Josh's 10 gallon Build

[simplycoral]

Looking good Josh..

Keep the pictures coming. Always good to see how some of my siblings are getting on Looks like you're taking good care of them...

Simon.

[fishytime]

Simply beautiful

[bauder1986]

Originally Posted by simplycoral

Looking good Josh..

Keep the pictures coming. Always good to see how some of my siblings are getting on Looks like you're taking good care of them...

Simon.

Thanks Simon, the frags that I got from you are doing great! Some of the healthiest looking corals I've ever had. Oh and I still promise you that once that Octospawn is ready, Ill frag a good piece for you as well!

Originally Posted by fishytime

Simply beautiful

Thank You Doug! Like I told you, one of the reasons why I am in this hobby is the beauty that can be created through it!

[bauder1986]

Now like I promised, I built a stand and a canopy for this tank. I spent the last three days working with these tools



So I had a damn good idea of what I wanted for a stand. I wanted something with a mixed Victorian / Venician style to it, but with in a budget and something that I can do myself. Now Im not a journeyman carpenter like Doug. But I sure try haha.

Now for a frame I decided to use an old friend of mine....My old 45 gallon stand, thats right the one built out of 2x6's. Terry was using it for his 30 gallon starfire cube but he suddenly got different ideas and gave it back to me....I wonder what he has planned actually hmm.

So this stand was slightly modified for Terry's cube, he had a 3 inch deep square cut into it to set his cube into to hide the base of the tank. and with the styrofoam leveler it really was only 3/4 inch deep. That cut out that Terry did was perfect for my tank, it was 20" wide and so was my tank!.

So thats the story on that stand now for pictures!

The beginnings of the canopy


More beginnings, but with the night lights one so cool!


FTS of the beginings.


And after I got the trim on with stain
[IMG]http://i645.photobucket.com/albums/uu172/bauder1986/P1010896.jpg[/IMG
]



I designed the stand to let me remove the front panel to store stuff underneath, dont mind the mess, I just moved in haha



Oh and did I mention that the bulb in my Corallife MH went on me...Yah crazy, so I needed another bulb and terry decided that he didnt have a use for this 150 watt K2 Viper at the moment, so he let me use it till I got mine running again! He is a pretty nice guy eh! Gives me my stand back, loans me his MH. haha Thx Terry!




And the FTS of the finished product!

[bauder1986]

And another FTS of the pretty stuff Dont mind the ****y looking corals, they had no light for most of the day.


But yah, I'm pretty proud of what I managed to pull off here. I spent $775.00 on this tank already with the intention of spending another 100 on another Nano fan, some hammerhead frogspawn and an actinic PC fixture to combo with the MH. Oh yah and a canopy cooling fan sometime soonish. The cooling fan isnt really a big worry, my temp only goes up 2 degrees in a full light cycle, but it doesnt hurt to be safe, right?

So final run down on what I have:

Coral:
Digitata
Frogspawn / Octospawn
Blue Pom Pom Xenia
Gorilla's Nipples
Fire and Ice Zoos
6 other types of Zoos

Hardware:
1 Korelia Nano
150 watt heater
150 watt MH K2 Viper / Corallife
Cleaning Magnet

Dosing:
Weekly:
Iodine
Strontium/Molybdenum
Calcium

Every two days:
Phytoplankton

Every three days:
Coral Vit
Phols
Amino Acid LPS

Feed the Frogspawn Mysis shrimp every night, or try to keep up on that habit haha.

Building supplies came from Home Depot, 80 bucks worth of trim, 4 bucks worth of hardboard, 12 bucks in stain and brushes and 8 bucks in glue.

So yah thats what I can build I guess, honestly I'm surprised that it turned out this good, Im not the best at cabinet making.

[Boomboy]

I dont think you should be dosing anything, it can easily throw that tank out of whack if you do weekly to by weekly water changes that should be enough. i think you should raise you salinity slowly to 1.024-1.026 around that range. in your pictures your zoas were really scretched out. and your xenia still isnt happy from your recent ones same with your frogspawn. they are not expanding like they should. everything is going good. just keep it simple with tanks this size. also i dont think you need to feed phyto in the tank either or any of those other ones. changing 2 to 3 gallons a week will be plenty to keep the parameters in check. you wanted to keep it simple anyways though right.

keep up the good work man.

[bauder1986]

Originally Posted by Boomboy

I dont think you should be dosing anything, it can easily throw that tank out of whack if you do weekly to by weekly water changes that should be enough. i think you should raise you salinity slowly to 1.024-1.026 around that range. in your pictures your zoas were really scretched out. and your xenia still isnt happy from your recent ones same with your frogspawn. they are not expanding like they should. everything is going good. just keep it simple with tanks this size. also i dont think you need to feed phyto in the tank either or any of those other ones. changing 2 to 3 gallons a week will be plenty to keep the parameters in check. you wanted to keep it simple anyways though right.

keep up the good work man.

ok Ill give it a shot, ill do a water change tomorrow to raise the salinity up a point. I do however want to keep dosing my coral vit, phols, and amino acid LPS, but maybe a little less often. the frogspawn is all the way out now, ill get a photo of it. But the xenia is still not that happy but i think that it is because of the higher light intensity. Xenia is usually a low light coral.

I found that the gorilla nipples reached out ever since i introduced them into the tank, they do that in my buddies tanks as well, we have more than sufficient lighting, i think it be more of a characteristic of them. the other zoo colonies have a really short reach but fully spread heads. My digi's polips are always out, not all the way out but none the less they're out.

But yah, ill start relying on the water changes for calc, iodine, strontium, molybdenum. Ill maybe stop the phyto but i seem to have great results with the zoos on that, and i dose really small amounts of everything as well. I am very careful with my dosing because i know how easy it is to throw a tank out of whack.

Thanks
Josh

[bauder1986]

Alright, I have gotten lazy lately in keeping this thread updated, so here goes it. Grab a coffee and a quick smoke because this is gonna be abit of a read.

It has been some couple of weeks since I started to raise my salinity, lower my dosing, and find some freaking way to make the gorilla nipples and the octospawn happy. Well, I did it. The damn things are happy now.

So I ended up raising the salinity up to 1.024 which seemed to make everything happier. But I still hade problems with the octospawn being so damn sensitive to everything. And to boot I had some heat issues from the light and canopy mix.

So first thing first, I had to fix the heat issues right away because Terry had the intention of storing his coral in my tank will he did a tank transfer from his 90 gallon tear down to his 30 gallon starfire cube(some of you have seen his tank) So what I did is added a fan bolted to the canopy facing outward and made sure that there was about 8 feet of power cord for it for whenever i want to get my grubby fingers into the tank. Well that solved the heat issue for the day time



And then I aquascaped the tank to better suit the light demands of some corals. and that seemed to work in making the gorrila nipples happier. They dont reach that much anymore.

And then I did something that I promised myself that I would not do on this 'Simple' Tank setup......I added a protein skimmer.

Good thing to because my nutrients were starting to go through the roof which was increasing the phosphates which in turn was increasing that annoying green crap everywhere. Well with the protein skimmer on there I now have clearer water, lower algea growth and a very happy octospawn.

But with the extra piece of equipment I have extra noise for the night time and as some of you know, that tank is in my room so I had to unplug the protein skimmer and the fan at night. That got old after a few days so I set up the protein skimmer and the fan on a timer with the lights so I only have that noise during the day time which isnt that bad. And dont worry, surprisingly the protein skimmer fires up succesfully every morning.

Now enough chatter and more pictures like you guys want.

[bauder1986]

Oh yah and for a little experiment I put a bit of carbon into the large particle filter on the protein skimmer just to increase the water clarity. K I think thats it for the updates.

[bauder1986]

well I did it finally, I made my first frags ever! I made four 10 - 20 head frags of my fire and ice zoos. Now what Im going to do is watch these buggers heal and attach to the frags rocks. In probably a month or so I may be interested in trades for zoos and such.