Nano Reef Aquascape

I played around with my LR set up a bit more today. I brought everything into the centre and put the rocks into more of a slope position. The right side builds nicely from front to back I think. Looks pretty sweet now. Im not sure If I should light from morning till evening while its cycling or just a couple hours a day. I want to maintain my coraline so Im just doing 2-3 hours in the evening when i get home from work. Does anyone think I shouldn't be doing this?

Week 1: Stuff is dying!

So a few days into letting my tank cycle I notice a few hitch-hikers. This turned out to be both BAD and GOOD. First the bad - they were dying. The good - they were unwanted hitch-hikers. The first I noticed was a 1.5 inch bristleworm. These guys actually arent too bad, except certain species eat polyps and the bristles can sting you if touched. The next critter was pretty bad - a Mantis Shrimp. These guys are nocturnal predators that posess an evil weapon - the chelae.This thing can kill fish and shrimp or even put a hole in your finger. So it was a good thing it was dead. I was a little concerned as to why it would be dead though, but i figure my ammonia levels must have been pretty high in order to kill the hitch-hikers. Still waiting on my test kit so i know what my water params are.

My Biocube 8

So I ended up getting my tank sent from half way around the world. My Biocube 8 arrived at my doorstep only a week after i ordered it, off eBay. A seller named captainaquarium, I was pretty pleased with his willingness to ship the tank from the states to Australia, most others said they couldnt. He deserves the super hero title.

I purchased a stand, a new Eheim 600 pump, a Hydor Flo, a refractometer and some sand. The only problem was, getting the tank which was designed to work off US mains to work off Australian mains supply. The US system uses 110V and we only have 220V. So I needed a stepdown transformer which i found again, off eBay.

I ran the 2 PC light ballast cords into this. The pump I purchased locally so that was fine. And for the LED lights i had to solder a small 5v AC adaptor cable into the existing LED cable. Once that was done she fired up!

Everything worked, except for one of the LED's blew! Oh well, still got one. I did a freshwater run, no leaks. Then premixed saltwater and put that in. Then the live rock and now a 6 week wait for the cycle to fully complete itself - time to read up and write blogs :)