The Progress

A few shots of everything settled in:

- A.

The Fish Room

Self explanatory. More details to come on this style of setup.

The 47 Rimless

The 29 Gallon Biocube was recently dissembled. The contents were added into a larger more diverse system. Here are some photos (iPhone only) of what is the beginnings of a custom built 47 gallon, shallow, rimless cube. The system is a sleek shallow rimless design made with all Starphire glass dimensions are 30x30x12.

For preferable aesthetic placement and optimal drilling access the new tank had to be placed in the same location as the already existing Biocube which obviously creates an obstacle, all the livestock from the drained 29 gallon tank was stored in a clean rubbermaid bin with a heater and two Nano Koralias.

All new substrate was used and a lot of new water had to be made to fill the extra 40 gallons of volume but almost everything for the previous system was used. There was a small re-cycle in the system due to loss of a lot of beneficial bacteria in the old sand but the extra water, sump space, massive DSB and Refugium helped to keep the entire cycle under 2 weeks.

The Setup is plumbed into a 30 gallon basement sump in a room that has inevitably been dubbed the "fish room."

After all the plumbing was finished the livestock was added.

Last but not least... here are the first attempts at an aquascape... water was still a bit cloudy from new sugar sized sand but you can get the idea.

Its been two and a half weeks since this upgrade and so far so good. Corals and the paired black clowns seem happy. I had been testing for ammonia and nitrite frequently over first week and within 7 days all levels were zero and the system was producing nitrate. Small algae blooms appeared on day 3-5 but were gone quicker than they came. This quick cycle could have something to do with adding a small carbon source as I was dosing 0.3 ml of vodka daily. That dose is now up to 0.4ml daily and the effects are unbelievable. As you can imagine the SPS showed severe browning from stress during the move, this brown tinge is clearly visible in these shots as the entire system looks quite brown. Under three weeks later the SPS colors are brighter than ever before and the water looks crystal clear.

I don't recommend upgrading a tank using this "do it in a day" method if you don't have to. In this case: in order to drill into the basement and keep the tank in the living room the only option was to put it in the same place as the existing system hence the tiring all weekend affair of upgrading with a basement plumbing mission. Ideally you would set up the new system have it run and cycle for a while before beginning to add livestock.

More updates to come.

- A.

The Upgrade

Huge changes. The Cube is no more.

It is now a Custom 47g Shallow Rimless.

Major updates to come around here, in the meantime here's a video of the new setup.