Little Late - Build Thread for my 33 Cube (8 months in) (1 Viewer)

[mpwolken]

Okay, so I'm 8 months into the cube. I really thought that this would be an "interem" aquarium until I was finished building my 180 gallon. Well, the 180 is in progress but other things are more important than quickly setting it up right now [eating, daycare, you know "the good stuff"].

Here are the previous posts about this system...

http://www.marshreef.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=39454&highlight=
http://www.marshreef.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=38356&highlight=
http://www.marshreef.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=36727&highlight=

Highlights

• 
  Hamilton "reefstar" 250W 14k Halide lighting
  Precision Marine Redline RL100
  Partitionless Sump
  Tunze Osmolator (to keep level for many reasons)
  "Fuge in a Bag" (if you want to know, ask)
  Xantrax Freedom 1000 HF inverter/charger battery backup (IKE response)

Partial Livestock List

• 
  Zoas: 3 main colonies [pink, orange, green]
  Shrooms: "superman" (don't worry, didn't pay much)
  Acros: Birdsnest, "Purple Plasma", Tricolor, slimer, various others
  Montipora: Orange
  Acans Lords: 3 colonies [red, pink, purple]
  Torch (hosts the clowns nicely)
  Fish: Sohol Tang; Paired Solomon Island Clowns
  Crocea Clam
  Micromussa
  small colony of dendro

Note to tang police: tang is only 6" and there's a 180 gallon in the same room being built right now.

Current Photos

Hope this makes someone smile. It's good stuff! I recently added a little epoxy to tighten some things up. The newest members of the family are the dendro frag, micromussa frag and crocea clam. The clam has attached to the rocks and the frags are eating {I target feed mysis every other night to all my LPS; if you look at some of the older posts, you can see a huge amount of growth}

 

[flexrac]

nice!

 

[jamesw]

Great! Looks like a perfect interim setup. Hope you can get something bigger soon for that Sohol tang - but if not let me know and I can baby sit him for you

Cheers
James

 

[mpwolken]

My 180G taunts me. I've got just about everything necessary to get it up and running. I just need a few things.

1.) Sand
2.) Rock - (I'm cool with "dead" rock as I usually just seed some old dead rock with live rock and that works just fine)
3.) Pendants & bulbs - (I've got 3x 400w icecap ballasts)

Anyway, back to the 33G. I'm working on coloring up some of my SPS. It's just way too packed with zooxanthellae to show of it's pigmentation. That doesn't mean it's not healthy; it's just not as colorful as I'd like.

So, I'm not sure what the best approach to lower the amount of zooxanthellae present in the coral and keep it healthy at the same time. I figure that increasing the photo period will probably help because more time for photosynthesis means fewer active zooxanthellae are necessary. [these are the ramblings of an engineer not a biologist so if I'm totally off, forgive me, that's why I'm writing here -- feedback]. So, I increased the "on" time for the light to 9 hours from 8.

I've also been told that the strength of the pigmentation can be altered by the spectrum of light present. Most really nice coral pictures I've seen have been below T5s or 20K bulbs. So, I just put an Ushio 20K 250W DE bulb in to replace the 8 month old Hamilton 14K bulb.