The Coral Cube Redux (now with PICTURES!)
 

Someone asked me to send them some pics of my corals for comparison purposes and I realized... I haven't ever put a damn picture of my tank on here!

So, here it is in all it's glory... This tank was started a little over a year ago after making a swap from my old 40G that had sprung a leak. Unfortunately, during the swap I had a crash and lost all but a few frags and mini colonies. All the colonies you see below were grown from ~1" frags that I was able to rescue off the dying colonies, with the exception of the green milli, which had a head start at 3.5".

Some specs:
- 50 gallon cube (24"x24"x20") with a Beananimal overflow into a 15 gallon sump
- Vertex IN-100 skimmer
- Giesemann Inifiniti 250W halide with 4x24W T5's (KZ Super Blue)
- Tunze ATO tops off with kalkwasser
- VSV dosing + MB7 daily, which let's me...
- Overfeed the tank like crazy

Livestock:
- Waaaaaay too many corals
- Potter's Wrasse
- Randall's Anthias
- Coral Beauty
- Unidentified combtooth blenny (indian? chestnut?)

Forgive the iPhone FTS... I'll get a better pic one day :razz:

Left Side:
http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/a...1CFA001CD9.jpg

Some top down coral pics...
http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/a...1CDF08D40E.jpg
http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/a...1CE170BC59.jpg
http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/a...2B330D7345.jpg
http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/a...1CE6E67599.jpg

And some pics of the tank being built:
http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/a...ergetic/91.jpg
http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/a...rgetic/101.jpg

Lol. All that coral and I'm staring at the last pic of a empty tank haha. I really dig the tank

Awesome pics man... Love the zoa/paly garden

VSV Solution
 

Just curious on the ratio of your VSV solution and how much and how often you are dosing.

Thanks Steve. I'm glad you posted the FTS for all of us. I am very impressed with the colors you are getting compared to me, but I don't have a sand bed. I assume that I'm not giving my bacteria a chance to colonize.

What salt mix do you use? Can you share your params? I am very impressed with the deep purple/blues.

Also, are you wet skimming or dry skimming?

looks rad man! Love that zoa garden and your potter's wrasse!

Who built that cube it's gorgeous!

Really nice tank I'm loving that purple acro.

Loving it! That zoa garden is the best, always nice to see multiple morphs grown together!

Thanks! I put a ton of effort into that tank. Aside from polishing and beveling the edges, I built the tank and stand myself (with some awesome advice from the guys at Concept). I had a blast working with the glass. Scary but fun. Not shown in the pics is a black acrylic insert that I machined out to cover up the back of the tank so you can't see the pipes.

That purple acro, by the way, is the fastest growing coral I've ever seen. You can practically watch it grow. I measured one tip to grow 1.5 cm in just under 2 weeks!

The ratio changes every time I mix up a new batch. I've found that when you stick with one mix for a while it can become less effective, so I now change it up every couple months. Right now I'm actually using straight vodka but I'll be going back to VSV in a week or two once this bottle runs out. I use the recipe on Glassbox Design.

I dose daily. I used to split it up into two doses, morning and afternoon, but my schedule is too erratic for that. I just douses in the morning before work. Right now I am dosing ~1.2 ml/ daily but I've got a pretty good feel for it now and will sometimes bump it up if I do a heavy feeding. In the beginning I used SonnyX's Vodka+MB7 guide as my reference. Follow those instructions to a T when you are first starting.

It should still work with just LR but, yes, the sand does help. Vodka dosing does not make for bright colors, it only helps. During the summer I stopped dosing just because I was too busy to deal with the tank and my nitrates were like 10-15 ppm and I actually had some of the best colors then (except for the purples... They looked more brown). Light, I believe is one of the biggest factors in coral colour. I run a 250W halide with 4x24W T5s, which is actually a stupid amount of light considering that many similar sized SPS tanks run 4-6 T5s. What is your set-up?

I switch my salt fairly regularly but recently I've sticking with good old Instant Ocean (switch back and forth between reefers best and the regular stuff). My parameters... errr... I don't actually measure anymore. I can just look at the tank and know what params are high/low based on what is happening in the tank. The last time I measured a couple weeks back (and they're fairly stable, so I'm probably not too far off these numbers now) the params were:

Amm: 0 ppm
NO2: 0 ppm
NO3: <2 ppm
PO4: forgot to check but no algae. It's typically around 0.02 ppm. I actually don't go for zero. I find SPS get really unhappy at zero.

Calc: ~430 ppm
Alk: 7-8 dKH
pH: 8.2
Temp: 79F (went to 86F in the summer before I had my chiller set up:sad:)

As for skimming.... I don't really subscribe to any particular school of thought on this but I guess I am more on the side of wet skimming. I've found that with my skimmer, if I skim dry, I get tons of skimmate building up in the neck (reducing performance) rather than making it into the cup. By keeping it more wet I avoid that and don't have to clean the skimmer as often.

As you can see, a lot of what I do is very subjective. I have a "feel" for the tank and I constantly experiment; I just make little tweaks as needed. I swear by metal halide (though I am setting up a LED cube experimental tank for my office) and I think highlight is one of the keys to my success.

nice pics i like the zoas

tank looks great buds