14 gal. oceanic biocube

[rajuncajun]

14 gallon oceanic biocue with 16lbs. of fiji live rock. 22lbs of fiji pink live sand. Oceanic biocube protein skimmer. Bio balls are in as of now but i am am trying to get info on wether or not to take them out. As of today i have two tank buddies a blue and gold damzel, and a green starburst polyp. I am heading to the LFS thursday to get a cleaning crew. will update when they arrive to see exactly what i get.

[jenglish]

sounds great. in general if you have enough beneficial bacteria in your rock there's no reason to use bioballs as well imo

[Loverotties]

Get rid of the balls!

[rajuncajun]

can i get rid of them now all at once since they are new. or should i wait and do it over time. because i would realy like to move the heater out of the main dispaly i dont like all the hardware in there

[jenglish]

If you consider them a part of your biological filtration then they should be fazed out. If they are new to the system and not likely established or if there is another bio filter then I say rip em out.

[rajuncajun]

ok well thanks for the advice the general opinion on here seems to be that if you have live rock and live sand there is no need for te bio balls. i will take them out now because the tank is new and i dont think they will have much on them i mean only about a week and a half running the system, and monitor water parameters. i am doing daily top offs with R/O and everything seems to be happy.

[rajuncajun]

any suggestions on what to do to keep the waterfall noise down. that was one good thing about the bio balls.

[Paramecium]

In mine I took out the balls and then raised the water lvl up to the bottom of the top tray in the middle chamber. Once the balls are out you can disregard that max lvl line. It gives you a little more water volume and gets rid of the waterfall sound. I also got a bag of uncut filter pads like this..
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/produc...31&pcatid=4231

and cut out a piece to fit on top of that tray going into the middle chamber. Helps polish the water and I just switch it out every few days. Also depending on the heater I believe some of them won't work unless they are mostly submerged such as the stealth models which is what I have. I put mine in the third chamber with the return pump and keep the water level high enough to cover it completely. Anyhow just my thoughts but it seems to be working quite well, I run the oceanic nano skimmer as well in the first chamber like you have so it sound about identical. The only other changes I made was adding a Koralia Nano powerhead opposite from the pump return and upgrading the stock pump to a MJ900 with a Hydor Flo deflector on the return. The flow isn't crazy but it's much more random and everything seems happy.

~Danny

[rajuncajun]

ok well that nice to know about the water level thing only applying to if you have bio balls in there. but how much more water are we talkin about because right now it only has about 1/2" to the top of the tank. i dont want the thing overflowing. and i was not to crazy about putting a korila in there. just did not want the additional hardware. thinking about a dual foutput on the return with a maxijet1200. but who knows. still trying to keep ,my walet from floating out of my pocket from the intitial set-up cost

[Paramecium]

If your talking about the level in the display it won't change at all. The additional water will all be in the back of the tank. Just fill into the middle chamber and it will level over into the return chamber. The display level should never change. All of the evaporation and such will just drop the level in the rear of the tank.

~Danny

[rajuncajun]

ok so a few questions. one when i do tops off with this tank should i add it to the back in chamber two or three. another thing i am heading to get my cleanup crew tomorrow because the LFS will be getting there shipment in. will some of the critters clean up the diatom bloom. I have a blue and yellow damsel/azure in there right now and am feeding him brine shrimp. i have been feeding him a little extra this week so some will get into the sand bed. will this be enough for the clean up crew or should i supplement their diet.

[Paramecium]

I had my cleanup crew in for a few weeks with no feeding. I did however have a fairly large amount of hair algae. They will scavenge what they can from feedings but I wouldn't overfeed just for the cleaners. Probably will end up just feeding the algae that they will be to full to eat haha. I could be wrong though. Like I said my crew was fine without any feedings, just eating all the algae in the tank.

As for water topoffs unless you have the lid propped open you don't evaporate much at all. I did for a while when it was hot with a fan blowing over the water and lost about half a gallon a day. I would add RO/DI water every night in the 2nd chamber. My thinking was that it would mix with the tank water better if I slowly added it there rather than right into the pump chamber. Probably over cautious but with the 3rd chamber getting water from the bottom of the 2nd and it doesn't appear very turbulent in the 3rd chamber so I thought it may not mix well and you would get pockets of fresh water getting shot into the tank. Probably not a big concern but the 2nd chamber is getting mixed pretty well so I would just pop the top tray out and add my water there. Again I'm no expert but it just seemed like a good idea to get the fresh RO mixed well with the salt before it hit the main display.

~Danny

[rajuncajun]

Well i added some of the clean up crew thursday and friday because the diatoms were getting bad and the hair algae was starting to grow. I got three little i mean like really little nassuri snails and three our four larger ones. i cant remember and they burry themselves so not sure. i have two snails the LFS sold me that i think are turbos but not sure will put some pictures up when i can get a digital camera. also there is 1 scarlet hermit, 1 blue leged, 3 jade, and some other one with coraline algae on it looked cool. Also i bought a few pieces of live rock rubble and one seemed to have some type of polyp on it when i got it in the tank. again i will post pictures to help id. i had to leave the tank for the weekend so im not sure how its doing hopefully its ok

[rajuncajun]

well came back to te tank sunday night and everything seemed fine. all the snails and cras were doing good and the damsel is doing great. starburst is already growing. the cool polyp things were some of those asptaisia anenomes. (spelling?) after reading some advice on here and not being able to do any of those i took the live rock out and took a lighter to it then put superglue over the areas that i could remember them to be. hopefully this will take care of the problem. ill post later to see if they come back. but thinking about getting a watchmen goby this week or next and maybe a few small frags, as long as the water stays good.