How NOT to start a nano reef

[Medical_Reef]

He was Army for 14 years. It was such a struggle! But we didn’t have a small tank - 75 gallons. We clearly weren’t thinking properly.

I work as a respiratory therapist for a pulmonologist who teaches medical students. We have two right now that are about to begin their residency. I do not envy them one bit but I’m thankful for them. Lots of luck to you!

75 gallons would definitely be a pain to move around! And thank you, I need it!

 

[Medical_Reef]

Currently– The whole gang is all here!

The whole family really wanted a shrimp, so we went to a different fish store about an hour away and found a beautiful Blood Red Fire Shrimp. This time, I acclimated the way I was supposed to. I had just finished a water change, so I used the old water to slowly drip acclimate the shrimp for over an hour. Then I rebagged him and floated in the tank for 15 minutes to acclimate to the temperature, just in case it had changed.

He’s only got one leg on the right side, but I’ve read that they will regrow as he molts, so I’m not worried about that. He’s a cute little guy and adds a great splash of color to the tank.

Here is the whole Hogwarts crew; Fred and George Nemo, Tonks the Royal Gramma, Fleur the Damsel, and of course we named the shrimp Hagrid. What else could we possibly choose? I’m going to declare this tank officially fully-stocked for fish and shrimp! I only plan on adding a clean-up crew as needed, which if anybody wants to chime in on good crew members for a bare bottom tank, please do! I obviously don’t need any sand sifters, so I am currently planning on just stocking some “banded” Trochus snails. Now I just need to get a nice little plaque that says "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Now that we are up to date, I won’t have nearly as many updates to post, and hopefully moving forward I will have much less drama. I have a couple ideas for future posts, such as my planned maintenance scheduled and my thoughts on the Nuvo 20 vs the WB15, but if there is anything you are curious about let me know! I’ll also try and detail my experience with the BRS/WWC cycle in good detail.

BRS/WWC cycle status: Cycle started on January 30thwith Fritz 900, dry rock, marine pure and more rock rubble in the sump. Currently running the filter sock and included sponges as the only source of filtration, plus a bag of carbon. As soon as Algae Barn has Chaeto back in stock I will start the refugium.

Schedule: April 1st– add coralline algae source
April 15th– turn the lights on the display, add CUC as needed
June 1st– 4-month cycle is officially “completed”
*assess coralline algae growth
*potentially add starter corals

 

[ccombs]

November 29th– Tank stand skin and canopy

For my tank stand, I built the standard 2x4 base structure and planned to build panels to cover it down the road. One of the things that I underestimated with my setup was how much light bled into the room from the XR30. I didn’t have the light mounted super high, but I still found the light annoying, plus there was the added risk of little toddler eyes looking up into the light every time they looked in the tank. I decided I wanted a canopy, and while I tossed around a bunch of different ideas, I ultimately decided to build a single wooden structure that would serve as a canopy and skin for the bottom of the stand. I constructed the two side panels and the front separately and then joined them together to form a “U” that sat on the floor and I could slide over the stand and the tank, thus blocking the chords and the light from little hands and eyes.

While the almost finished product looked nice (I never got around to finishing the wood, as the tank sprung a leak) its function left a lot to be desired. The first problem arose as I tried to use a circular saw and an undersized table saw to make most of my cuts, which lead to a less-than square structure. It was especially a problem at the bottom, as the three panels narrowed towards the floor. Thus, when I first glued everything together, it could only slide on about halfway. That was a bummer. I ended up removing some wood from the 2x4 stand and shaving down some of the skin, but it was always a tight, awkward fit, and I planned on redoing the whole stand in a couple years at the end of Medical school. But for the moment, I strengthened the stand with metal brackets and tied it to the wall to ensure it was stable and secure, and it looked nice while it lasted.

The second major problem was that the fit around the glass was pretty snug, and this did not leave very much room to slide over the outer magnet of the Gyre. That was something I truly had not considered, and in order to tank the skin off I either had to remove the magnet (which was a pain because it had an adhesive backing) or I had to gently wiggle and push the stand so that it would just barely squeeze by. I am sure this put extra stress on the tank, and it was not one of my best woodworking projects to date. So, when the Nuvo broke, I was almost relieved to be downsizing and going in a different direction with the stand, as I now had an excuse to get something that worked. Though the new stand was a total pain for its own reasons.

I love the enclosure you made!

 

[Medical_Reef]

I love the enclosure you made!

Thank you! I thought it looked pretty slick myself, and it did a great job of keeping the light out of my room and toddler hands out of the tank. Unfortunately, it donated its front panel to reinforce the back of my current stand, so thankfully it was cheap wood!

 

[Medical_Reef]

Due to the “long” history of things going wrong in my tank, I routinely walk by the fish and think the worst has happened. This morning was no different, except that the outcome was actually positive; Hagrid (the Blood Red Fire Shrimp) got his legs back! When I walked by the tank and saw a limp, pale red body lying stuck to a rock in the current, I thought for sure that I had lost Hagrid in another sudden, unexpected turn for the worst. Thankfully, he was still hiding out under his ledge and seemed to be enjoying the appendages he had regrown through this new molt. I couldn’t be happier for him, but I sure do wish that he’d find a less startling way to tell me that he was coming out. Even though I knew he was going to molt, I did not know how long it would take, nor when it would happen, so it was startling nonetheless. Thank you, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (special fish edition), for making every day special.

 

[Medical_Reef]

This may be obvious to the rest of you, but I failed to comprehend what child locks are intended for. As it turns out, child locks were developed specifically to keep children out of items that you don’t want them to play with. Imagine that. My oldest loves to help out around the house, and last week while I was taking a nap, he decided he was going to feed the fish. I foolishly kept the fish food in the cabinet of the fish tank and made the erroneous error of exposing its hiding place to my children whilst feeding our aquatic friends together. He knew where it was, and the rubber band I had loosely wrapped around the handles was no match for his determination. He decided the fish looked exceptionally hungry that afternoon, so he dumped the entire Ziploc of pellets into the fish tank and all over the stand and floor. Luckily, I had the good sense to only store a small portion of the food in the Ziploc, but it was still an impressive amount of food to add all at once. I think Fred and George were actually swimming slower than usual after they gorged themselves on this never-ending feast.

This is one place where a bare-bottom tank definitely shines, as most of the food had settled on the bottom. The exceptions were the pellets that fell into the holes and crevices of the rock, but I easily ousted these wandering food particles with the use of an MJ600. If I had fresh salt water on hand, it would have been easiest to just siphon out all the food and perform a water change while I was at it. However, my DI unit from Lowes is on the slow side, so this wasn’t an immediate option for me. I opted instead to add two additional pumps to the bottom of the tank and create a pellet flurry with the hopes of driving all of the excess food into the water column and down the filter sock while I started the process of making new water.

The best part about adding an excessive amount of food to your tank is the wonderful aroma of fish food that fills your living room, which my wife found exceptionally pleasant. Needless to say, I added another bag of carbon, monitored the ammonia and nitrate, and kept the fresh salt water coming. For only having a 2o, then a 15-gallon tank, I sure have gone through a lot of salt water in 6 months.

 

[NY_Caveman]

Funny story. I am guessing the Clownfish now love your son.

 

[Medical_Reef]

Funny story. I am guessing the Clownfish now love your son.

Yeah I’d say so. They are pretty social fish already, always swimming to the surface when you walk by, and they seem to track me around the room as if I have nothing better to do than feed them.

 

[Medical_Reef]

Just a couple of updates tonight, some good and some bad. I seem to be getting some sponge growth on my rock, and the last couple days it has been growing fairly quickly. I hope this means the tank is getting happy and healthy! However, I am not quite sure how the rock could have been seeded with sponges, since I bleached the heck out of all the rock prior to restarting this tank, and to this point I have only added a few fish and shrimp. Any ideas on where these came from? Or maybe I am wrong on identifying them as sponges…

I got tired of waiting on the Chaeto to get back in stock at Algae Barn, so I decided to go for some sea lettuce instead! I read some good things on here, and Algae Barn claims that it is one of the fastest growing macro algaes and does a great job of removing nutrients from the tank. As you saw, my tank can be fed a lot of food by my little helpers, so nutrient uptake is necessary! Everything looked great upon arrival. I also added some pods and phytoplankton to the order to try them out, and the nano brine was free since it was my first order. Thanks for the box of goodies @AlgaeBarn! On such a small system the phyto will last me a long time. Plus, it describes phyto as another option to control nuisance algae in the display, so I would love to have as many different control systems up and running before I turn the lights on in the display area. Hopefully, the sea lettuce will do a good job of minimizing nitrate and phosphate so that nuisance algae will have a harder time taking hold in the display, but we will see if this theory pans out. I rinsed the algae in my tank water following a small water change, then I removed the second sponge and the bag of carbon from the middle AIO chamber in the back and tossed the algae in. I let it acclimate to the tank parameters for a couple of hours before turning the lights on as per Algae Barn’s instructions. I am using a cheap light fixture from my favorite local home improvement store and an inexpensive LED grow bulb. One small note, the glass that divides the main display from the AIO is frosted glass, and thus it lets light through to the main display. So I will need to add some sort of light black to that back chamber.

I thought I would test nitrate and phosphate at the time I added the sea lettuce so that I could try and track the changes as it started to grow. To my surprise, nitrate was extremely high, somewhere between 40-80 ppm or more. Phosphate was also high, more than 2 ppm. This alarmed me a little, as it wasn’t nearly this high the last time I checked. I then noticed that Fleur the damsel didn’t seem to be doing so hot, her breathing was rapid, and she had a flesh-colored lump next to one of her fins. A quick R2R search seemed to indicate that this could be ammonia burn, and so I did a quick ammonia and nitrite test. To my surprise, Ammonia was elevated above 0.5 ppm and Nitrite was above 5 ppm. what the heck. These rocks have been cycling for over 6 weeks at this point, I did not expect to see an ammonia spike, let alone Nitrite as well.


I quickly made a fresh batch of water and pulled all the fish out into the fresh water. Nothing like the bright orange hotel for the night to put you in a good mood. I also added some prime to the tank to try and speed up the ammonia removal so that I could get the fish back into the tank before the water in the hotel started to cause its own problems. I’m making more water now, but my system is so slow that once the 3-gallon storage container is emptied it may take all night to make 5 more gallons.

I ran to the local Petco to grab an air stone and see if they carried any testing kits besides API, which they don’t, so I ordered the NYOS nitrate and phosphate kits from BRS and will hopefully have them early next week. While I think for the most part API can be just fine, I struggle with the color interpretation and the inaccuracy of the tests; actually, it drives me insane, but coming from my research experience I am used to measuring data as accurately as possible and repeating everything in triplicate, so this may be one facet of reefing that I have to get used to. I may eventually switch to Hannah just because it will give me a specific number, but the NYOS system seems to do a better job than API at narrowing down the actual water parameters. Per API, the water parameters after the addition of prime and turning the refugium light on for an hour were as follows:

Salinity – 1.026 SG
Ph – 8.0
Ammonia – 0.5 ppm
Nitrite – 2-5 ppm
Nitrate – 40 ppm
Phosphate – 1-2 ppm
Ca – 380 ppm
KH – 8.5 dKH

So, it’s better, but still not what I am looking for. Looks like the first thing I’ll be doing tomorrow morning is testing the water, both in the tank as well as the temporary hotel, and deciding how to best use my 5-gallons of clean water. I’m not quite sure what happened, but I am going to assume that the food overdose my toddler tossed in took a little while to break down and thus I am just now seeing a spike, or the alternative is that I am just over-feeding the tank as a whole. How fast do you think the sea lettuce can kick in and get those nutrients under control? Fingers crossed it happens quickly.

Welcome back to the disaster that is my nano reef. Are you not entertained?!?!

BRS/WWC cycle status: Cycle started on January 30th with Fritz 900, dry rock, marine pure, and more rock rubble in the sump. Filtration includes a filter sock, carbon, and sea lettuce from algae barn in the refugium.

Schedule:
April 1st– add coralline algae source
April 15th– turn the lights on the display, add CUC as needed
June 1st– 4-month cycle is officially “completed”
*assess coralline algae growth
*potentially add starter corals

 

[Medical_Reef]

As of 9am this morning, everybody is alive. Thank heavens. If I started losing fish again, my wife might have killed me. First things first, I checked the ammonia in the temporary fish hotel, and it is slightly elevated. I added some prime to help keep that in check while I finish mixing up the fresh salt water, but then I’ll have ~9 gallons of new water for about a 60% water change. Then I can get everybody back home again. What an adventure.

The tank parameters before the water change and after sitting all night with prime and the sea lettuce are as follows:

Salinity – 1.026 SG
Ph – 8.0
Ammonia – 0.0 ppm
Nitrite – high. Maybe 1 ppm? The color is hard to match, so maybe 5…
Nitrate – 0 ppm

I’m going to test the nitrite one more time, just to make sure, but the good news is that everything seems to be coming down AND I still have a water change to do, so the crisis should be averted.

With the second test, nitrite looks to be in the 1-2 ppm range, so still pretty high. Just for kicks and giggles, I decided to test my fresh salt water and ensure I am not introducing ammonia to the system without my knowledge. They are as follows:

Ph – 8.0
Ammonia – 0 ppm
Nitrite – 0 ppm
Nitrate – 0 ppm

That, at least, is good news. The bad news is that the hotel keeps getting smaller. I needed their bucket to drain the old tank water, but it is only temporary. With the water change done I returned the fish home, though I think the night in the bucket traumatized Tonks. Poor Gramma.

I ended seeing Captain Marvel and I must say I really enjoyed it, even more so that all the fish seemed fine when I returned home. Water parameters are as follows:

Ph – 8.0
Ammonia – 0 ppm
Nitrite – 0.5 ppm
Nitrate – 20 ppm

Seems like I have narrowly avoided another problem, though I may do another water change this evening or tomorrow to try and remove the rest of those nitrites. I keep hoping that the bacteria will process those suckers right out, but maybe I still have some food particles in there that are breaking down. Fleur still has the fleshy lump on her fin, so I’m going to keep an eye out on that and hope it isn’t a bacterial infection or some other mischievous fish killer.

Until next disaster then.

BRS/WWC cycle status: Cycle started on January 30thwith Fritz 900, dry rock, marine pure and more rock rubble in the sump. Filtration includes a filter sock, carbon, and sea lettuce from algae barn in the refugium.

Schedule:
April 1st– add coralline algae source
April 15th– turn the lights on the display, add CUC as needed
June 1st– 4-month cycle is officially “completed”
*assess coralline algae growth
*potentially add starter corals

 

[acabgd]

Dumping so much food in such a small tank was certain to produce ammonia. Your best bet would've been to syphon it out directly into a filter sock in a bucket. Then return the water to the tank and repeat until you got all the food out. Trying to just up the flow with the hope it will all end up filtered out was not your best bet.

 

[Medical_Reef]

Dumping so much food in such a small tank was certain to produce ammonia. Your best bet would've been to syphon it out directly into a filter sock in a bucket. Then return the water to the tank and repeat until you got all the food out. Trying to just up the flow with the hope it will all end up filtered out was not your best bet.

Definitely, and the factor I hadn't considered was reusing the water. Instead I thought I'd make the pumps work for me while I made new water, and while I did go back and siphon out the bottom once it was ready, and I got all of the visible food out of the tank, I'm sure the pumps broke up the food and wedged little pieces into the rocks. Live and learn is the theme here.

 

[Medical_Reef]

Parameters are still off today, so I may go grab some more nitrifying bacteria to try and encourage the conversion process. And I’ll probably do another small water change. We’ll see how long I am battling this.

Ph – 8.0
Ammonia – 0.25 ppm
Nitrite – 0.5-1 ppm
Nitrate – 20 ppm

 

[Medical_Reef]

Not much to report today. I am still fighting some nitrites, which I find really interesting. All of my reading suggests that even during a normal cycle the nitrites are very short lived and many fail to test any at all. I'm assuming this means I have a constant source of food breaking down in the tank leftover from the previous food spill. The other option may be that I overstocked the tank in a system that doesn't have a skimmer. Let's hope the second isn't true.

Ph – 8.2
Ammonia – 0 ppm
Nitrite – 0.5-1 ppm
Nitrate – 20 ppm

I added some more starter bacteria and went a day with out feeding to try and help the system process the nitrite. The pH in the tank seems to have increased a little, which I am interpreting as the sea lettuce is starting to grow. All the fish are still good as can be on rations. They seem to spend a lot of time staring at me through the glass though...

 

[Medical_Reef]

The good news is that I believe the nitrites are finally starting to come down. The API kit is demonstrating much less of a bright magenta color and leaning more towards the muted purple spectrum. The bad news is that I think it has been much higher than I thought it was this previous week. The color was so pink that I couldn’t match it to the card very well, and I believe that my previous guesses were very off. They may have been as high 5 ppm, but I am still not sure. So, while it is coming down, we still have some ground to make up.

pH – ~8.4
Ammonia – >0 ppm
Nitrite – 1-2 ppm
Nitrate – 10 ppm

The wonderful news is that the pH is still on the rise and the nitrates seem to be falling, so I am hopefully optimistic that the sea lettuce is doing its job!

Everybody is happy in the tank and the aggressions continue to be mild and associated with feeding times. Hagrid is always a little slow to the food uptake, so while I turn the pumps off and let the pellets sink to the bottom, he usually doesn’t show up until the food is mostly gone. Better luck next time ‘Agrid.

 

[Hemmdog]

Sorry for your issues. Enjoyable read though. Please let me know if you have any questions, I’d love to help you have success.

Nooo more fish !
Start feeding frozen mysis instead of pellets. Hakari or pe are great brands of mysis.

Pellets are only for fish sitters, not fish keepers.

 

[Hemmdog]

By the way my first tank ended in such a bad failure my wife and I had to move. So your not alone with the pitfalls lol.

 

[Medical_Reef]

By the way my first tank ended in such a bad failure my wife and I had to move. So your not alone with the pitfalls lol.

That sounds like a good story. Ha.

Sorry for your issues. Enjoyable read though. Please let me know if you have any questions, I’d love to help you have success.

Nooo more fish !
Start feeding frozen mysis instead of pellets. Hakari or pe are great brands of mysis.

Pellets are only for fish sitters, not fish keepers.

Not even fish shopping, I like the little crew and this was the plan from the beginning. We are stocked and done!

I have seen a mix of what people feed their tanks, but can you expand on the reasons for not using pellets? I feed mysis as well and currently alternate between the two, but I'll be getting my auto feeder back online soon and obviously the frozen food won't work in there.

 

[Hemmdog]

That sounds like a good story. Ha.



Not even fish shopping, I like the little crew and this was the plan from the beginning. We are stocked and done!

I have seen a mix of what people feed their tanks, but can you expand on the reasons for not using pellets? I feed mysis as well and currently alternate between the two, but I'll be getting my auto feeder back online soon and obviously the frozen food won't work in there.

Sure it’s decent food (if it’s a good brand) dehydrated and compressed together then added preservatives. The preservatives are full of phosphate which accumulates in your system if you only feed dry food. Also with dry food being compressed it has more calories than your standard mysis, which is good, but anything uneaten or that gets stuck under your rocks or anything is a lot more nutrients that it will slowly be letting out into your tank, fueling nussance algae and all kinds of undesirable stuff.
For me, if I feed pellets I find I need to clean my glass of algae film fairly often, with only frozen I rarely have to clean the glass. So if it’s doing that to help algae grow on the glass, it is also doing it in the water column and all over my tank.

I used to leave pellets for my fish sitter when I travel, but now I even find its better to take my time and explain my frozen thawing and feeding process to my fish sitter while I’m away. The fish’s colors are better, coral looks brighter and has better pe when I do not feed any dry food.

Auto feeders are a death wish, pellets accumulate moisture and stick together, then will all dump in your tank as one giant clump, bad things happen, especially if no one is at the tank to be able to siphon out all the extra pellets lol.

 

[Medical_Reef]

Sure it’s decent food (if it’s a good brand) dehydrated and compressed together then added preservatives. The preservatives are full of phosphate which accumulates in your system if you only feed dry food. Also with dry food being compressed it has more calories than your standard mysis, which is good, but anything uneaten or that gets stuck under your rocks or anything is a lot more nutrients that it will slowly be letting out into your tank, fueling nussance algae and all kinds of undesirable stuff.
For me, if I feed pellets I find I need to clean my glass of algae film fairly often, with only frozen I rarely have to clean the glass. So if it’s doing that to help algae grow on the glass, it is also doing it in the water column and all over my tank.

I used to leave pellets for my fish sitter when I travel, but now I even find its better to take my time and explain my frozen thawing and feeding process to my fish sitter while I’m away. The fish’s colors are better, coral looks brighter and has better pe when I do not feed any dry food.

Auto feeders are a death wish, pellets accumulate moisture and stick together, then will all dump in your tank as one giant clump, bad things happen, especially if no one is at the tank to be able to siphon out all the extra pellets lol.

Thank you for the detailed response! I'm going to stew on this for a day or two, and more importantly not try and respond at a very late hour when I should be asleep. lol. This is all great information and I appreciate it! More once I've digested, pun intended.

One quick question, I am using Hakari Marine-S, hopefully that qualifies as a "quality" pellet food?

As a quick update tonight, I got some new toys today! Sometimes I feel like I have fallen so far, getting excited about more accurate testing kits, but hey, we are all nerds somehow. Water parameters are as follows:

API:
pH – 8.4 ppm
Ammonia – 0 ppm
Nitrite – 0.5 ppm
Nitrate – 0 ppm
Phosphate – 0.25 ppm

NYOS:
Nitrate – 5-12 ppm
Phosphate – 0.2-0.3 ppm

Everything is looking pretty good. I love the discrepancy between the two Nitrate tests, so I will probably keep running both for a while to see if they are consistently inaccurate. It is *slightly* frustrating that my fancy new kit only narrowed me down to between two colors, but I am much happier with the results. Here is a quick update shot, nothing has changed recently. Oh, except our fire shrimp molted again today. That’s twice in 10 days since he was added, but he seems happy! A brief R2R search seemed to indicate that wasn’t an unheard rate of molting, and like everything else, there is no consensus on why the rates of molting can vary. Cheers!