Better late than never IM Nuvo Build

[justinkdenny]

Up to date FTS.

 

[justinkdenny]

I started this reef about 3 years ago but never did a build thread on reef2reef. I will try to go back and show some photos and talk about some issues and successes and get up to date on the progress. Here we go.........

 

[NHgoalstop]

Wonderful pic. What light are you using? I'm in the process of piecing together a 16 gallon nano and researching lights.

 

[justinkdenny]

This is the very start of my first journey with nano reefing. I had a 75 gallon reef a long time ago but had been out of the hobby for years.

IM Nuvo 10
Caribsea live sand
marco dry rock

 

[justinkdenny]

Wonderful pic. What light are you using? I'm in the process of piecing together a 16 gallon nano and researching lights.

I use an AI Prime 16.

 

[justinkdenny]

First inhabitant, a small clownfish with the new AI Prime 16. It has turned out to be an amazing light!

 

[justinkdenny]

Tank at about a month old. Added a small cleanup crew and a few corals. Defiantly starting to see the ugly stage.

 

[justinkdenny]

Here is where it gets bad. It is defiantly hard to start a reef with dry rock. When I had my 75 gallon, we never worried about 0 nutrients. I worked real hard and was excited about my super low nitrates and phosphates and then...........

 

[justinkdenny]

DINOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[justinkdenny]

I had the worst type imho. Amphididium (don't know if that is the right spelling) dino's that go in the sand at night.

 

[justinkdenny]

Here is a short video showing dinos! I will explain how I beat them in the next post.

 

[justinkdenny]

So after about 6 months and almost quitting, I finally beat dinos! Here are some of the things I did to beat them in no particular order.

1. Let the tank get filthy! (I did not clean the glass for a long time.
2. Manually vacuumed out the dinos and returned the water back to the system.. I didn't do water changes since that could fuel the dinos more.
3. I added nitrates, phosphates, and silicates (all brightwell products)
4. Added a uv sterilizer
5. Added phyto and pods
6. Added small amount of live rock from a different tank.
7. Added bottle bacteria

Only thing I really didn't try that I have since read about was raise tank temp.

The strategy I used that I think eventually helped the most was just getting more biodiversity in the tank and getting things to outcompete the dinos.

 

[justinkdenny]

Look what a sea hare can do to hair algae! Just get him out when he is finished or he will starve unless you can get him to eat nori. Mine wouldn't eat nori.

 

[justinkdenny]

7 months. Corals really took a hit with the dinos.

 

[justinkdenny]

Nice pic of my Azure damsel

 

[justinkdenny]

Frogspawn growing in nicely.

 

[justinkdenny]

Fireworks cloves from Budman's Corals.

 

[justinkdenny]

Late night blues. Tank is filling in nicely.

 

[justinkdenny]

Almost 3 years old!

 

[X-37B]

Beautiful nano. I run 2 16hds on my 20g nano. They looked so good I took down my halide on my 45 frag system and run 3.
Keep up the good work.