ilyad's JBJ build

[ilyad]

Hey guys, Im new to the forum here, but I wanted to post up my build of the JBJ 28g Nano Cube.

I'll start with the beginning and show you my progress, step by step. I hope that this thread will not only amuse you, but also provide some valuable information for anyone else looking to get a nano tank.

I purchased my tank on 9/9/11 but the stand came without hinges so I had to return that to the LFS to get reordered, in the meantime, I tested out the LED's

Moonlight

Dawn/Dusk

Daylight

The tank and its gear

the tank in its place

These LED's are bright

Leak Test with Tap Water

Drained the Tap

All of the supplies ready to be put in the tank

Now on to the individual pictures of the liverock to showcase their beauty

Rock 1

Rock 2

Rock 3

Rock 4

The sand in the tank

With the live rock, live sand and water

 

[ilyad]

Getting less murky

The original aquascape

Front

Left

Right

The beginning of the cycle

Talk about some crazy diatoms

Introduced a clean up crew

The snails doing their job on the algae

Got some hair algae bloom

And the cyano

Keep in mind, these are all normal steps of the cycling tank

My first fish, a clown which I named Nema

Cyano is getting really bad

Cyano and various algae

FTS after a cleaning

My clean up crew (CUC) - hermits and turbo snails

 

[ilyad]

Added some nassarius snails to keep my sand clener

My first coral - a Zoanthid colony in green, red, and green/yellow

Close-up of the Zoa's at night

FTS

Got some supplies - magnet cleaners, a carbon filter and a spin-stream nozzle

Testing the magnet - Before

And after

Close Up of the Spin Stream

Other gear in the tank

Got myself a tuxedo urchin - his name is Mr. Bow Tie

Urchin acclimation

Mr. Bow Tie on his first rock in the tank

FTS

 

[ilyad]

Nema under moonlight

Purchased a Neon Green Candy Cane Coral

The candy cane in the tank

A super tongan nassarius snail - I bought him with the CUC but he finally came out after 3-4 weeks of hiding under the sand

A peppermint shrimp - Sergeant Pepper

Purchased a Duncan Coral

Close Up of the Duncan Coral

The newesr aquascape

Front

Left

Right

There is more to this tank, Im just really tired at a quarter past 4 am, but I will post the rest of the build tomorrow

 

[Smitty]

Hello and welcome to the site...glad to have you aboard. Thanks for sharing the pics, everything is looking great, and you've done a great job.

 

[Samhain]

Very pretty! I love the urchin and shrimp!

 

[little_fish]

Hello and Welcome!

Looks good!

 

[Live Rock]

Welcome to Livingreefs! :D The only concern is the candy cane. It looks like the flesh is receding. What are your water parameters?

 

[ErinCahir]

Hello and welcome to the site!! Love the pictures!

 

[ilyad]

Welcome to Livingreefs! :D The only concern is the candy cane. It looks like the flesh is receding. What are your water parameters?

Live Rock, those Candy Canes came from the LFS like that. They were damaged during shipping and nobody really wanted them, you'll see that in the later pictures they're doing a lot better :bounce: Most of my corals were bought because I felt bad about them, rather than show pieces right away.

Like I said the Candy Canes were in a great display tank at the store, but since they were injured, nobody wanted to buy them, I watched them over a period of 2 weeks at the store and saw that they were staring to recover, so I bought them.

The Duncan I found in the same store where it somehow made its way under all the rock... there was barely a little part of one of the heads peaking out from all of the rubble. When I had him pull it out, I knew Id love this guy too...

You can also see this guy was injured (a third of one of the heads was gone, and there was some recession as well)

This is a more current picture where its recovered a lot since I first bought it.


Anyways, lets continue with the build.
Here is the Duncan after it had acclimated to the tank

And a close up

The Candy Cane doing better too, at this point i still havent gotten in to feed, but it was puffing up during the day

This little guy loves picking everything up, here he is on a walk with his hermit crab buddy.

One day after class, I came home to find that the urchin had snagged up a little frag of the zoa colony onto himself

I had a dilemma, I didnt want the zoas floating around freely and landing somewhere on my main rock work to later spread like wild fire, but then again, I didnt want to just kill the few polyps that he yanked off. Luckily at this time I had started doing some research on fragging corals (although I wasnt planning to do any myself any time soon).

I guess it was time, so I headed to the LFS, grabbed a frag plug and some glue and was on the way home to frag my first coral, with the help of the urchin

I used tiny tweezers and grabbed the piece of rock that was attached to the zoas and the urchin, gave it a little tug, and the zoas were free, I was careful not to damage the soft tissue and release any toxins into the tank

Here are the zoas drying on the paper towel

The rest of the things

A little dab of glue and they were on

Here they are back in the tank

And they're open!

Shortly after that (probably 2 days) I found my peppermint shrimp attacking the duncan coral. Ive spotted him bullying the coral once in a while during feedings, so I didnt think much of it, but in front of my eyes, the shrimp ran up to the Duncan, yanked 2 tentacles off and pierced one of the heads with his claw.

The guy had to go, luckily someone local decided to take him off my hands, along with the baby zoas and even traded me one of his frags.

He gave me these stunning Captain America Polys

 

[ilyad]

Once again, I had to move the rocks around... this time it wasnt because I didnt have anything better to do with my hands, but I actually thought of some of the future corals I plan to have and decided I need more/different rock space. So, during one of the days for Thanksgiving break I went ahead and moved them around.

The newest and current aquascape

Front

Right

Left

You can see the Candy Cane is recovering nicely and getting its stripes back

It also started sending its feeder tentacles out (although at very random times still, lol) one day they'll be out during the day, and others they stay shut until hours after the lights are off.

My last purchase was another Candy Cane, this time a crimson/teal one

Close Up

This guy just loves carrying rocks around, sometimes he'll keep them for so long algae starts to grow

 

[NanoReefer]

looks good, the super tongan nassarius snail , i always called a tiger nassarius because of its shell. i have two of them. that was one hell of a trade for you, captain americas are usually 20-30 bucks a head.btw welcome to living reefs!

 

[ilyad]

looks good, the super tongan nassarius snail , i always called a tiger nassarius because of its shell. i have two of them. that was one hell of a trade for you, captain americas are usually 20-30 bucks a head.btw welcome to living reefs!

Yeah I know, the reason he traded that was because the shrimp was confirmed to eat Apteisa. Lucky for me the fish store I go to, doesnt feed their pep shrimps anything but apteisa so when you take them home, they go bonkers for that stuff.

Plus, he turned out to be a really cool guy, he said his tank is almost at capacity now, so he pretty much just frags and trades now, so he didnt mind giving that frag

Honestly, when he first told me, I didnt even know what those were, and I agreed. I didnt do it to get a good deal, I just needed the pep shrimp gone, and didnt want it dead, I was willing to take anything for him. This guy just happened to be the first to do it.

 

[ilyad]

The corals are doing so much better now that they seem to be splitting/seeding heads

The Captain America's

I hope you can see it, but on the right of the polyps, there is a tiny new one growing

The Duncan

I believe the two protrusions on the left polyp are new heads about to grow

In case you guys are interested, here is what I feed to these guys, I do various combinations or alterations of these 3 foods, usually just in a random order (because in the wild their food source would be random too)

We have the Phyto Feast

Thats for the Captain Americas and Zoa's once in a while, I just broadcast some into the tank

Then the Oyster Feast

Everyone loves this thing! One thing to keep in mind is that it tends to clump up when it hits the water, so I put it into a pipet and shake the pipet over the coral, while pressing down just a little, and the oyster feast then comes out mixed into the water... For this one, I like to turn off the water circulation, to let the polyps and heads eat it before it gets blown away. It also really brings out the color in all the corals! Amazing

And lastly, we have the Arci Pods

Probably one of the best small food out there. This one I feed to the clown as well

In addition to all of those I have some frozen brine shrimp that I feed to the clown and the bigger corals.

Keep in mind, I dont feed every day, and I dont feed all 4 of them at the same time, I alternate, I mix, I match:toothy12:

And here are the results of the feeding

Candy Cane after feeding on the pods

The other Candy Cane after feeding

The Duncan after food

So today in the morning I woke up and the lighting was just right in the room so you can get the blue and still have the tiny camera on the cell phone recognize the colors. Usually the cell phone gets washed out and all blue, but here you go guys

The Zoas

Duncan

Captain America

The Candy Canes

And the FTS

 

[ilyad]

with the lights

and a wide shot

OK, well thats my tank up to date... I hope you guys enjoyed it, and if you have any questions feel free to ask... I'll make sure and keep you guys posted on the progress as well :D

 

[Waddi]

Great tank there mate!

 

[ilyad]

Great tank there mate!

thanks!!!

I cant wait to get some more things in there after the holidays... Im planning to get a frogspawn, and a clip on LED for the back so I can get some chaeto in the top part of my drop in filter

And Im waiting for an acquaintance to frag a piece of Xenia for me... He fragged one of his in Nov, so he prob wont be doing much fragging until the end of the month, or early next year.

 

[little_fish]

Looks good!

Brine has almost no nutritional value though, its like candy for fish. You are much better off feeding him some mysid or other foods

 

[Live Rock]

Looks good!

Brine has almost no nutritional value though, its like candy for fish. You are much better off feeding him some mysid or other foods

+1 lil fish

btw, I love your urchin!

 

[ilyad]

Looks good!

Brine has almost no nutritional value though, its like candy for fish. You are much better off feeding him some mysid or other foods

Yeah, the previous store that I was going to, before my current one, where I bought the Clown, the store owner gave me the frozen food and told me thats what to feed it. I didnt think of it twice and got it...

Ive stopped going to that store since, and now Im getting a lot better information from my new fish store. He was out of Mysid the last few times I was there, so thats why I bought the pods. Hopefully next time Im in there, I can get that food too...

And thanks for the positive comment, Im really excited my tank is doing well, I was quite worried when I was starting out that I have invested a ton of money and wont be able to pull it off... So far, its paid off so much!!!! I stare at that little cube of ocean in my corner many hours each day:mrgreen: