My new 24 Gallon Nano Cube

[alikhan2004]

Hi everybody this is my new 24 gallon nano cube. I have about 25 pounds of live rock in there and I also have live rick in the back chamber with some bio balls and its been cycling since last Saturday. my next step is wait till next sturday and grab couple of clown fishes and then start getting some corals to make it a reef.


By alikhan2004, shot with T-Mobile Dash at 2008-05-30

[crazylion]

lookin good man, some one did a good job on that rock design, you should be good on putting the clowns in their.

[Illuminati]

Do you know why the bioballs were in there in the first place?
Bioballs have surface area for the good bacteria to grow on and help break down dissolved organics. They can also trap solids and they in turn build up and you have little piles of crap causing higher nitrate levels in your tank. For fish only tanks it's not a huge problem but for a reef tank nitrates are bad.

Swapping out bioballs for live rock rubble is like trading in a 91 Toyota for a 92 model. You think your getting something better but the difference is minimal. Over time detrius (waste) will build up between the live rock rubble just like it will do between the bioballs and you'll be back where you started.

Also if you have enough live rock in the display (which it looks like you do) the addition of a little rubble will have little to no impact on biological filtration.

In short ditch the bioballs, ceramic rings and the live rock rubble idea (In my opinion)

How I setup my chambers:

Chamber 1 (Where the water flows into)
Chemi-Pure Elite on the bottom
Filter Floss on top (This catches the solid waste and can be thrown away weekly, one bag lasts a long time as you only need a small handful at a time, replace weekly when doing waterchanges).

Chamber 2 -
Purigen on the bottom
Heater

Chamber 3
MJ900 (If you want to upgrade the pump. The stock pump uses more watts and more watts = more heat in the tank. If you have high temps (above 80) then swap out your pump for this one).


Don't get clowns next week. While they are hardy and a great starter fish you aren't ready.

In about a week your going to start seeing diatoms, brown algae that covers the rocks and sand. It's a normal part of setting up a new tank and at that point it's time to get a cleanup crew going. Once the cleanup crew (Snails and Hermits) get the diatoms under control then your ready for fish. Adding fish before diatoms will lead to a LOT of algae that will be harder to get under control.


Again, all of this is just my advice based on my experiance, do what you want

[alikhan2004]

TY....BTW your the one that set it up.

[lcstorc]

Have you cycled the tank yet?
If not use a shrimp from the deli to kick off the cycle instead of putting a fish through that.
You need to go through the entire cycle from amonia to nitrite to nitrate. Then and only then should you start adding a CUC etc.

[alikhan2004]

Originally Posted by lcstorc

Have you cycled the tank yet?
If not use a shrimp from the deli to kick off the cycle instead of putting a fish through that.
You need to go through the entire cycle from amonia to nitrite to nitrate. Then and only then should you start adding a CUC etc.

Yes I threw a raw shrimp in the tank for 3 days but I took it out now and its been cycling since last Saturday. I also threw in 6 hermit crabs in there.