College Waterbox 25 peninsula

[Kluker589]

Hello all! I just moved to a new house and am setting up a Waterbox 25 which I picked up from European aquatics. The tank had a cosmetic chip on the corner so it was a great deal! This will be my fourth reef tank so hopefully I can finally iron out all those newbie mistakes. I’m high school my first aquarium was a standard 15 gallon which was an absolute mess. Then I upgraded to a 38 gallon innovative marine with all the bells and whistles. Much more successful than the first. I then setup a little 9 gallon cube for my senior project which was a super fun little tank. Looking back I feel my main problem is over use of carbon and gfo along with over skimming. I would always bottom out my nitrate and phosphate. This tank I will be keeping super simple mostly softie and lps with a few sps. With that out of the way here’s my equipment.
Equipment:
Ai prime hd (the older version)
(Planned settings attached)
100 watt ehime jager
Jaebo sw-4
Stock return pump (a lot of complaints on this but so far it’s been great)
Intank filter floss holder ( ditched the filter sock)
20 lbs reef saver rock
Fiji pink sand 20 lbs
Aquavitro salinity salt mix from lfs

I’m honestly pretty happy with my aqua scape. I’ve never put the time in to use super glue to make an aquascape and I’m super happy with how it came out. The tank was setup yesterday so still cleaning up.

Planned livestock
Clownfish pair
Some sort of sand sifting goby
Long nose hawk fish
Hopefully a larger show fish like a leopard wrasse or baby tomini tang ( only will be setup for a year)

 

[chadfish]

Sounds and looks great. If you have room, I recommend adding some live rock to the sump at some point.

 

[tkyee98]

Looking great so far! People do crazy stuff with the ai prime settings, I recommend keep it simple and avoid the huge spike in the middle. Can’t hurt to try getting some par readings too before ramping up a prime to over 100% on the blues and 40% on the whites.

 

[Slombardi]

Scape looks cool! Don't forget to get some turbo snails in there to help with some of that algae , especially during the ugly phase at the start.

 

[Kluker589]

After 16 days the tank cycled. I ended up using a mixture of seachem seed and fritz 900 to cycle the tank. Seemed to work pretty well. My nitrites got stuck at 2 ppm for 10 days of the cycle. But after the tank had fully cycled I added some livestock. I first did a 7 gallon water change on the system which is about 35% of actual water volume. Trying to get my alkalinity in-line as after the cycle it was only at 5.0 dkh. After water change it sits at 6.2 dkh.

Livestock added post cycle:
1 black and white missbar clownfish
1 mocha Vinci clownfish
4 blue leg crabs
4 astraea snails

All from ocean state aquatics.

Now looking to start to add some easy soft coral to the tank as testers before any of the lps goes into the tank.

 

[Cinnimin]

After 16 days the tank cycled. I ended up using a mixture of seachem seed and fritz 900 to cycle the tank. Seemed to work pretty well. My nitrites got stuck at 2 ppm for 10 days of the cycle. But after the tank had fully cycled I added some livestock. I first did a 7 gallon water change on the system which is about 35% of actual water volume. Trying to get my alkalinity in-line as after the cycle it was only at 5.0 dkh. After water change it sits at 6.2 dkh.

Livestock added post cycle:
1 black and white missbar clownfish
1 mocha Vinci clownfish
4 blue leg crabs
4 astraea snails

All from ocean state aquatics.

Now looking to start to add some easy soft coral to the tank as testers before any of the lps goes into the tank. View attachment 178875View attachment 178876View attachment 178877View attachment 178878

I LOVE the new clean rock look, I had it in mine when I started and sometimes I wish I could keep the look. I have loads of coraline growing now and thats cool and all, but the clean ones are just so striking, love the rockscape too

 

[dz6t]

Looking great so far! People do crazy stuff with the ai prime settings, I recommend keep it simple and avoid the huge spike in the middle. Can’t hurt to try getting some par readings too before ramping up a prime to over 100% on the blues and 40% on the whites.

+1
Those spikes in AI settings are nothing more than garbage and BS. I communicated with the person who “invented” these spikes and read the scientific paper he send me. Well, all I can say is that someone really needs to understand how data points were collected and how they should be analyzed, (hint, simply connecting data points with straight lines was not the right way to interpret data). The funny thing is that even in that paper he sent me, all those slightly up and down data points were curve fitted to a smooth curve, lol. I also communicated with a lighting authority in the field, his words were simple, what a load of BS.
Sorry if I offended anyone, my above comment is only for entertainment purpose. Well, what a load of BS.