The Coral Cube Redux (now with PICTURES!)

[ScubaSteve]

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

Left Side:


Some top down coral pics...





And some pics of the tank being built:

[Proteus]

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

[Kgrizzle]

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

[kooky]

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?

[kien]

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

[lastlight]

Who built that cube it's gorgeous!

Really nice tank I'm loving that purple acro.

[Zoaelite]

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

[ScubaSteve]

Originally Posted by Titus99

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

Originally Posted by lastlight

Who built that cube it's gorgeous!

Really nice tank I'm loving that purple acro.

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!

[ScubaSteve]

Originally Posted by kooky

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

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.