Hey Everyone, my name is Matt, I decided a few weeks ago after dealing with fresh water for most of my life that I wanted to venture into the whole reef scene.  I do not have a lot of room in my current house, so I figured that I would look for a BioCube.  One of the members on here happened to be selling his BioCube. So hopefully I don't ruin his old tank 

Anyways, here is my build thread, currently I am running the following peices of hardware.

Maxi Jet 900

Hydor Flo

Koralia Nano Power Head

AquaClear 100w Heater

24w 10,000k Daylight PC

24w Actinic PC

I decided after reading some that I would drop out the 1st floor to make room for the heater.  The bioballs and everything was already removed.

Tonight I started running fresh water through the tank (after cleaning it down with vinegar) to both make sure the traces of vinegar I wasn't able to clean off with fresh water were removed, and to test the tank to make sure everything was working.

The tank so far seems to be running great, I pulled apart the hood and cleaned the fans to make sure they were silent. cleaned the bulbs a little bit.  will probably replace them sometime in the future with two 50/50 bulbs (unless anyone has any other suggestions)

Tomorrow I was able to find someone to trade me some live water for salt.  Someone wanting to get rid of a half bucket of live sand. And someone else that had some live rock they would trade me as well, so hopefully my cycle will go through pretty fast. - I can't believe how nice people are here!

Ran the tank for a solid 24 hours and everything seems to be going great.  When I get home today from work i'll be pulling all the water out of the tank, wiping it down and then mixing / adding the RO water I picked up at walmart today (they only had 5 1 gallon jugs, so i'll have to make two more trips while the first bucket is mixing the salt and heating up t the correct temp)  I am picking up a half bucket of live sand, and will be combining that with the current sand I have to make a 2" bed in my tank, though I may have to wait until tomorrow to dump the sand in, because I am getting some lw and some lr from a friendly member that lives a few blocks away from me.  Or should I just go ahead and add as much LS and salt water as I have and just let it settle in the tank until I can put the rock / live water in that I am getting tomorrow?  Then fire up the pump powerheads / lights again?  or I guess I can just get all the sand in there, fill the water all the way to the top and then do a partial water change with the water live rock that I will get tomorrow

 

 

I would probably just add fresh mixed salt water and sand to the tank. It might make the water clouded but it will settle. By the time you add LR and LW it will be somewhat clear and then only take 12-48 more hours to clear up after everything is running.

 

Last night I picked up a half bucket of sand plus ~1g of live water from one of our friendly members, put the sand in with all of the water I could get out of the bucket (I still have sand left over) and then filled the the rest of the tank with water that I picked up from "Where's Nemo" in Spanish Fork.

 

I have to say that the tank was pretty cloudy last night, but I woke up this morning and it was crystal clear. I don't know if that means that the sand just settled, or that my cycle is going better than I had hoped.

 

Today I will be going to a lfs (still can't decide which since I work near Thanksgiving Point) to purchase maybe a pound of live rock just to get the dead rock that I have seeded. I have about 10 pounds of dead rock that I put in a bucket of salt water last night just to see if I could free up any loose debris before it goes in my tank.

 

I figure its not too exciting to post a tank that just has sand in it, so i'll post some pictures of my tank when I have set up the rock and it has cleared up.

Alright, so since I spent my monthly alottment for my tank, I just decided to be patient, throw in my dead live rock and see how that goes.  I'll probably try to find atleast a pound or two of live rock (since I really don't have a lot of rock in my tank as you can see), just to get the little bugs to migrate to the dead rock and get it started faster, unless my live sand will do the same thing?

 

Anyways, here's a pic of my rock and sand set up, still a little cloudy from me shifting the sand everywhere, but should be clear tomorrow.

 

 

Heres an updated pic of my tank, any constructive criticism is more than welcome.

You may also want to move the Koralia more towards the surface if possible. That way it will disturb the surface and cause aerations and gas exchange.

Moved rock on the right a few inches to make room for magfloat when the time comes.

Cut the stem on the Pom Pom and placed it in a new location, reacting to the new location a lot better than where it was before (might have been from all the stress, sitting in a sump.etc)

Moved Zoo's up higher in the tank, they are wide open now and doing great

Star Polyps were down to the stems, no growth when I had put them in the tank, wanted to see if they would grow and they started growing heads. So I guess this must mean my tank is doing good so far.

I also pointed the Koralia upward to stir the surface water a little bit to help with gas exchange, moved filter floss to make better tank flow.

When the bubbles clear up,etc i'll start shooting the tank with the dslr.  

Pom Pom's were pretty much dead when I got them home, so i'll probably look for a frag of that next week when my tank is ready for the clean up crew, but i'll watch them in that next week to see if they get over the move

Also, excuse the Dirty Glass and Thermometer, was checking temps (Staying pretty consistent at 76-77 degrees. and I still need to clean the glass today

 

Diatom Bloom, brownish red algae towards the top of the tank, so I guess let the cycle begin.

 

Tomorrow i'm going to stop by and pick up some inverts, what do you guys suggest I pick up right now, and what should I grab later? (Snails, Red Hermits, Cleaner Shrimp?)

 

Still need to find out what happened to my Pom Poms, they just up and dissapeared last night, with the exception of half of the stalk.  Someone said it may be a hitchhiker, but I cant seem to find a crab, slug or anything anywhere!

 

Zoo's and GSP's are doing great, GSP's have grown a ton in the last couple of days, can't wait to see what they do.

 

(By the way, white specks are air bubbles)

 

 

 

 

So yesterday, after holding out for a couple of days with my Diatom Cycle I decided to pick up a clean up crew.  Got home and now everything is starting to go green in my tank, so I guess my cycle is well on its way, hopefully i'll start to see some purple soon.

 

Anyways, here is what my clean up crew consists of

 

4 Astraea Snails

2 Nassarius Snails

4 Cerith Snails

 

10 multi-colored hermit crabs (some blue, blue banded, scarlet.etc)

 

1 Mithrax Crab (Red Female)

 

1 Green Brittle Star

 

After I had let the snails and crabs sit in the water for about 45 minutes I set them free, they immediately started going to work, my tank is a lot cleaner than it was the whole rest of the week, so I know they are doing their job.  I woke up this morning and can tell that this should be a pretty good number for my clean up crew, but I guess only time can tell.

 

The mithrax is doing pretty good, watched her pick off a lot of hair/green algae last night, and move up pretty far in the tank

 

The sea star is hidden pretty well in my rocks now, I can see a few tentacles sticking out in key places, and it seems to be pretty happy, I fed it a couple brine shrimp last night that it seemed to like

 

After this I am going to start stocking the tank with a few corals, let those secure themselves and then probably get some type of fish and a skunk cleaner shrimp.  I was going to get a Jawfish, but I am not sure yet, so I guess we will see what happens.

 

Salinity yesterday was 1.026 so I pulled out about 2-3 cups of water and replaced it with some RO water to drop it down to 1.025, I need to test it tonight, but it should be about right.

 

Tank is staying consistent at 75-76 degrees without a heater, so I am not sure if I should pick one up or not

 

Please also ignore the 5 bell looking things in the photo at the top of the tank, I didn't realize I had my lights on when I was taking photos, haha

 

 

Hey guys, so I finally decided to get a couple of clowns. They seem to be doing great! both eating wonderfully, and its kind of fun to feed them because now I can get my starfish out, he loves Formula One, haha.

 

Anyways, here's the new pictures, obviously its pretty barren, only some Zoo's and GSP, but hopefully I can get some Xenia this week, and then see what else is around. Hopefully my clowns will like the Xenia, I feel kind of bad that they don't have anything to host, but they don't seem too stressed out at the moment.

 

 

Oh, I also moved some rock around to give more room for corals in the future

 

 

 

Not the best picture, but a lot better than my other pictures.  Especially since I fixed the bubble problem.  (The DIY Media Basket fixed everything) so thanks for the idea Todd, and the eggcrate.

 

 

 

I added a media basket in the back, some more corals, fixed my whole bubble issue, my candy cane coral has grown a ton since I put it in there, excited to see how big it gets.  Xenia started growing back off rock that I got when I first started my tank, kind of cool.  and everything else seems to be growing great.  I have done two 1 gallon water changes since having the tank, and will probably do another 1 gallon change this weekend.

 

 

Thanks

 

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcAx_s-f1jU -

With my lighting upgrade, this is pretty close to my current lighting color

Once I took out my KN my corals also got a lot bigger than they were, so its seemed to help everything out quite a bit.

The branching coral in the back right is a brown finger leather (I think) it recently started growing a lot

I wanted another Jawfish, but I think that will have to wait since I bought a bi-color blenny, dunno if I can risk putting it in the tank, my wife would be really upset if another one died (they are her favorite)

Here's a picture of the corals

Here's my mod list for the last couple of weeks

1-

Removed 2" of sand from the bottom of the tank, I probably will remove another inch, but I will do that when I do another water change. 

This gave me close to a whole extra gallon of water in my tank.

I am still playing with the idea of doing a barebottom tank, but since my sand hasn't been blowing around so far, I think i'll just leave it how it is.

2-

Added a Loc Line Y Splitter with 3 Links for Each Side

This diverted the flow of the Maxijet 900, removing a couple dead spots I had in my tank, but seemed to make my flow go down a lot more than I like

3-

Added a Koralia Evolution Nano 425 (Same Size as the Koralia Nano, but pushes 425GPH)

I did a bit of research, and even though my Koralia Nano was pushing my tank a bit harder than it should, I decided to give this a try.  Surprisingly enough, this created the perfect amount of turbulence for my tank, and now gives most of my corals a decent wave, rather than blowing in one direction, they rock back and forth.  

I now no longer have any extreme dead spots like I did, which was causing my cyano outbreak.

4 - 

And last but not least, I finally finished my LED build, I made another post for the build thread, but I figured I would post again just to show what a huge difference it is making, I probably will place some screening to help acclimate my corals better to the lighting, but after a day underneath the LED's my corals have opened up a lot more than they did with the power compact lighting.

Before

After