My Biocube 14 update video

Here is my biocube 8 or 9 months in! Thanks to this and other sites it has been so much fun! I couldn't attend fragfest this year but did pick up my 1st corals from members. Now I recently got a bazooka joe, bubblegum monster and miami hurricane chalice for a great deal, I hope they do well like the brain coral have! I think they have tripled their diameter. Just a short iphone vid, but I think it captures tanks better than still photos, but I am terrible at pictures!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u38O...e=youtu.be

 

Just the stock lights, they seem plenty strong for these corals. Granted I picked corals with low-medium light requirements, but several even bleached a bit when I 1st put them in.

 

I have the stock return with 1 biocube powerhead. The flow is good, but I don't love the biocube powerhead as it seems to rattle quite a bit - it's rated at 250gph and the return is 180gph.

The rear chambers are filled with water with chamber 3 not quite filled up as the JBJ auto-top-off sensor is in there. (the ato is my best buy for the tank - linked to an aqualifter pump it keeps salinity from changing much. It was my largest problem)

Chamber 1 has my heater and 1 packet of purigen at the top, chamber 2 has some rubble and chaeto - I light the chamber from the back with marineland LED. I tried coralife's T5 and I went through 4 of them!!!! All failed under 1 week, but dr foster and smith exchanged them with no problem. The chaeto needs to be washed out every week or two to get the "crud" out.

Chamber 3 has the stock pump, I dropped in some chemipure elite on the top of it that I change every few months. It also has the JBJ ato sensor.

So not much for filtraton really. I think the key is the fuge with chaeto - I keep a few snails and hermits back there with it too.

 

I normally clean the glass every week or two. It doesn’t need cleaning all that often.

It’s pretty low maintenance. I try to exchange some water once a week, but sometimes I push that to every other week. Depending on how I feel I will sometimes make 5 gallons of saltwater and store it, then I cut the top off a gallon jug to use it as a scoop. I then take one scoop out of the aquarium – nothing special, just from the top water, and replace that scoop with the stored salt mix. Easy way to change ~10% of the water, it only takes about 5 min and you only need to mix one bucket of salt every 5 weeks.

If I am feeling a bit more ambitious I will change 4 gallons of water syphoning the crud from the back chambers, cleaning the screen to the return pump and washing out the chemipure bag. I do this around once a month and replace the chemipure about every 3 months. I recharged the purigen once, it lasted around 6 months before becoming discolored.

I normally take the chaeto out once a week and rinse it, if it doesn’t look too dirty I will just squeeze it a few times in the front display of the tank.

I also test Ca, Alk, Ph, Phos, Nitrate once a week or so.