Art's 14 Gallon Biocube (would love some suggestions)

[guarda]

Saw BBC Life a few months back and then started researching corals. I had no idea these creatures were so amazing. Fast forward to today and I picked up a Biocube 14 at a great price and I can see my time and bank account rapidly dwindling at the opposite rate of my joy and discovery. Anyway. Got some LR and 3 gallons of water from a 3 or 4 year old tank, stuck a frozen shrimp in and waited 2-3 weeks. Chucked the bioballs, filterfloss in chamber 2, Koralia 1. The only other "mod" is a little feeding station I made to train the mandarin.

Picked up some corals from a friend dismantling his tank and some snails from Petco. Sony (mandarin) I got from the lfs at a little over an inch, maybe 1.5 inches and her belly was concave compared to the other mandarins in the tank. Pic of when I first got her in this thread. https://www.livingreefs.com/salutations-mandarin-owner-t27501.html
I'm gonna try and take a pic of her in the same position so you can see her belly progress so far.

So far I have 5 or 6 margarita snails, 3 nassarius snails, a tiny orange fiddler crab, Sony Sotomayor mandarin, a branch of green zoas, 3 colonies of pulsing xenias, a group of 5 or 6 candycane corals, pipe organ, and a blastomussa (not sure, the big green thing front right of tank).

Anyway, my aquascaping skills are sorely lacking and I think it looks terrible. The tank sits in the left corner of the living room so the main viewing sides would be the front and right sides. THe left side is close to my wardrobe so no one walks over there. If anyone has any tips on how to arrange or add/remove anything I'm all ears! Thanks!

Left side

Closer front

Right side

 

[ggNoRe]

You're being too hard on yourself... it looks great! Geez those are some giant brains! :O

 

[lilduud]

yea really! congrats to you for doing it so efficiently and yet so quickly. your off to an excellent start.

 

[sen5241b]

I have a BC29. Scrape the black paint off the back of chamber 2 only, put two strong plant lights next to the glass, then fill chamber 2 with cheato. I did this and my nitrates and phosphates dropped way down. If you luv corals you will have to get the 'trates down.

 

[d2mini]

Nice looking tank!!!
If I had a biocube I'd probably have a lot of Zoas and Ricordea.
LOTS of colors to choose from and they don't need a lot of light.

 

[ggNoRe]

I have a BC29. Scrape the black paint off the back of chamber 2 only, put two strong plant lights next to the glass, then fill chamber 2 with cheato. I did this and my nitrates and phosphates dropped way down. If you luv corals you will have to get the 'trates down.

Or you could just get an underwater light from intankmedia like I got for my BC29. Got my chaeto growing like crazy. Also running chemipure elite and purigen as long as having a polyfilter pad are other ways to keep your water crystal clear and make your corals happy.

 

[yote]

Aquascaping looks pretty dang good to me. Besides,you'll end up changing it for one reason or another before to long.:D That just part of the hobby.

 

[guarda]

Thanks for the tips everyone! My order came in over the weekend so stuck the chemipure elite under some lr fragments in chamber 2 and built a little light assembly with a 40w halogen. Need to find my pack of velcro. Waiting on some chaeto from Biff. I do water changes every couple of days and my nitrates have always been pretty close to 0. The only fish I have is a 1-1.5" mandarin and she doesn't poop much. Have 5 margarita snails and 4 Nassarius and 2 Ceruth. Calcium hovers close to 400 a day after 25% wc and sometimes i dose 5 drops of Kents Coral-Vite.

ggNoRe - When you mean polyfilter pad you mean on top of the vented lid on top of chanber 2? I got some polyfill that I sit on that lid but when I get my jigsaw back from my friend I'll cut a piece of the egg crate I found to replace the lid. Btw since I'm gonna have a light on the back of the tank do I still need to use the egg crate? It seems that ppl use the egg crate to let more light in to reach the chaeto? Or am I wrong about that?

sen5241b - Yup, the current Biocubes have a clear window in the back wall where chamber 2 is.

Here's how the cube looks now. I think it looks ok now. Just have to fill it in. Definitely want more zoos and those tricolor ricordeas look nice but haven't really seen many corals in person. I have to admit that I was amazed last week when I saw someone's BC29 with the actinics on. Never thought it would look that nice. The aquariums around here don't have nice looking setups.