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My 29 Gallon Bio Cube

5K views 19 replies 4 participants last post by  chris55 
#1 ·
Its got about 80 pounds of live fiji rock, 1 blue regal tang (yes I know she will get to big for the tank), one true perculla clown, one sand sifting starfish 2 jumbo mexican turbo snails and 2 blue leg hermits, and one peppermint shrimp, more cleanup crew to come cause the turbo aint doing a good job on the algea. coral I have is one green eye polyp rock, 1 colt leather, one toadstool leather, some red and green mushrooms, some yellow polyps and another polyp not sure of what they are called.
 

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#4 ·
its the one in the third pic, the lights are the coral compact t5's actinic and 10k, its the green film algea on the glass and some of the rocks, and im using ro water from the fish shop, even for water changes, the tangs either going to be tranplanted to the 75 when it gets up and running, or she'll be donated to somebody on here that can house her if i dont have the tank setup in time
 
#5 ·
looks like clove polyp to me if not flowerpot coral. looks more like a clove polyp though. its good you have it seperated from your rock work because it will spread pretty nice. heres mine:


im all for not buying something that you cannot properly keep but im glad to see your planning an upgrade or at the very least willing to give up the tang.
it is possible your LFS water isnt completely pure. i want to say i read somewhere that someone got dechlorinated tap once from a fish store claiming to be selling RO. im not saying this is the case, but something to consider.

the algae on the glass is just part of the maintnance. its going to be there no matter what. i prob. scrape the glass with the magfloat every day/every other day and ever once in a while i get in there with my hand and use a plastic scraper to get the coraline along the bottom close to the sand. as for the rocks i see you only have 2 mexican turbo snails. i personally am a fan of a variety of snails, all doing their own thing. astrea,cerith,nerite,stomatalla,nassarious... you may want to look into a few of each. however in picture #4 the green looks like green coraline algae but its hard to tell.
 
#6 ·
yea I heard they spread pretty fast, but the water is ro I watch them put it in there, and its a 6 stage ro they have thats 150 a day, I personally seen the filter and seen the water coming out of it going into my container, I was a little weiry to that they may be selling me tap water for 1.25 a gallon so I asked to see the setup and they took me in the back. But I trying to crape too much off cause I got baby starfish all over the front of the tank and the sides. But the algea on the rocks showed up in about 48 hours that bright, I dont think its coraline, It happened the day after we left the lights on for about 16 hours out of that day (left early and didnt get back till late). but I agree on the snails, The lfs has a bunch of little white ones about the size of a quarter, you think about 10 of them would be good for the algea??
 
#7 ·
yea well im sure most LFS are selling RO water just so they dont hurt their business but you never know so it should be considered. you dont even know how old the filter cartridges are too.
i suggest picking up a timer for your lights. walmart or a hardware store has single socket timers for no more then $20. if you can, set a light cycle where your actinics come on first for about an hour, then all your lights, then just actinics for an hour then lights out.
if the algae seems hard its most likely coraline, if its slimey its not.
i personally prefer a mixture of different snails. telling me that your LFS has quarter sized ones means nothing lol. they could be nassarious which are meat eaters.

another good thing is to look into local reefing clubs in your area. they are great to meet people, get frags usually for cheap, buy/sell equiptment and learn alot about the hobby.
 
#8 ·
Tank is looking great and it's always humorous to me to see a Hippo that can be taken out by a False Perc.

2snails is way too little IMHO. The general rule of thumb is 1per gallon. so you'll need 29snails. I know that sounds like a lot and if your LFS is anything like mine, then a snail is going to run $2-3each. I order my CUC online at either liveaquaria.com or reeftopia.com. I like reeftopia.com and have ordered from them several times and all livestock made it through shipping.

If you are in a club and they are wanting to do a group buy, i'd go with keyscritters.com. They do club specials and if everyone orders enough, then they sale them at crazy prices. I know a guy that got 100snails for 12cents a piece there. The order did have over 15,000inverts though.
 
#9 ·
thanks much for all the info, Im learning more and more everyday, but ill try to get by there today and get some snails, I have 2 of those coral life digital power strip that I could never figure out and after I bought them found out alot of bad things and im kind of hesitant to put one on there. We dont have any reefing clubs in the panhandle that I know of, I tried finding one and talking around to people and cant find anything
 
#10 ·
Oh? You're in texas? There's a club in dallas, DallasMAS and DFWMAS and then there's San Antonio Reefers club (i Think that's what they are called) and OMAS, Oklahoma Marine Aquarium Society, it's pretty big and the one closest to you, i think.

If they aren't close enough then you can check out www.MASNA.org. They have a listing of all the local reefclubs in America.
 
#14 ·
well went and got more cleanup crew today to take care of some of the fim algea, now I have 2 jumbo turbos, 10 astrea snails, 10 blue leg hermits and 1 sand sifting star, Im going to go get 3 pepermint shrimp and 1 emerald crab and 10 nassarius snails. You think that be too much for the bio cube??
 
#15 ·
make sure to add some empty shells for the hermit crabs. if they dont have any ( sometimes even when they do) they wont hesitate to rip snails from their shells. i personally am more of a fan of skunk cleaner shrimp and suggest 1 of them as they tend to have more of a personality. if you do go with the peps i would only get 2 as getting 3 will lead to the odd man out and will end up dead. i personally am not a fan of crabs either as they are opportunistic and will eat what they can, given the chance but this is your tank and thats my opinion.
i think it sounds good to me, the very worst thing that will happen is a snail or two will die due to the lack of food or you wont have enough and its not a problem to add more. again i think you should be alright though.
 
#16 ·
yea I already have one pep and was going to get one more, but I like the skunk, but they aint cheep, my lfs wants 29.95 for one, but I like the emerald, Ive watched the one they have at the lfs in there 14 gallon show nano with corals other inverts, clown and anenome's, he seems to do fine in there I actually have to look for him thought and sometimes hes really hiding good
 
#17 ·
yea skunk cleaners are about half that around me, alittle more depending on size. the fire red cleaners are more expensive.

again the emerald crab is totally your choice, my opinion for my tank is no crabs, lol. i dont even like hermits i have maybe 2 in my display

i do however have an arrow crab on order for my clubs invert group buy.. cool looking crabs but unfortunatly to large for your tank
 
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