biocube chamber 3

[RustyT22]

I've recently had a decent spike in nitrates and ammonia. Because of that, i just did a 33% water change and switched out the filter floss as well, which will solve the problem short term.

Long term though, I'm getting worried that when I took out half the Bioballs to put in my DIY basket w/ eggcrate (holding floss, chemipure, and purigen) that I removed too much of the biofiltration. Can I put LR rubble or bioballs in chamber 3? Or would I need a filter before the return?

My current setup is:

Chamber 1: heater and oceanic skimmer ( know it sucks. Budget)
Chamber 2: floss, chemipure, purigen, bioballs
Chamber 3: return only

I have a good bit of LR in the tank and 2" deep sand bed.

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

Im not sure how long you have been running bc29? I wouldnt put anything in chamber 3 because of maintaining pump inlet filter, unless you have removed that already. There alot of different mods out there, combining all chambers,etc. If your staying with standard pump and flow setup, continue to do w/c and filter changes. Leave your lid feed hatch open to get the gas exchange too. The design is the flaw, nothing youre doing. If you can gap the entire lid 1inch, this will help you alot.

 

[sen5241b]

I had a BC29 and got it down to zero trates and kept'em at zero for years. What did I do? Heater in chamber 1. I had the cheap skimmer and eventually ditched it and ran skimmer-less. Filled chamber two with a bag of carbon and cheato. The halogen or xenon puck lights make the cheato grow like crazy. I had to scrape the black paint away so light could shine on the cheato. If you want to use floss, put a small piece right where the water spills over from chamber 1 to 2. Ditch all the bioballs gradually, maybe 25% at a time.

I keep chamber 3 clear of everything except the pump. Like mariobrothersleeve said you need to keep that pump clear. I tried live rubble in chamber two and it did not do much for my tank.

 

[RustyT22]

Cheato and light would be a bad idea in #3 if I put filter floss around the intake on the pump?

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

Cheato and light would be a bad idea in #3 if I put filter floss around the intake on the pump?

I guess your asking alot out of 3-4 cups of water, and a very small amount of cheato. Would you get a result out of it?

 

[grozier]

how long has the tank going? If it hasen't yet the tank will cycle causing your amm. and nitrates? might be trites to spike until the cycle completes.

 

[RustyT22]

I have read that a lot of people keep the third chamber almost full of water. This is what in was planning to do as well if I did this.

 

[RustyT22]

About 4-5 months.

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

I have read that a lot of people keep the third chamber almost full of water. This is what in was planning to do as well if I did this.

If you elevate the level in 3, it will affect chamber 2 as well. You water will be to high, drip method, for oxygen to get in. Very risky imo. These machines are money pits, you soon will find out. All in one, be careful in decisions. :)

 

[tp1011]

I too have a 29 bc and have the oceanic skimmer am I correct to assume that the skimmer puts alot of oxygen in the water

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

I too have a 29 bc and have the oceanic skimmer am I correct to assume that the skimmer puts alot of oxygen in the water

Lots of trust with a 40 piece of plastic with no outlet. Mine would pick alot out some days and nothing the next. Try turning it off for an hour and start it back up. Imo, i think the columize the water inside the protein skimmer

 

[mtnstreesndogs4me]

Hello,
This is my first run at salt water tanks so I don't have a long history to pull from.
I do have the biocube 29 HQI that we got mid-January of this year.
We started with all live rock, live sand and salt water from our local store.
We cycled for about a week and tested pretty good so we started with a few crabs, snails and a skunk shrimp. About a week later we added our 2 clowns and a couple of frags.
We noticed we were having heat issues so we had to put a cooling fan behind the tank to keep the HQI from heating the water. We have the stock skimmer in tank 1, a big ball of cheato and about 3 pounds of live rock rubble in take 2 and the heater and standard pump in tank 3. I put a grow light behind the tank for the cheato and we use the standard filter cartridges.
We got up to 5 fish and a bunch of frags and everything was doing pretty good until we decided to add our birds nest. We tested our water the day we bought it and found our calcium was down to 280. We had been adding buffer to raise the pH (was at 8 from the get go) and calcium (was at 300) daily but couldn't get it to the right levels.
Our ammonia, nitrates,nitrites, KH and salinity were all right on but the pH and calcium wouldn't budge.
We wound up doing a 60% water change and went to NeoMarine precision salt blend and everything is beautiful.
I have been told we are very lucky that it cycled so easily and we have had no other issues.
For my first run at salt the biocube 29 HQI, in pretty much the stock set up, is very fun and seems to be pretty self contained. I think Biocube fixed a lot of the issues from the earlier models and I can tell you that the new ones are pretty nice.
The cheato and live rock rubble haven't hurt us, and I can't be certain but I think they helped.
Not sure if this helped you at all but I hope if did.
If I can answer any questions just let me know.

 

[RustyT22]

I went ahead and purchased the media basket from stevie T and mediabaskets.com for my biocube 29. Now my questions are two fold:

I currently have about half the bioballs in chamber 2, but will need to remove them to insert the media basket. Will it cause a spike to remove all of the beneficial bacteria at once? or should I put them for a short amount of time into the area where my refugium will be in the future (chamber 2b for lack of a better name since the basket divides chamber 2 into 2 areas). My other option is to remove everything in there now and insert the media basket and intall my new refugium light with cheato for area 2b and hope for no major spikes of any kind.

My other question is will the fact that the water isn't "trickling" through the media basket (with purigen, chemipure, and filter floss) make it ineffective? or is there some way Im missing that causes water to trickle through it rather than it just sitting in water?

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

Just pull the bio balls and monitor. Waterchanges may br immenent. Everything will get flow just fine. Get rid of the purigen if running cheato. Zone 1 filter floss, zone2 chemipure elite, zone 3 cheato.

 

[RustyT22]

Does Purigen hurt cheato?

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

It is doing the same thing. Double stamping, your cheato will die back and render it worthless. One or the other. Its kinda fun to the your tank organic. Algae to get rid of algae! The hole idea is funny

 

[ErinCahir]

Not really. The more established chaeto will out-compete any algae that tries to take root (for lack of a better phrase) in your display.

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

Not really. The more established chaeto will out-compete any algae that tries to take root (for lack of a better phrase) in your display.

This discussion is purigen and cheato, why not to run both

 

[ErinCahir]

It is doing the same thing. Double stamping, your cheato will die back and render it worthless. One or the other. Its kinda fun to the your tank organic. Algae to get rid of algae! The hole idea is funny

That was what I was responding to.