Braeden's 22 Gallon SPS Dominated Cube

[Aquaticguy11]

Originally Posted by Casey8

Very nice stand you built ! You would be very proud of yourself if you see how I built my ugly stand

Thank You.

[Aquaticguy11]

Filling up with fresh RO/DI water. Very exciting!!! Also got 3/4's of the rock in. Not my final aquascape.


Adding Reef Crystals Salt


Made a stand for my skimmer so that it would be sitting in the proper water level in my sump. All I did was cut a square of egg crate out to the right size, then the PVC legs, then cut and drilled some holes in them so that detritus wouldn't build up in there, then I zap strapped the PVC legs to the egg crate.


Added the live sand



Under the stand


Water clearing up a little bit


I will post some more pics later. Enjoy!

[Aquaticguy11]

Here is where the fun part began for me. Watching the tank grow into a small piece of the ocean.

New aquascape. This I believe is my permanent scape. A new powerhead for the time being since the Koralia 750 was blowing my sand around a little. I will be putting a Koralia 550 in here along with this Maxi Jet 900. In the future I will hopefully get 1 MP10 which would be ideal since the 2 power heads that are in there now don't look the nicest.

View from my chair


View from the front. On the front right rock there will be a neon green torch coral. I will also have 2 True Percula Clowns that will hopefully host the torch.


A couple of close-ups of my rock work




The Koralia 550 is now in and I also got a fan to blow over the water surface.


Also bought a Reef Keeper Light to control my metal halide, Koralia, heater and fan. I absolutely love this thing!! It keeps my temperature perfect. Between 78.4 - 78.6


Will be posting some more pictures a bit later, SPS and Zoas!! Stay tuned.

[Snaz]

Looks great so far. How do plan to cycle?

[Aquaticguy11]

There was an instant cycle from adding the 40lbs. of live sand. The Nitrates looked like this for the first 5 days

Day 1: 3ppm
Day 2: 2ppm
Day 3: 2ppm
Day 4: 1ppm
Day 5: 0ppm

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think this is a full cycle, right?

[Nano]

I would still wait, dont be surprised if you see an ammonia or nitrate spike.. wait your not usin any live rock? technically you have no real biological filtration, I would add a chunk or 2 of live rock even just in the sump to add the filtration, that will also ensure a cycle happens.

[Snaz]

Yes don't count on live sand to cycle your tank. If you are not interested in damsels or clowns to cycle then a bit of rotting uncooked shrimp will get things going along with a seeded rock.

[Aquaticguy11]

Originally Posted by Nano

I would still wait, dont be surprised if you see an ammonia or nitrate spike.. wait your not usin any live rock? technically you have no real biological filtration, I would add a chunk or 2 of live rock even just in the sump to add the filtration, that will also ensure a cycle happens.

I forgot to mention, I added a few handfuls of good quality sand from an established tank about a month ago. The cycle definitely happened because I am keeping Hermit Crabs, Snails and SPS in the system right now and they are doing great. Thanks for the heads up though.

[Nano]

Originally Posted by Aquaticguy11

There was an instant cycle from adding the 40lbs. of live sand. The Nitrates looked like this for the first 5 days

Day 1: 3ppm
Day 2: 2ppm
Day 3: 2ppm
Day 4: 1ppm
Day 5: 0ppm

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think this is a full cycle, right?

.....

[Aquaticguy11]

Originally Posted by Nano

.....

This was just showing the first 5 days of testing. Today is day 58 and the nitrates are still undetectable. Sorry for the confusion.