First Tank - Innovative Marine 14G Peninsula

[Jib]

Nice looking tank! I just got the same one, although still dry for now.

Thank you. Following along with yours. Excited to see how you set it up.

Following your progress. What do you have in the middle chamber is that the mount for the light or skimmer? Also thanks for pointing out the size of the VCA, I thought the 14 used the 16mm.

In the middle chamber is the mount for my AI Prime. Along with 2 50W heaters in the actual chamber.

It was difficult to try and figure out what sizes of the VCA I needed looking at the different sites that sell them. On VCA's site, they thankfully post a bunch of pictures of tanks and what fits them. It made it much easier to figure out what sizes I needed.

 

[Jib]

So I learned an interesting lesson today regarding Auto Top Off's.

I was keeping the water supply line very close to the water level in my return chamber to minimize micro bubbles when the ATO ran. Pulled my mechanical filtration to rinse it, and when putting it back in must have displaced some water moving things around which raised the water level in the return chamber. The water line for the ATO then started to syphon tank water into my ATO reserve...

I caught it pretty quickly, and ran the ATO a little to try and clear salt water from the line. Hopefully not too much got into my reserve bucket....

Have since moved the water line higher to keep farther away from the water in the return chamber...

 

[Jib]

Trying to take the "go slow new reefer" thing to heart but at the same time am attempting to increase the bio diversity in my tank without adding anything new (fish, corals, etc.) for the next month or so. In my effort for diversity, adding a few goodies from the Algae Barn today.

Got some of their pods and phytoplankton,

5280 Pods & OceanMagik

ALL-NEW DURABLE PACKAGING! INCLUDES: 5280 Pods Three Species Mix For Maximum Copepod Diversity Seed Your Aquarium | Increase Pod Populations | Feed Finicky Fish OceanMagik Live Phytoplankton Blend, Four Nutritious Strains Feed Copepods | Increase Coral Growth | Reduce Nuisance Algae

www.algaebarn.com

As well the Pink and Purple Coralline Algae.

Coralline Algae

Coralline Algae in a Bottle excelerates growth of colorful coralline algal crusts over your live rock. Choose between pinks with Pink Fusion®, purples with Purple Helix®, or get 2 bottles, one of each, with Pink and Purple! Unlike coralline "accelerators," Coralline Algae in a Bottle is a live...

www.algaebarn.com

First impressions of the Pods are good. They were alive and kicking all over the bottle. Hopefully they settle into the tank before I put the mechanical filtration back in on Saturday. Clownfish didn't seem to notice any of the big ones. Think he's a little scared from all of the commotion of me adding new things.

This is likely the last thing I'm going to do before adding corals in a month or so. Have my eye on some Zoa's and a sinularia leather from Jason Fox.

 

[Jib]

Was starting to get some algae building up on my rock work so decided to add to my clean up crew. Wanted to add 2 trocus and 2 cerith snails. I got 2 trocus, 1 cerith, and 1 empty cerith shell (thanks LFS). In addition, they had a cool pistol shrimp which I picked up as well. He's orange and under actinic lighting his legs looks purple. Pretty cool. He was very active when first added, then dug a burrow in the middle of my rock arch. Hoping he settled in and survived the first night.

The plan will be to add a goby at some point to round out my stocking. Going to try and get one from TSM since they go through a bit of a QT process.

 

[Pkunk35]

This tank is dope! Love the scape!

 

[Jib]

This tank is dope! Love the scape!

Thank you, I appreciate it. I'm not at all artistic, so it was a maddening process to create the scape. Probably my least favorite part of setting up the tank.

 

[Pkunk35]

Thank you, I appreciate it. I'm not at all artistic, so it was a maddening process to create the scape. Probably my least favorite part of setting up the tank.

Honestly less is more imo with nano tanks. This has the look of “miniaturized” if that makes sense. And good water flow as someone else said, so nice!

 

[RichtheReefer21]

Lots of good rational thinking, concerns, and attention to detail early on in the game is key to being successful. Followed by patience. I like the choice to feed the itch by doing pods and cuc.

I will be runnin fowlr for a few months before coral additions.

Best of luck, im in for the ride.
@NY_Caveman may have a gem in the making here

 

[Jib]

The pistol shrimp I bought turned out to be a bad idea. I knew he would burrow some sand, but I did not know how much. On a nightly basis he seemed to dig 10 burrows, and move all of my sand into the middle of the tank. This was not going to work out. I took him back to the LFS and traded him for some jugs of water to stock up. Hoping not to go back for water for a few months as the virus has been raging in my area...

Tank is 4 months old at this point. Once I get my Nitrates back up and stable, it will be time for some softies...

 

[RichtheReefer21]

Nano livestock is always a toughy.

Have u looked into a pederson shrimp?

 

[Jib]

Nano livestock is always a toughy.

Have u looked into a pederson shrimp?

Never heard of one. Just looked it up and they are really cool. Nice small size as well. I'll have to keep an eye out. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Jib]

Since I don't have any corals, I didn't put a ton of thought into my lighting other than watching some BRS videos and taking a general stab at it. Since I'm getting close to the point of adding corals, wanted to get serious about my lighting schedule.

One of the things I like about AI is that they post some successful reefers lighting schedules to their website that you can import. The one thing I feel is a miss is they don't include the rationale to why they chose what they did. And between the 10 or so they have posted they are wildly different. Makes it difficult to choose. So I imported a bunch of them and had the schedule run to see what I thought from a general aesthetics perceptive (didn't bother with the ones that had sky high lighting for SPS).

I ended up liking the aesthetic of the Saxby schedule, and could find a YouTube video where he discusses his thought process. Ended up scaling it down about 40%. I chose this based on a BRS video where they discussed some lighting intensities for small tanks using the AI prime. Matched up their recommenced intensity, with the Saxby schedule. Hopefully this is a good first attempt.

I like that the "daytime" part of the schedule includes enough white to see things well, but that there are periods of intense blue at the end of the day where corals will hopefully pop.

Thinking about renting a par meter to check my work. Shooting for a range that can support softies and LPS. If anyone has thoughts around how my schedule will work out, please feel free to chime in. The percentages shown are at the most intense lighting period of the day.

Lastly, a tip for anyone using a Prime and thinking about using on the the schedules from their website. If you put two of your fingers on the phone screen, you can easily slide the start / stop time, as well as proportionally adjust the lighting intensity. I didn't figure this out until after spent a few hours plotting the Saxby schedule in Excel, scaling it down, and rebuilding it in the app. Oh well....

-Jib

 

[RichtheReefer21]

I was tossed up between saxby and the BRS AB+ for my hydra26hd's. I always loved the symmetry of the saxby schedule. You should post that question in the "Lighting by Dana Riddle" subforum. You will get the answers you seek there for sure.

 

[Tcook]

Your tank is coming along nicely. I just purchased a 14 to use as a QT/hospital tank. I have the Nuvo 20 set up as a QT tank in my office. I'm really impressed with the quality. I use the JBJ ato and it has worked well. I run the ro line through a IM Hydro fill bracket. Solid mount and keeps the line out of the water to prevent siphon.

I had been running the IM desktop DC skimmer on my Nuvo 20. My opinion is that it is a TOTAL piece of junk. Crappy skimming function and filled the tank with bubbles. Pulled it a few days ago and will just do 5 gal water changes weekly. No need for a skimmer in tanks this small IMO. Not sure how one would fit in a 14 if you plan on using the media basket as well as keeping the heater and probes back there.

 

[Jib]

Couple small updates, having some trouble with Dino's due to my Nitrates and Phosphates being bottomed out. Seems like the depletion of nutrients was directly related to adding the copepods and dosing the phytoplankton. I've stopped dosing the phyto since 11/19, but nutrient levels still bottomed out. Have some NeoNitro & NeoPhos on the way. Going to start with a 1/2 dose of the NeoNitro and see what happens.

In other news, I finally got around to cleaning up the absolute rats nest of cables I had under my desk. Spent a hour or so routing cables and using cable ties to tidy them up. Also ordered some LightDims to dull the LEDs glow from the controllers. I swear the light on my ATO is so bright you could grow Acro under it. Hoping getting some corals will be my next update.

 

[Jib]

It's been an exciting weekend for my tank. Yesterday, me and my wife spent 8 hours clicking refresh for the Jason Fox live sale. It was frustrating at first, as everything got scooped up fast. As the day wore on it was much better and only the $5 & $10 frags seemed like they were getting bought by a bot. We had fun looking at all of the corals. It was unfortunate for me he has a lot of SPS, as I'm not ready for them yet. But tons of gorgeous stuff. I ended up with:

• Everlasting Gobstopper Zoas
• JF Kung FU Fighter Zoas
• Sonic Flare Zoas
• JF Grinch Fuzz Star Polyps
• JF Southern Girl Palys
• JF Fairy Sword Sinularia

It was also nice that Jason is local to me so I was able to pick up everything this afternoon. As we were talking, I asked his thoughts on how to best acclimate them. He noted he has never acclimated any corals in his life, even temperature. First time I have ever heard this. While I'm sure he was correct, I needed to do a water change and planned to use that water to acclimate so I went ahead and drip acclimated them to pull water out of my tank. He also assured me there were no pests on the corals and they wouldn't need dipped. I do believe they are pest free. I've seen a Reef Builders video where Jake Adams goes to his facility. He demonstrated his QT process and noted how screwed he would be if any pests made it into his main system. All that being said, I dipped them anyway. Used the Coral Rx Pro and a turkey baster to clean them off. I did see a small brittle star and a few small what I believe to be bristle worms, but didn't see anything generally considered a pest (a very small brittle star did make it into my tank anyway though).

Placed the corals on a frag rack until I figure out exactly where I want to place them. Will likely make the middle sized rock my Zoa garden, and working out a spot for the Sinularia. Going to put the Star Polyps on the back wall.

Using the acclimation feature on my light. Set it to 50% power with a 7 day acclimation schedule. Hopefully this is long enough to get them used to my tank lighting.

Clownfish was less than thrilled with all of the commotion and is sulking in the corner.

Overall, I pumped to finally turn my fish tank into a reef tank.

- Jib

 

[RichtheReefer21]

Nice haul!

 

[Jib]

Couple of new updates:

First, have been battling Dino's (I think) for the past few weeks. Making pretty good progress though and very little grows throughout the day, and some grumpy corals are looking pretty happy. Been doing a couple of things:

- Turned lights down and whites lights off. Only running blues and violets
- Dosing NeoNitro & NeoPhos, got NO3 up around 5-10 and PO4 up at .1
- Dosing Micro Bacter 7 in the morning.
- Dosing Hydrogen Peroxide at night
- Stirring up sandbed during height of growth to dislodge and pick up in filter
- Change filter floss 1-2 times per day

Overall, think I'm seeing light at the end of the tunnel in the Dino war.

Second, participated in the Zoanthids.com live sale a few weeks ago and got a few new corals in the mail today. Me and my wife were having a couple of drinks and the live sale structure appeals to her enjoyment of gambling, so I now have more Zoanthids than I want / need. Will let the ones I don't like as much grow out and hopefully trade or give them away at a later date.

- Blue Hornets
- Eagle Eyes
- Mohawks
- Naked Agave PE
- Nightmare 2.0
- Pumpkin Patch Echinata

As far as Zoas go, only the Naked Agaves and Nightmares really opened up so far. Nightmares are strikingly beautiful. Agave nice too. The Echinata is gorgeous as well, the thing almost glows...

I can barley even see the Eagle Eyes. They must have took picture with a sweet Macro lens...or a microscope.

While I think the Zoas will be beautiful over time, they are very small and only 1 head or so. To be fair, the live sale was WYSIWYG, but it was a little disappointing seeing them. During the Jason Fox live sale, all of the Zoas I got had 5 or so large polyps. So by comparison these seem like a poor value considering the prices were similar. It should also be noted the Eagle Eyes were only 5 bucks, as well as the Echinata.
I dipped all of the corals, and was impressed how few hitchhikers fell off. Only 1 thing I could ID as some type of worm. They also packed them very nicely for shipping. Very heavy styrofoam box with 3 heat packs, and packed in individual plastic hard cups full of water. Going to keep the cups in case I ever sell anything.

I'll try to get some pictures of them as they all open up.

Only other thing I'm debating is getting a dedicated powerhead. Have been relying on the return pump only. I don't think anyhting I have needs more flow, it might be nice to have it more varied and a way to run flow without running the filter. Well see....

 

[Jib]

Few pictures of the new Zoas in the tank. Everything is starting to open up. Very disappointed with the stuff from Zoanthids.com. I understood how many heads I was buying, but geez they are SMALL. We really need the reefing equivalent of a banana for scale for these sales....

Not sure if the Jason Fox stuff just that good, or the Zoanthids.com stuff just that bad. Highly doubt I'd buy from them again. Couple of pictures below. JF stuff is the first pic, Z.com the second and third.

 

[RichtheReefer21]

Few pictures of the new Zoas in the tank. Everything is starting to open up. Very disappointed with the stuff from Zoanthids.com. I understood how many heads I was buying, but geez they are SMALL. We really need the reefing equivalent of a banana for scale for these sales....

Not sure if the Jason Fox stuff just that good, or the Zoanthids.com stuff just that bad. Highly doubt I'd buy from them again. Couple of pictures below. JF stuff is the first pic, Z.com the second and third.

I find zoanthids to be much smaller across the board in general. Its the Palys branch that are enourmous, ime.