coral (told hubby to forget the chocolate and flowers - I want livestock!)
What should I buy today?
Sue


 
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