Journal Harry's 18" Cube

[HarryL]

Looks like JB waterweld epoxy putty has some good reputation in the reef community, my current issue is the lava rocks not having enough contact area with the wood for the Gorilla Gel to work well on. The epoxy can be bought easily, works on wet surfaces, so I'm going to give it a try tonight.

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Superglue and cotton pads works really well if you can get multiple points of contact

 

[HarryL]

cotton pads

I used paper towel earlier, is cotton pad a better filling than paper towel?

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Same thing, didn’t realize you tried that already.

 

[HarryL]

Another night of failure. JB waterweld would not stick to the wood nor the rock, after a few attempts I decided to switch back to using super glue.

Due to the space restriction, there aren’t many orientation options available for the smaller piece of wood. I decided to sacrifice the look a little for easier rock attachment. After gluing down as many rocks as I can, I started filling water. Getting close to the half way mark, the smaller piece floated again and broke all the gluing points.

Guess I’m out of luck today. I might just get a heavier rock instead of using lava rock. They are just too difficult to work with in this case. The reason for not using a slate is because I don’t have the tools to drill. So I’ve been looking for more alternatives.

Oh, and I dropped a rock and chipped the side glass a little

 

[Kwyet]

You could just let the wood soak. Eventually it will sink.

 

[HarryL]

You could just let the wood soak. Eventually it will sink.

Yeah I might just do that. Or I will try to find a smaller slate to tie beneath the wood. Either way I think I’m going to start the filter first since the large wood can stay under water with just a few pieces of rocks.

 

[HarryL]

Fired up the filter while soaking the large piece in the tank. The smaller piece is soaking in a separate bucket. I have a feeling that this will take at least a week or two if not longer. Might end up tying the whole thing to a slate anyways. Meanwhile just let the system build up and stabilize.

 

[HarryL]

Being as impatient as I am, I went out this weekend to get a piece of slate and a roll of transparent monofilament fishing line. It was quite difficult to find places that sell slate scraps/single piece of slate in my area and I ended up buying one from a LFS. $12 for 3.4lb.

It was so difficult to try to tie with the fishing line. May be because my lack of knowledge on different types of knots, but I just couldn’t figure out how to properly tie without the line loosen up. So I wrapped a few times around both the wood and the slate, then dabbed super glue gel on the line while holding them tight with hands.

Once the large piece of wood was properly tied down, I configured the smaller piece in a way that there are two decent contact surface with the large piece, and glued them together using cotton ball. I held them together for a good 5min before letting go and waited another 1hr to let it dry.

This time I finally got it!! The final position is not exactly where I wanted them to be but after a whole week’s stress, I’m more than happy to accept it.


The heater is set to 77F to help accelerate the cycle, and will be adding Seachem stability daily for the next week. Lights will stay off for the week as well.

 

[HarryL]

After a week and half of dark start, I ordered plants from APF before they paused shipping earlier this week. Here’s a list of plants: potamogeton gayi, juncus repens, cryptocoryne nurii, cryptocoryne balansae, hygrophila pinnatifida, anubias bacteria petite coin, anubias coffefolia, staurogyne repens, hydro other tripartita mini, bucephalandra alamanda blue, eleocharis pusilla. It’s getting warmer here(60-70F) and took only two days to arrive, so all plants look healthy. I didn’t order any TC plants but some of these small plants have bits of remaining gels on the root. I wonder if they just TC all plants and separate them from gel before shipping and give you a little less in compared to when you buy a whole cup/bag of TC.


Some of the plant and the hardscape structure was inspired by Luis Cardoso’s work in 2023 that participated in the AGA.


Planting process didn’t go as smooth as I’d like. While draining the water, I accidentally knocked the wood(no pun intended) and the smaller piece of wood broke away from the large piece and floated. The good thing is after some time in the water it is now more water clogged and I was able to tie a couple lava rocks at the bottom to keep it from floating.

Here goes the fully planted photo:


I used hydrocotyle tripartita to cover spots where fishing line/super glue is visible and hopefully they will attach themselves to the wood later instead of floating in the water. I chose two different anubias and put the larger coffefolia to the right corner at the back for it to cover the gap there as it grows. All staurogyne repens are planted at the left of the wood which you can’t see from the front. I’d like to make this tank look a little different from both the front and left since these are the main viewing angles.

Currently I have the light set at 50% power 6 hours a day. Will slowly increase weekly and see how it goes. The temperature is dialed down to 71F. Still debating if I should place the outflow at the back with the inflow and move the diffuser to the back as well. But I like how the current flow brings the potamogeton gayi tilted to the right, aligning with the hardscape direction.

I bought the NilocG dry ferts and will be dosing PPS pro, but instead of daily I might front load it because I’m lazy.

 

[HarryL]

Introduced some blue dream neocaridina. I plan to have them and the plants acclimate in the tank for a few weeks before introducing fish.


The knockoff surface skimmer I got along with the glass lily pipe has pretty wide gaps, I watched one of the shrimp getting pulled inside and instantly got flushed down into the filter canister. So I had to wrap the skimmer with fishing line to reduce the size of the gap.

 

[Kwyet]

Good idea! I haven’t seen that before!

 

[Jeff Miotke]

My experience with shrimp down the surface skimmer has been similar. I gave up trying to stop them long ago. I run the Oase filter so I simply dump the prefilter into a bucket and then return them to the tank. I find that they can even crawl up the skimmer and over the edge in their pursuit of grazing on the goodies that build up on it. For me the best deterrent has been swapping the skimmer piece every week during water change. I throw the dirty one in the bleach-soaked bucket and keep rotating. If I keep it clean then the shrimp aren't attracted to it. The weekly filter cleaning went from dozens (my colony is hundreds) a week down to two or maybe five at the most. Sometimes even zero. Quick and easy to separate a few from the mulm versus a horde of them.

I'm curious as to how the fishing line modification works out for you. I'm picturing happy shrimp with a nice ladder to the buffet. Silly shrimps

 

[HarryL]

The weekly filter cleaning

My filter goes from the bottom to the top instead of the side ways like the Oase ones, so I’m no where near cleaning it on a weekly bases, more like every few months.

I'm picturing happy shrimp with a nice ladder to the buffet.

I honestly didn’t think about this! The skimmer seems quite tall and they’d have to really climb out of the water to get over the top, I really hope they don’t do that lol.

Since you have so many shrimps, maybe you should try one of the surface skimmers built on the outflow instead of the inflow, in that case you won’t have any shrimp sucked into the filter at all. They just get blow right back into the tank.

 

[Jeff Miotke]

My filter goes from the bottom to the top instead of the side ways like the Oase ones, so I’m no where near cleaning it on a weekly bases, more like every few months.

I honestly didn’t think about this! The skimmer seems quite tall and they’d have to really climb out of the water to get over the top, I really hope they don’t do that lol.

Since you have so many shrimps, maybe you should try one of the surface skimmers built on the outflow instead of the inflow, in that case you won’t have any shrimp sucked into the filter at all. They just get blow right back into the tank.

Oh yea when I saw the skimmers on the outflow my gut reaction was oh yea thats the ticket...then I thought about it and I would be giving up all the debris removing my current one does which is substantial. So it is a can't win situation. So for now I stick with the rotating skimmers and keep an eye out for somebody to solve this.

 

[TRyan]

After finding all of my baby Amano shrimp inside my canister filter with a skimmer like yours, I switched to an inflow pipe without a skimmer. Then I added an Eheim 350 skimmer, but that too has large gaps in it straight from the factory.

But... Amazon sells this amazing aftermarket set for the Eheim 350 that keeps all but the smallest of baby shrimps out. It also tames the jet output with the other piece. Never had another Amano shrimp get in and my plants aren't getting blown over.

It really works well. Good luck.

 

[HarryL]

Oh yea when I saw the skimmers on the outflow my gut reaction was oh yea thats the ticket...then I thought about it and I would be giving up all the debris removing my current one does which is substantial. So it is a can't win situation. So for now I stick with the rotating skimmers and keep an eye out for somebody to solve this.

Another idea I had was to put a wire mesh on top of the skimmer, that can further stop the shrimps from climbing in while still allowing small debris to get clearness out. But I’m not doing that unless the shrimp issue is getting worse.

 

[HarryL]

In the meanwhile, I received too many cryptocoryne nurii for them to all fit in the tank, so I started a little emersed grow box to keep any extra plants I have. This first one has four crypt nurii, some fissidens fontanus, christmas moss(I think), and some riccia fluitans. Miraclegro potting mix is used as the bottom layer, about 1.5" thick, then a layer of lava rock for the moss to attach on. The moss is barely submerged in the water to keep it nice and moist.

 

[HarryL]

Day 10

The plants seem to be doing quite well so far. The most severe melting was observed on the staurogyne repens, where the stem under the soil kept melting and the plant would float up. I replanted them deep into the soil, showing only a few leaves, now the roots have grown and they should settle in soon.


Hydrocotyle tripartita sent out lots of roots, but still not yet attached to the wood by themselves. I need them to grab on and spread a little before I can start trimming. They do pearl nicely though.



I currently do daily macro and micro dosing. 7:0.7:9.3 NPK weekly, and 20% water change once a week. I want to let the nutrient slowly accumulate for a month before switching to front loading the macros.

 

[HarryL]

I recently noticed a small outbreak of hydra that probably came with the plants.

Upon research, people recommended to spot dose H2O2 , or No Planaria. As H2O2 can be harsh on other organisms and I don’t want to buy a new pack of No Planaria, I gave APT fixlite a try.

I happened to have bought it a couple weeks ago to spot treat algae in my other tank, and it’s very gentle on the plants, including any moss, and is very effective in killing the staghorn algae.


This is an example area before I did the treatment.


This is a few minutes after I spot treated them with APT fixlite. Upon getting contact, they immediately shrunk, and some turned white(I’m assuming that means it’s dead) within minutes.

No signs of harming the shrimp either. As I spot treated the other tank, the area had lots of new born shrimp, looks like they survived no problem. Great product to have on hand!