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My 28 gallon HQI Nano-Cube diary.

Hello everyone. :) I'm restarting my 28 gallon HQI Nano-Cube. It crashed because I did a few nooby mistakes such as rushing things. lol So, now, I'm restarting it. I just reset it up on January 1st 2011, its filled with water, live rock and sand. The tank wont be full azoox but a mixed reef with quite a bit of azoox animals. Threw in a raw shrimp and going to let the tank cycle for a while before I start adding things. I'll add photosynthetic corals first, then azoox corals later once all things are stable and ready for them. :) The nano wont have a sump. For filtration, I'll add a Tunze 9002 skimmer with a StevieT's skinny cup upgrade, several large fluidized sand reactors, small fuge compartment in the back, 3 x little fishy reactors with GFO, Carbon, and Bio-Pellets once I get the skimmer going. I'll be doing water changes as needed, I'll try 25% every week and go from there. Here are a few pictures of the tank that I took on January 1st 2011. Water is pretty cloudy because of a bacteria bloom. I threw in a cube of fish food and half of a raw shrimp from a grocery store to start the cycle. (PVC tubing that goes through the wall/under the sand is for an Eel. :)
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Here is a FTS that I took on January 04, 2011. :) Water is starting to clear up.
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Bought 1 more little fishy reactor, so I have 3 now. Here is a picture of the back area of the Nano-Cube. I'll beef up the filtration once I start adding some azoox animals/corals.
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Just thought I'd share a picture of my rock background that I finished a while ago for my 28 gallon nano. All rocks were zip tied to the egg crate and all the nooks and crannies were filled with epoxy and silicone. The PVC tubing is for an Eel. :D There will be a total of 5 feet of tubing if you take it apart and line it up. Here are several pictures. Tell me what you think!
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Well, there is 5 feet of PVC tubing total in the nano tank. I used 6 sticks of epoxy, 4 tubes of silicone, and about 10 or so lb of live rock. The background weighed a total of 14 lb in the end, that's with epoxy, silicone, PVC, live rock and such. 4 tubes of silicone cost $5 a tube, epoxy was $6 a stick and live rock can be found at about $2 lb, so, total was about $76 not including PVC and egg crate. This is the epoxy I used, I got it from Home depot and the silicone I used was clear aquarium safe silicone.
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The water is almost crystal clear. I'll take an updated FTS tomorrow. :)
 
Looks very nice.
I like how the pipe openings blend in.
A late suggestion : Make random cuts in the ends of the pipes, and maybe add a few epoxy blobs.
If they are not perfectly round, they will blend in even better. Your eye is good
at picking out regular shapes.

What types of eels are you planning??
 
rygh said:
Looks very nice.
I like how the pipe openings blend in.
A late suggestion : Make random cuts in the ends of the pipes, and maybe add a few epoxy blobs.
If they are not perfectly round, they will blend in even better. Your eye is good
at picking out regular shapes.

What types of eels are you planning??

Thanks!
Okay, I'll try a few things to help it blend in more. Thanks for the suggestion BTW!
Ribbon Eel. I know, they are very hard to keep...
 
Wow, Ribbon Eel. Well, they do look VERY cool.
Sounds like you are informed on the issues with keeping them.
And as a bonus, it is a good excuse to get a small brackish-freshwater tank. (To raise ghost shrimp and guppies.)
 
Nice setup. I think I saw your posts on RC when you just started...

I would be very careful with all tose reactors being outside the the tank. One bad tube/connection and you'll flood everything. I'd suggest having some kind of shut off / flood prevention. In case the water level drops below X - shut off the return/reactor pumps. Same goes to skimmer (in case you decide to have a HOB one.) No matter how careful you are - it will flood eventually.
 
rygh said:
Wow, Ribbon Eel. Well, they do look VERY cool.
Sounds like you are informed on the issues with keeping them.
And as a bonus, it is a good excuse to get a small brackish-freshwater tank. (To raise ghost shrimp and guppies.)
Yup. :D



zepplock said:
Nice setup. I think I saw your posts on RC when you just started...

I would be very careful with all tose reactors being outside the the tank. One bad tube/connection and you'll flood everything. I'd suggest having some kind of shut off / flood prevention. In case the water level drops below X - shut off the return/reactor pumps. Same goes to skimmer (in case you decide to have a HOB one.) No matter how careful you are - it will flood eventually.

Thanks!

Yeah, they have good fittings and I plan on zip tying the connections.
 
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