Hectors IM tank

smiley28 · Jan 12, 2018

Also I may be looking to frag off half my wwc purple monsters for free to anyone local. I bought these have had them almost 2 weeks and was not anticipating such quick growth. Every bit of space is important in my nano and I would really prefer to fill in with zoas and let lps take over the tank. I placed an extra plug under them thinking oh hey they will grow onto it eventually but as you can see there has been good growth on one side in particular.

Also if I can manage to get my frags growing I’d like to a lot more free frags in the future.

smiley28 · Feb 8, 2018

FTS update things are starting to settle from being moved around. At the moment some zoas and favia aren’t looking so hot but hopefully they make a turn.
Oh I’m the plus side the JF freakhair is recovering on the left. Ordered a new lid and tried to get a pygmy wrasse but for some reason it wasn’t shipped and I was refunded. So still looking at nano fish but I’m not in a rush cause the tank is pretty full but I’ll be keeping an eye out.

smiley28 · Mar 20, 2018

Coming back with an update in 2 weeks I missed 1 but I’ve been very busy!

smiley28 · Apr 26, 2018

Just finished the semester up and so I decided to finish up my mixing station. I plan on swapping out the brute cans down the road when I need a higher volume of freshly mixed sw, but until then this is my first addition in awhile besides some Hanna test kits. Hoping to really learn what my tanks chemical consumption is weekly.

Also I’ve gotten rid of entire zoa/play frags due to aiptasia and I’m still trying to remove a couple. Oh and I’m waiting on some acrylic to arrive in order to make a diffuser for my hydra.

Also got majority of my mixing station plan from the thread here on R2R & @FLSharkvictim

smiley28 · May 21, 2018

smiley28 · May 21, 2018

Tank as of now. Need to update on equipment being used but maybe another day.

Joe G · May 25, 2018

I like your nano it looks great. I’m currently doing a 10 gal build myself but I’m still in the early stages.
Is the clown your only fish?

sotsreef · May 28, 2018

Where did you purchase the Fathead Dendro colony from, it looks great btw!

smiley28 · Jul 25, 2018

Only pics of anything over the last 2 months. I haven’t done a very good job of maintaining the tank cause I’m pretty sure these zoas and dragons breath are the only things that grew.

smiley28 · Dec 4, 2018

Tanks been up a little over 14 mo? I’ve taken a lot of lps to the lfs nearby due to my poor ability to keep up with this tank. I’m not sure if it’s due to the size or what but I don’t think I do water changes frequently enough. I’ve found that if I do water changes ever 5-6 days everything does great but one or more days late and the tank looks as if it took two steps back. I did stop running a protein skimmer months ago as I’ve never been a heavy feeder.

These may be the last days of this tank due to an upgrade sort of. Long story short I’m starting a 25g nuvo ext.

smiley28 · Dec 4, 2018

These pics are in chronological order I think? I got my stand in September before I had anything else cause I got it for around 50% off brand new. While I had the stand I saw Jake from reef builders setup some new EXT tanks without the paneling so I figured why not? No stand is ever going to be the difference in acceptable noise in my opinion. The setup itself has to be silent otherwise I’ll go mad and I like seeing open stand tanks so that’s the route I went. Around late September I picked up live rock aswell which until today was in a tote with pumps and a heater getting small water changes less frequently then the 10g. My next step was searching for a sump which took a month to find then a couple weeks of making sure it was what I wanted and waiting for Black Friday. I somewhat searched Figicube around the web to see how their deals worked and I believe blackfriday was my best bet. Also of note I got the tank 20% off in October otherwise it would of been a blackfriday purchase. With that said I did better on that random sale! Not sure if mentioning the retailer would be good or bad so I won’t. Lastly this is my first time plumbing a tank which was tested for a week. I tried to plumb it so if adjustments need to be mad down the road I can add things or whatever. I won’t get my skimmer till Christmas and I won’t have my display power head until the 10g is figured out. I would like to keep most of what is in the 10g except for the main rock.

smiley28 · Dec 4, 2018

Also forgot to mention I’ll be sticking with my hydra 26hd for now. I’ve been running to mimic ecotech ab+ but toned down to fit my tanks par needs.

smiley28 · Dec 4, 2018

Couple extra pics of the setup. It’s very hard to work the kessil A80 to the point that it can light up the 25 lagoon but it will do till I can reclaim my AI light mount.

smiley28 · Dec 10, 2018

15lbs live rock. I have no clue how people approach the 1-1,1/2lbs per gallons. I know it’s old school of thought and space is in but 25lbs would literally seem like a tank of rocks..

Dr. Dendrostein · Dec 10, 2018

smiley28 said:
Started a 10g nuvo while going through a nursing program. The purpose of this nano is to have fun and maybe show some progression.

Please don’t respond to this thread.

So far this tanks has been up for almost a month and really not much is going on so weekly pre water change I’m going to post updates on the tank hopefully. Tomorrow I should be adding a leopard clownfish from @Pieces of the Ocean

Equipment:
AI Hydra 26HD (haven’t figured out how to actually transfer settings yet)

Sicce Syncra 1
Tunze ATO nano
Neo-therm 50w heater

Recently added a @Vivid Creative Aquatics random flow generator. Currently trying to use the rfg as the only source of flow which may or may not be working out time will tell.

Normal light setting 60/100ish

100% white only

Also you can’t tell in these pictures the ripples that the rfg creates due to a overflow from my ATO. I didn’t want to add a controller/redundancies because this tank is meant to be simple. However, I’ve never experienced a ATO overflow so I’m still kind of just questioning if this will happen again anytime soon. Also I’d like do add that I have a second Tunze nano ATO that I’ve ran for years.

Will document the addition of the leopard tomorrow hopefully.

Thanks for sharing, comrade

smiley28 · Jan 6, 2019

One month. Moved Bugatti over. Plan to drop the light much closer and I did clean up the wiring.

smiley28 · Jan 29, 2019

Tank as of today with a few corals nothing crazy. I’m waiting on my lid from @ArtFully Acrylic to arrive any day now. Till it does I’ve been using some old diy lids from my old rimmed tank. Also got some supplies and a light improvement.

smiley28 · Feb 3, 2019

Not very good about updating as I do things but here is the tank with a AquaticLife hybrid fixture added. After a few hours of messing with bulb combos, mounting brackets, checking par, adding endcaps the lights are good to go I think. The tank definitely looks different with aquablue. 2 blue+ and a actinic. The spread is pretty impressive with the fixture around 13” above water and the par drop is much smoother moving toward the edges of the tank. Peaking at 350ish on the top rocks and dropping to 120ish on the outer bottom. I don’t know if going the 16in wide would make a huge difference aesthetically or par wise but it is something I wouldn’t mind checking out. I do wish the fixture was ceiling mounted.

reef-rc · Feb 3, 2019

smiley28 said:
Not very good about updating as I do things but here is the tank with a AquaticLife hybrid fixture added. After a few hours of messing with bulb combos, mounting brackets, checking par, adding endcaps the lights are good to go I think. The tank definitely looks different with aquablue. 2 blue+ and a actinic. The spread is pretty impressive with the fixture around 13” above water and the par drop is much smoother moving toward the edges of the tank. Peaking at 350ish on the top rocks and dropping to 120ish on the outer bottom. I don’t know if going the 16in wide would make a huge difference aesthetically or par wise but it is something I wouldn’t mind checking out. I do wish the fixture was ceiling mounted.

How does the AquaticLife hybrid fixture fit over ur 25G ext? I have over a Fusion 20 which is smaller and was planning to modify the thing but reconsidering due to heat concerns just due to placement of the tank itself.

smiley28 · Feb 3, 2019

reef-rc said:
How does the AquaticLife hybrid fixture fit over ur 25G ext? I have over a Fusion 20 which is smaller and was planning to modify the thing but reconsidering due to heat concerns just due to placement of the tank itself.

It’s a about 1,1/2-2” longer and about 1,1/2-2” shorter width wise. Haven’t had the fixture long enough to monitor temp but so far it has swung about 0.2 degrees higher and it’s midday on the light schedule. I do have a 20g(10g of water almost) sump so that probably helps with temp stability. We probably have a 15g difference depending on our stocking. One thing I’ll say is the aquablue definitely gives a(in my opinion) classic daylight look in which really observing every detail is a bit easier. Mixed with the leds and blue+ it definitely doesn’t have a yellow appearance some worry about.