A College Nano

[WindyCityReefer.]

Hey everyone!

Long time lurker so I decided it was time to introduce myself as well as my nano. I am a graduate student at the University of Michigan but I am originally from Chicago (hence the username ). I was introduced to the hobby by my father at a young age - there were always aquariums around the house while growing up. So when I moved to Michigan for school I had a feeling that would not change! My only issue was finding something that would scratch my itch and not add additional stress to my school/study habits.

As you will see, my addiction and love for the hobby grew!

May 2017:




September 2018:





The tank is 90% SPS and about 10% LPS/Zoas. The tank is fairly self-sustaining. Equipment list below:

• Mightjet return pump
• InTank media basket
• GHL 2.1 doser
• Nano heater with separate controller
• IM ghost skimmer
• Tunze nano ATO

You can see the tank has changed a lot over the course of a year. Looking at the photos myself, it is hard to believe what it used to look like. I can go more into detail about the system but for now I think people enjoy photos!

 

[James M]

Welcome to reef2reef!!!
You have a beautiful tank

 

[NY_Caveman]

That is awesome! Welcome to R2R!

 

[Octocat]

Hi! I am new here as well. Your tank looks awesome! It's great to see the progression-- definitely good motivation for people like myself. I look forward to reading more about your experiences!

 

[hdsoftail1065]

Your tank looks really nice! Welcome to R2R!

 

[Captain Quint]

Welcome aboard. All looks nice and healthy. Thank you for sharing.

 

[WindyCityReefer.]

Thank you everyone for the warm welcome! As well as the compliments on the tank

Here are a couple more photos of the tank. They are not in exact chronologic order, but I feel they give you the story behind the tank's growth.

I also apologize for the first post having huge photos! I was creating the thread from my phone.. did not realize they would come out that big. These should be a little easier on the eyes.

 

[SPR1968]

That’s a great looking tank and corals and welcome to R2R!

 

[LBReefer]

Great looking tank. Those colors really pop.

 

[PookieGV]

Very nice

 

[edc_aquarium]

What kind of acan is this?

 

[WindyCityReefer.]

What kind of acan is this?

Not exactly sure. I picked it up as a no-name at a local frag swap.

Thank you everyone for the kind words! I attended a local frag swap today and came away with a RR Asia Orange Passion frag

 

[WindyCityReefer.]

Last week I also attended a swap.. I swear swaps are my weakness! There I picked up a WWC Supafly (Superfly) chalice. First photo is WWC

Second is the frag I bought - I made the mistake of taking a photo right after dipping and remounting on a new plug. Definitely looked better beforehand! I will have to update it as it begins to grow.

 

[WindyCityReefer.]

Way overdue update!

Well the system has changed drastically since my last posts. Here are some updates. I will post more if this one ends up going too long.

Winter/Spring 2019:

• While away on an externship for school, the girlfriend accidentally scratched the entire front glass with a magnet cleaner. I had already been eyeing a tank upgrade due to space. That gave me all the more reason to upgrade and I decided on an IM 25 lagoon! I wanted to have more depth 3-dimensionally and this gave me just that.
• In addition, I was accepted into a residency program at the University which meant I would be sticking around for at least another 2.5 years!

The transfer over. I now understand why SPS are called the building blocks of the ocean. All the rock was "glued" together by the SPS. I was amazed! It made it that much easier to transfer everything over.

Early Summer 2019:

• Just as I was getting ready to graduate from my program, the tank was hit with a nutrient spike.. this caused a domino effect which ultimately took out my big colonies of Walt Disney, orange monti and BattleCorals Sky Dopple. Along with that, a lot of higher-end frags were lost. Thankfully all the LPS were unaffected.

Photos as everything was rebounding from the "mini-crash". As you can see, I already started to pick up some SPS frags to repopulate the tank.

Late Summer 2019/Early Fall:

• As everything was starting to grow, I realized my AI Sol fixture was not going to cut it anymore. A lot of the SPS corals were experiencing die-off from shading and I was limited to placement of coral on the island.
• After extensive research, I knew I wanted to go down the hybrid (LED/T5) route. I came across a fantastic deal on another forum for an ATI NanoBox Hybrid LED/T5 lighting system. The system includes 6x NanoBox arrays and 6x T5 sockets. While I realize this is overkill for the tank, I figured I could choose to use 2-4 of the T5 sockets. Furthermore, the ability to upgrade tanks in the future without worrying about lighting was a big selling point - along with a fantastic price!

In action.

Late Fall 2019/Early 2020:

• The tank has pretty much been on auto-pilot. I am slowly making the tank more SPS dominant aside for a few favorite LPS pieces. Here are some updated shots as of last week.

I am sure I will think of something that I missed. In the mean time, please enjoy the photos!