It's been a while since I was an active member of this community as work/life and other hobbies have gotten in the way. I started up my BioCube 29 nearly 10 years ago (wow wow wow!) and it definitely had its ups and downs, but like everyone else on here, I fell in love with the fish, the coral and everything else...down to the live rock! For the past couple of years I had been struggling with fine tuning the BC29. For several years I had an Octopus BH-1000 skimmer that was really doing the trick and once that unit ended up cracking and the pump leaking, it was all downhill from there. The limitations of the AIO really reared their ugly head for me. I purchased a HOB fuge and just couldnt get its return pump and the tank's return pump to play nicely.
Anyway! Long story short, my Starry Blenny bugged out a couple months ago and started burrowing. This lead to what I've researched as "old tank syndrome". The gunk that was buried in the DSB was stirred up and wreaked havoc on my tank. You could smell the hydrogen sulfide and everything was a mess. I had some soft corals left which were doing OK (after several water changes and running carbon) and my three fish: snowflake clown, black clown and the crazy blenny. They were all full of personality and doing just great.
Well! The latest storm got me. I was going away for weekend right when Riley (I believe) hit and we ended up losing power. I've lived in Yonkers over 30 years and have never been out of power for more than a day (I was away for the big statewide blackout though, ha). I had a friend run my battery pump, but my house ended up being without power from Fri-Tue and I lost everything. Actually, not everything. When cleaning out the tank I found three little hermit crabs still alive. I have them in a little 5G tank I used to use for ATO. So now I want to strategically start over. And do it the right way! I've started researching tanks in my size range, as it really needs to fit in the footprint of the BC29, but it seems like sooo many are now AIO. I really would like to go the drilled route after dealing with the constraints and limitations of an AIO and frankly just having to do too much contortion to get to the rear chambers. Any suggestions? I've seen some Deep Blue See 34G or so...and could always go like custom acrylic, but looking for suggestions.
Thanks for reading!
Anyway! Long story short, my Starry Blenny bugged out a couple months ago and started burrowing. This lead to what I've researched as "old tank syndrome". The gunk that was buried in the DSB was stirred up and wreaked havoc on my tank. You could smell the hydrogen sulfide and everything was a mess. I had some soft corals left which were doing OK (after several water changes and running carbon) and my three fish: snowflake clown, black clown and the crazy blenny. They were all full of personality and doing just great.
Well! The latest storm got me. I was going away for weekend right when Riley (I believe) hit and we ended up losing power. I've lived in Yonkers over 30 years and have never been out of power for more than a day (I was away for the big statewide blackout though, ha). I had a friend run my battery pump, but my house ended up being without power from Fri-Tue and I lost everything. Actually, not everything. When cleaning out the tank I found three little hermit crabs still alive. I have them in a little 5G tank I used to use for ATO. So now I want to strategically start over. And do it the right way! I've started researching tanks in my size range, as it really needs to fit in the footprint of the BC29, but it seems like sooo many are now AIO. I really would like to go the drilled route after dealing with the constraints and limitations of an AIO and frankly just having to do too much contortion to get to the rear chambers. Any suggestions? I've seen some Deep Blue See 34G or so...and could always go like custom acrylic, but looking for suggestions.
Thanks for reading!