Amoo's JBJ H Mag Focus 28G Cube

[Amoo]

"Wait, you have a H. Mag in a 28G cube, are you nuts?"

Well sort of. Would I ever recommend anybody to put this size nem in this small of a tank? Not unless you are extremely confident in your ability to keep them happy AND have the ability to move them somewhere else on a moment's notice (be it QT, Rx, Another tank...etc). Things can go south fast in a nano, but that's part of the fun with them in my opinion. They make you stay on top of your game.

I setup this tank exactly 22 days ago with the specific purpose of accomplishing this task. The lighting for this tank is a Kessil whatever360whatever hooked up to their little doodad controller thingy. The tank has approximately 20lbs of rock and about 20lbs of sand. Filtration is currently via a media basket housing filter mesh/GFO/GAC. The returns are Maxi Jet 1200s I think, they came on the tank and I was told they're an upgrade from stock (they'll be replaced soon). The MP10 has a new power supply on order so for the moment a RW-4 is controlling water flow inside the tank. Weekly 5G water changes are also performed. A Santa Monica DROP.6 Up-flow Algae Scrubber was added today along with a Tetra Whisper-150.

Current tank inhabitants are as follows
1 9" Diameter H. Mag Nem.
2 Black Ice clownfish
1 Yellow Tang (Calm down, this is not a forever home, he'll be in the 60g frag tank by the end of the year)
1 Serpent Star (Was a freebie from Reefcleaners, he's a baby so he'll be moved as he gets bigger.)
2 Nerite Snails
6 Nassarius Snails
1 Scarlet Reef Hermit
12 or so Florida Ceriths
2 Heads of Frowspawn

Sunday's NO3 was 6ppm per RedSea and PO4 was .04 per Hanna ULR.

The tank was seeded with a base rock piece out of my 125G along with a few rubble pieces and a couple of pieces of new acid washed rock. The plan for this tank is to feature the H. Mag perched on a rock hosting it's 2 Black Ice clowns. The lower portion of the rockwork will feature some Zoas and Softies like the frogspawn to fill in the blanks and at some point I'll probably add a pair of Dottybacks once the Tang is moved. The goal though is to keep the focus on the Nem and clowns. We've all seen people drop some clowns in a 10G tank or smaller with bare walls and a couple pieces of PVC and use that as a breeder setup. Think of this more like the BMW version of that.

Don't you just love new tank syndrome, bet you can figure out which rocks are new...

 

[Amoo]

The Nem in this tank came to me from a fellow reefer on another site who couldn't get it to stop walking around his tank. He came to me with very tan tentacles and they are already starting to lighten up some in the month I have had him. I think he'll be purple base, purple tent by the time it's all said and done, but time will tell. Let's talk about the UAS I added to this tank today. The .6Drop is supposed to be able to handle full filtration on a tank with a feeding of .6cubes of frozen food a day. This tank will never see close to that amount with an ultimate end goal of 4 small fish and the Nem will not be target fed.

Let's see what we got here:

The recommendation for this UAS is a much stronger variable flow pump dialed WAY down until you hit about, yeah that looks good....Seems like a waste of money to me. Let's just go ahead and buy an appropriately sized pump from the start.

Now let's see the goods.

Sadly this unit arrived slightly damaged. The airline connector which links the inside of the housing to the outside does not stay in place. I think I'll just go ahead and fix that myself, not worth dealing with CS. Finding a place to put this thing on this tank is also a nightmare. It took me a good 20 minutes to find a spot before I said, "that will have to do, but man is it obtrusive." My wife got home, looked at it and said, "Oh that doesn't seem in the way at all." So there you have it.

I can say confidently that I would NOT recommend this unit fully submerged in this size tank. Between the bubbles all over the tank and the bubbles breaking at the surface splashing water onto my gooseneck hung Kessil, that was not going to work. There really is no good way to hang these things if you run your water level at a reasonable level for these tanks. You pretty much have to prop it, then wrap some of the tubing around that piece.....I think we....ok nobody move. I think you get the picture.

This unit did not come with a cover for the LED like my SURF did so I guess it's bright light from now till eternity, minus the 2 out of every 24 hours it will be off. Personally I would have liked to have seen the LED placed in the door as opposed to it's current position, which is mounted at an angle on the bottom corner of the door latch. Sure seems like we're wasting a lot of real estate here that isn't going to get as good of growth as it could. Overall there are a few things here I probably would do a little different if I were to DIY it, which I may eventually in the future, if this setup works on this tank. For now though, we got what we got and we're going to put it through the paces.

The goal with this unit is to only run it and 5G weekly water changes to sustain the tank. That said I wouldn't dare remove the carbon or GFO yet until this things starts to get established some. The GAC may stay long term regardless but I would like to remove the GFO.

Lastly, here's the test piece we will be monitoring, moved over from my 125 complete with it's own algae growth.

 

[tureefik87]

Following, like all the detail!

 

[Amoo]

Following, like all the detail!

Welcome aboard and thanks for the reminder, I was supposed to update this yesterday but got sidetracked with the new additions. Time to get the camera and get to work.

 

[Amoo]

Here's the update on how the drop unit is doing. I'll add a few shots of the tank and some new goodies here in a bit after I resize them. Drop was installed on 8/3/2015 these pictures are from 8/13/2015.

Test 1

Well the outside is good at growing algae

The inside, apparently not so good at it yet

 

[Amoo]

Here's an update on how the tank itself is doing. I'm actually very much enjoying this tank so far. Very low maintenance. Still doing 5G water changes once a week and still have the bags of Carbon and GFO along with the filter floss (changed bi weekly) in the media basket. I was able to get the new power cord in for the MP10 and was going to go with just the MP10, but found an optimal spot for the WP4 so I left them both and the H Mag is responding nicely to the varied flow.

Here's a FTS

As you can see the starter algae is cleaning up nicely, I'm sure the additional flow is helping with this. I believe I have everything in this tank that will be in this tank. At some point once the ZOAs settle in I move them off the plugs and glue them directly to that rock. I'm thinking the Torch and Hammer will probably change places. I was not planning for the Aussie Blueberry Monti or the Ricordia, but they were both pieces the wife loved on the @AquaSD auction this past weekend so you know how that ends. Most of the pieces are new as of yesterday and beginning to open up nicely. No real issues at the bottom of this tank under a gooseneck mounted Kessil.

 

[Tahoe61]

The tank is looking great, definitely a decrease in the algae.

H.Mags do not move around much? Worrying about that Anemone moving into the power heads would make me a nervous wreak.

 

[Amoo]

The tank is looking great, definitely a decrease in the algae.

H.Mags do not move around much? Worrying about that Anemone moving into the power heads would make me a nervous wreak.

No they don't once they find their happy place. The three in my 125G have moved less then 3" in the year + I have had them in there. H. Mags like very high, varying flow along with high light. They also seek the highest point on the rocks they can physically touch. So basically if this thing were to stretch all the way towards the glass, realize it was there and decide it wasn't happy, there is a high chance it would try to get there. The positioning of the powerhead in the back corner actually blows hard enough that if the nem tries to stretch towards the back wall it's tentacles get swept in the current back away from the wall.

As you are well aware, but I feel it is fair to mention, there is ALWAYS a chance the nem will walk. It's hard to tell from the picture but there is actually over 6" between the nem and that back powerhead and more then that from the nem to the front one. The reason I waited a year to put any corals at all in my 125G is because of this worry. I wanted to test things with different parameters, swings, flow changes...etc and see how it reacted. What I discovered was that in times they were unhappy the walk slightly side to side on the rock they are on, but didn't tend to go full BTA and float away. This is not to say they won't because I have seen it in other tanks but lighting is key IMO and as long as your lights are sufficient they generally stay happy. It is worth mentioning the cell phone pic I got of this nem before purchase was from another reefer who kept him under LEDs (just like I do) but couldn't get him to stay still. He was actually all the way at the top of the tank on the overflow. He's moved 1/2" forward since I placed him on that flat rock I created for him specifically.

RE the diatoms I'm very happy and not at all surprised at how things are progressing. I'm on well water and while I don't have to deal with chlorine I do hive extremely high Silicates (9ppm) as per the water test I had run at UGA. Usually when my ro/di output hits 001 I'm actually getting a ton of silicates through. I knew I was close and ordered new filters a few weeks ago, but the last water change I did before they got here I was at 001. That combined with new tank syndrome and I wasn't surprised at all when the silicate bloom happened shortly before the first pic I posted. Luckily all the new filters are in now and it was even time to change my RO membranes (I have a 180GPD unit as most of what I'm removing is silicates which the DI catches which means 2 membranes). In about another week or so I expect the rest of the silicates to be exhausted and I should be able to get those zoas off the plugs and glued to that rock.

 

[Amoo]

Don't know how many days it's been like this as it's something that I don't check daily, but the LED on the DROP.6 (Which is about 2 weeks old) is out already.....Email sent to Santa Monica, we'll see how they want to handle it. My thought is if they tell me I have to pay for shipping to get a brand new unit repaired I'm just going to tell them to keep it, as other then a light dusting, 2 weeks in it's produced nothing. I'm not sure where all these "reviews" we keep seeing posted about how great things things grow are, but both of my units have been terribly disappointing in two completely different situations.

 

[Amoo]

Wanted to update this even though I don't have anything new to add about the tank other then I ordered in some LRS Nano Frenzy and began feeding that this week.

I sent an email to Santa Monica about the broken Drop and they asked me to verify a few things with the power supply which I did. Once sorted out, they offered to replace my unit if I shipped it to them and they said they would cover the cost of shipping. I agreed and got the unit out in the mail within a few days. I sent Santa Monica the tracking number along with what I paid for shipping and they promptly refunded part of my purchase in the amount of shipping.

I did make a special request and asked if they would be willing to swap out my DROP.6 for a HOG.5 as both units are the same price and I was going to need a new replacement anyways. They said this would be no problem and asked me drop a note inside the box. So I left a note in the box and off I sent it. In all I paid about $10 to send it 2 day USPS so hopefully they can get a replacement back out to me in a similar time frame. I decided to switch to the HOG for a few reasons. The first being the extreme frustrations I had with this thing trying to get it to fit inside the cube and stay put. The HOG allows you to trim the seal on the outside so I can limit the width even further then it already is, hopefully allowing me to place it behind the tank in the "sump" section. The second reason for the switch is work-a-bility. Had I already had a HOG and the LED died, I could have simply swapped it out myself and went on my way. Because of the way the LEDs are glued into the DROP units this is something I was unable to perform. We know a LED should have a usable life span of about 5 years, we also know a new LED will cost about $5-$8 when you factor in shipping. This seems like a much more reasonable solution then $100 for a whole new unit which needs to reseed itself...etc. I'll update more later as it's currently storming outside and the UPS on my tank is telling me power is trying to go out as I hear the skimmer cycling on and off when voltage drops too low.

 

[Shep]

Looking good, I like the concept of is. Keep us updated

 

[Amoo]

Not much to report here. Got the new HOG in on Friday finally. Everything appears to be in working order with this one and I was able to trim it down to fit it inside the back chamber. I took out the media basket, but will probably drop a bag of carbon in tomorrow as I'm not comfy running without it with the Nem and all those Zoas.