Fishoholic's 20g cubealicious tank (sps explosion)
 

I've never done a tank journal before so I thought it was about time. I had plans to do ones with my other tanks but I got them set up so fast that by the time I thought about it, it seemed kinda late and pointless.

Anyway I'm not like some people (cough Tony cough cough :razz:) who have a tank and sit around thinking and planing it all out etc. (which can be a good thing) but no, I'm the kind of person who once I have a tank I set it up asap.

In the beginning... (ya, I'm lame but you all should be used to me by now :wink:) on March 14th I went to my uncle's house and saw he had some old small fish tanks sitting around by his pool table. One of them was a cool looking little cube tank (20Lx16wx14h) since I have a thing for cube tanks I asked him about it. He said he'd love to get the tanks out of his house and would give them to me to give them away. So I got thinking (a dangerous thing, I know) about what I could do with a cool little cube tank and on Wednesday (March 17) I came by his house and picked up his old tanks. BTW if anyone is curious the other 2 tanks are a standard 10g and a 15g(ish) long tank.

On Thursday I phoned my friend and asked him about the frog fish he had and we worked out a deal for it and I said I'd come by friday to pick it up. So thursday after work I cleaned the 20g cube tank and filled it to test for leaks. There were no leaks so I emptied it and then picked up a stand from my boyfriend's Dad house. I got it all the way home, went to put the tank on it only to find out that I should of measured the stand 1st and not listened to him when he said it was wide enough, because guess what the cube didn't fit on it! Luckily we had a night stand that we weren't really using that the cube fit perfectly. So I filled the 20g cube and got the salinity and temp. in check. Plugged in the Koralia one only to hear a horrible noise coming from it. Messaged another friend about his koralia nano for sale and hooked up my old 900 maxi jet for flow.

You can see part of the stand (that was too small) off to the side in the background.
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So on Friday I go to my friends place pick up live rock, lights, and a better heater and my other friend met me there with his koralia nano :mrgreen: I'm thinking yay it's all coming together. We go out for dinner and when we came back we go to get the frog fish and it's dead! :eek: :surprise: He had it for about a year and neither one of us could hardly believe that it was really dead, but unfortunately it really was :cry: I'm hoping in the nearish future I can get another frogfish for my tank.

But for now I have a 20g cube tank with a bunch of yellow tail damsels in it, I gave the other types of damsels away. I also have a dumb blenny in it right now (since he likes to jump) and that's why there is a funny egg create/mesh screen/gutter guard lid on the tank. I also have my one rock from my reef tank in the 20g with my AI power head (for all you Edmontonians who will know what I'm talking about) red zoos on it. For some reason all my zoos melted in my reef tank and when these ones started to go, I thought I'd try putting them in the 20g. That way my reef rock could help further seed the new somewhat already cured rock, and maybe my zoos wouldn't melt.

The maxi jet was a bit noisy so I went to a LFS and I bought a new propeller
for the koralia one I have. Now it works great and is nice and quiet.

I have only had this tank set up for 4 days and I have changed out some rock twice now (got ones now that are all aptasia free) and have moved the rock work around 4 times. I like how the rock work is now but I will have to move it around again when I need to get the blenny out.

Here's how it looks now. When I get the blenny out I will take the makeshift lid off and put the legs for the lights back on.

makeshift lid
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Oh and FYI don't clean the hard salt spot on the glass with your shirt sleeve. As you can see by the pen lid poking through, when you do that you risk putting a hole in your shirt :redface: (still can't believe I did that!)

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Awesome little tank Laurie! Following along on this one :biggrin: Sorry to hear about the frog fish..........I think Ken has a variety of them coming in.

Cute little tank :biggrin: I love those wee little powerheads, I was trying to figure out how to put one in my nano but it really doesn't need one, I just wanted one cuz they were so cute :razz:

One question, I see one of the lids you have on there has some sort of mesh screen on it. I'm thinking I might have to invest in some sort of lid, is that screen part of a reptile setup or did you build it? If so where did you get the screening? Its not the same stuff that you use for screen doors is it, it looks a bit larger. I was wracking my brain last night trying to figure out something that was less unsightly (and smaller holes) than eggcrate but larger than screen door screening.

Any ideas?

Really sorry to hear about the frogfish. I've really been looking at them. Hopefully you can still get one sometime in the future. Tank looks great so far.

I like it can't wait to see that one too . . oh ya

I agree the little power heads are pretty cute.

The screen (as far as I'm aware) is a lid for part of a reptile 10g set up, I can't remember were I got it from but I found it in my house with a 10g tank. I don't know if it was bought that way or if someone else made it. When I get home I can post better pic.'s of it, my boyfriend might know were it came form or how to make one like it, I'll ask him and let you know. What size is your nano tank? Maybe you could find a reptile lid to fit it.

No, it won't be for the nano. The nano was fishless until I found a little eviota goby swimming around in the overflow. I thought he died during an autotopoff accident but he's still hanging around in there munching on copepods (I never feed the tank, now I'm like should I? He's been fine all this time) Anyway, I haven't managed to fish him out yet and am thinking theres probably more copepods in the back forty anyways.

Whoops got a little off track there, talk about hijacking. Anyway, the screening is for the big tank, I'm just wondering if I should be preparing for the arrival of a jumper or if he'll just be living in the overflow constantly. I'm thinking since this is pretty much equivalent to the second coming (in my world anyways :wink:) I should get some screening. Maybe I'll have a look at home hardware after work.

It's not really hijacking when you're answering my question. I would feel the need to put the eviota goby in the tank and start feeding it, however then he'd probably just go back into the overflow and prefer to eat pods so there might not be much of a point to doing it. I'm a lot of help aren't I :wink:

I would definately look into getting some kind of screen/cover if you're going to add a redspotted blenny. Unfortunately I found mine dead this morning :sad: I'm not sure if when he jumped out of the tank Sunday night it did more damage to him then we thought (he seemed ok after Steve put him back in and seemed ok all day yesterday) or if maybe the damsels in the tank killed him or if because it just was set up if that has something to do with it. I'm going to do a water change tonight and test the levels again. Everything was good last I checked but I'll check again to make sure.

Aww man!! That totally sucks :sad:

Yeah I didn't see much point in moving the goby and I didn't want to overly stress him out if the likelihood is that he'll end up back in the overflow. I do miss seeing him though, however feeding the tank is a bit of a nightmare (algae growth).

Ya that's why I asked for that thread in the buy/sell section to be removed. Note to self make sure fish is still alive before posting it for sale :sad:

too bad to hear. are you still going to do a frogfish?

That's the plan, I'm just waiting to get one.

On the plus side I tested the water (I was a bit worried about were the water chemistry was at since the blenny died) however everything seems pretty much cycled (using cured live rock definitely helped) ammonia is at 0 nitrite is at 0 and nitrate is at 5. Not bad considering it was set up last friday night :biggrin:

Looks neat. What colour of frogfish would you hope for? I love the red ones. I don't know if they hold the red though since diet and habitat plays a role in that.

The mesh can be gotten at Petland - I have the same for a 20g from when I was keeping some salamanders.

Oh and I like how you think that I have a plan. :lol:

Yes I'm hoping for a red one, but I'll have to wait and see what becomes available.

BTW I know you have plans....a little bit of jack hammering here and there.....poop pipe goes in here...see you have lots of building plans :lol: Just so you know people are still reading your thread :mrgreen:

Laurie, I think Tony's secretly taking his time on this build 'cuz he knows how much moola it's going to take to stock this thing! :mrgreen:

:lol: you might be right :mrgreen:

Ack! My secret is out !! Shhh! Don't tell anyone.

:rofl2:

Christy here are some close ups of the screen. It is a store bought reptile lid.

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Hmm I wonder if they make them in 6'x2' :razz:

I think I might check out Buckerfields tomorrow see what they have. Thanks for the close ups :biggrin:

So after our power bar on the reef tank got wet and Steve got a small shock from it (all the fish, corals etc. are fine) we added some GFCI's to all the fish tank outlets.

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Now that everything is hooked back up and the lights have their legs back on, and the egg create is gone, I thought I'd share pic.'s.

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Maybe, some reptiles get really big right :mrgreen:

I have to say I'm impressed at how fast you noticed the close ups. I felt bad yesterday that I ran out of time to post pic.'s. Installing a couple of GFIC's takes longer then you'd think, and all I did was hold the flashlight :lol:

LOL it always takes longer than you think. My husband changed out a touchy GFCI the other night and it took forever. Mind you the hockey game was on and he could see the TV through the tank :razz:

That's awesome, I'm just going to hold the flashlight and point it at my non-code-compliant sink and watch it fix itself! No wonder my build is taking so long, I've been doing it all wrong!

(Or do I need me one of these "husband" things first? ... That sounds like a pretty handy tool to have as well!)

(Oh I know I'm not funny. It doesn't stop me from trying though...)

I can see how that would indeed slow things down :lol:

Well if you're not funny then why are my co-workers looking at me funny for laughing my head off at the computer. I also re-read your post to them (so they'd understand why I was laughing so hard) and they thought it was funny too :mrgreen:

Also just so you know one of those "husband/boyfriend" things do come in very handy, I highly recommend them. :razz:

"POP" "POP" "POP" I hear something going "POP" "POP" "POP" in my 20g cube! I wonder what it could be......:twised: Maybe a mantis or more likely a candy cane pistol shrimp. My friend that I got the rock from said it could be a mantis but he did have a candy cane pistol shrimp go missing.

However what's really sad is that in my 230g tank with about 200 pounds of LR in it I can usually find my two-two and half inch bullseye pistol shrimp, my half an inch six line wrasse and tiny green clown goby, but in a 20g cube tank with 25 pounds of live rock in it I can't find the source of the "POP" "POP" "POP" :exclaim:

I also can't see were the small lose zoo frag I stuck on the rock last night disappeared to. I've seen it floating around several different times in the 230g, no problem (before I moved it to the 20g), but somehow in a 20g I can't see it anywhere WTF! :mmph:

its always that way Laurie /

Why???? How is it possible for it to be easier to find small things in a 230g than a 20g! Still trying to wrap my head around it.

Also if I do have a pistol shrimp or mantis in there what happens if I get a frogfish before I can find it and get it out? Somehow I don't see how the two could mix well together.

:lol: Here we go again :lol:

i would have to agree size does matter

Of course you do, you're both guys :razz:

you are to young to under stand that. Can you even spell that.:mrgreen:

So I'm pretty sure I have a pistol shrimp in my tank but I can't find it anywhere, however I definitely hear it. Unfortunately because I can't see it anywhere (to be able to relocate it) it will now have to learn to hide form Mr. Bumble Bee. My new frogfish, a Sargassum Angler :mrgreen:

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top down pic.
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So far he seems to like to hang out at the back of the tank. I was wondering if it was because there is more flow at the front, so I unplugged the koralia nano for now and I'll see if it makes a difference. I have also tired numerous attempts to get a video of him swimming, however every time I get the camera in place to take the video he totally freezes up and stops swimming. So far since I got him he's been pretty active and seems to be doing good. Hopefully it stays that way. One thing I noticed that's pretty funny is every time I get too close to the glass he starts wiggling his little lure.

Awesome!!! So totally jealous.

I tried to get a video for you, but he wouldn't co-operate :sad: I'll try again tomorrow.

He's so cool Laurie!!

Thanks, I'm hoping he'll do good in my tank. I'm a bit paranoid as I know they can be hard to keep, but for now I'm hoping for the best.

Wow, that is one awesome looking little dude! :cool: