How NOT to start a nano reef

[Medical_Reef]

Everybody say a little prayer for the tank, I am giving it every opportunity to crash yet again. I will be spending the summer in Houston doing research and studying for my board exam, so the tank will be on auto pilot. I think the longest it will be left without me checking in on it is 3 or 4 weeks, so if you’ve been waiting for a magnificent failure to rear its head again, check back here. Lol. Parameters were as follows on Sunday before I left town:

NYOS:
Nitrate – 0 ppm
Phosphate – 0 ppm

I was surprised the refugium was doing so well at pulling stuff out, even with the auto feeder on top of the tank. I didn’t mess with anything since I was leaving, so we’ll see what it looks like in 3 weeks. I do have a lovely camera pointed at the tank, so I can check in periodically, but can’t really do much if something is going wrong. Send prayers!

 

[Medical_Reef]

We've got a jumper!

Our friend who is watching the house for us called me this afternoon in a slight panic as Fred had found his way into the refugium compartment. She added some food to the tank and realized that only one clown had come up to eat, and after a little searching she found him.

Thankfully he jumped that direction and not out of the tank all together, but he seemed to be very grateful after being put back into the main display and given his own meal. Though it sounds like his girl friend was not happy he left and bullied him a little on his return.

I'm driving down tomorrow to check on the house and the tank, but so far it seems like I've avoided disaster for the first 2 1/2 weeks. We'll see what the chemistry is tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

 

[ScottR]

Good luck. Read a bit through your build. Sounds like you’ve had a rocky road but hopefully it stays stable here on out. My first saltwater was a similar sized AIO. Oh the things that can go wrong, especially when you’re away.

My little one liked to push my 5 gallon bucket over to tank, stand on it and literally play in the water with toys, cups and sand buckets. Same issue, lots of space to play and millions of toys to keep him busy but he couldn’t resist that tank.

 

[Medical_Reef]

Good luck. Read a bit through your build. Sounds like you’ve had a rocky road but hopefully it stays stable here on out. My first saltwater was a similar sized AIO. Oh the things that can go wrong, especially when you’re away.

My little one liked to push my 5 gallon bucket over to tank, stand on it and literally play in the water with toys, cups and sand buckets. Same issue, lots of space to play and millions of toys to keep him busy but he couldn’t resist that tank.

They just can’t resist the tank... thankfully we have learned that we need to be “gentle” while watching the fish, aka no hammers.

Round two here seems to be going okay so far. I originally pulled everything down because of dinos, which I believe got in as I rushed to add corals. So this time we are going slow and enjoying the fish while we wait.

 

[ScottR]

They just can’t resist the tank... thankfully we have learned that we need to be “gentle” while watching the fish, aka no hammers.

Round two here seems to be going okay so far. I originally pulled everything down because of dinos, which I believe got in as I rushed to add corals. So this time we are going slow and enjoying the fish while we wait.

No more hammers unless they’re euphyllia . The key to this hobby is stability. I preach it nonstop. Good luck in your reefing.

 

[Medical_Reef]

No more hammers unless they’re euphyllia . The key to this hobby is stability. I preach it nonstop. Good luck in your reefing.

Agreed, thank you, I appreciate it!

 

[Medical_Reef]

Well here it is, in all its green glory! The tank glass isn’t too bad at all, just a little algae. The rocks on the other hand have lots of green algae on them. It doesn’t look like green hair algae, so I’m wondering if it is possibly sea lettuce that made its way out of the refugium. I don’t have any major plans to clean the rock now since I’m heading out of town again, so we’ll see how it grows! Parameters are as follows:

NYOS:
Nitrate – 0 ppm
Phosphate – 0 ppm

Obviously the refugium is pulling everything out of the water. Though the algae in the refugium is definitely not sea lettuce. It kind of looks like the algae that usually grows on an algae scrubber, but I’m not sure.

I ended up adding three trochus snails to the tank, so now I am at a total of 7 snails. We’ll see if they like the algae or not. The filter sock was also a disaster, full of algae and clogged. The flow in the tank seems pretty diminished, so I am planning on cleaning out the back of the tank and seeing if anything is clogged.

On we go!

BRS/WWC cycle status: Cycle started on January 30th with Fritz 900, dry rock, marine pure and rock rubble in the sump. Filtration includes a filter sock, carbon, GFO, and sea lettuce from algae barn in the refugium. On April 5th I added Purple Helix coralline algae in a bottle from ARC. AI Prime running David Saxby’s schedule started on April 15th.

Schedule:
June 1st – 4-month cycle is officially “completed”
CUC – 4 Astria snails, 3 Trochus snails and a little hermit.
*assess coralline algae growth
*potentially add starter corals

 

[ScottR]

Well here it is, in all its green glory! The tank glass isn’t too bad at all, just a little algae. The rocks on the other hand have lots of green algae on them. It doesn’t look like green hair algae, so I’m wondering if it is possibly sea lettuce that made its way out of the refugium. I don’t have any major plans to clean the rock now since I’m heading out of town again, so we’ll see how it grows! Parameters are as follows:

NYOS:
Nitrate – 0 ppm
Phosphate – 0 ppm

Obviously the refugium is pulling everything out of the water. Though the algae in the refugium is definitely not sea lettuce. It kind of looks like the algae that usually grows on an algae scrubber, but I’m not sure.

I ended up adding three trochus snails to the tank, so now I am at a total of 7 snails. We’ll see if they like the algae or not. The filter sock was also a disaster, full of algae and clogged. The flow in the tank seems pretty diminished, so I am planning on cleaning out the back of the tank and seeing if anything is clogged.

On we go!

BRS/WWC cycle status: Cycle started on January 30th with Fritz 900, dry rock, marine pure and rock rubble in the sump. Filtration includes a filter sock, carbon, GFO, and sea lettuce from algae barn in the refugium. On April 5th I added Purple Helix coralline algae in a bottle from ARC. AI Prime running David Saxby’s schedule started on April 15th.

Schedule:
June 1st – 4-month cycle is officially “completed”
CUC – 4 Astria snails, 3 Trochus snails and a little hermit.
*assess coralline algae growth
*potentially add starter corals

Can you send more pics? Hard to see from that angle.

 

[Medical_Reef]

Can you send more pics? Hard to see from that angle.

It looks like the pics of the tank didn't even get loaded correctly. This is probably the best pic of the rocks I have. It almost looks like little blades of grass, which is what makes me think it could be sea lettuce.

 

[ScottR]

It looks like the pics of the tank didn't even get loaded correctly. This is probably the best pic of the rocks I have. It almost looks like little blades of grass, which is what makes me think it could be sea lettuce.

Honestly, that’s not too bad. It can be cleaned up easily with a good CUC.

 

[ScottR]

I’m actually begging for algae in my tank. I’m not aggressively approaching it, but wishfully hoping. My tank runs too clean.

 

[Medical_Reef]

I’m actually begging for algae in my tank. I’m not aggressively approaching it, but wishfully hoping. My tank runs too clean.

I bet that is a phrase not heard too often on the forums! lol. I'm not too worried at the moment, I am still out of town until July 1st, so I am happy to let the tank do its thing. I expected it with the dry rock as well. I've been slowly adding snails as I don't want to overstock and then deal with them dying and crashing the tank, so if in three weeks the new snails still can't keep up I'll grab a few more.

 

[Medical_Reef]

I am a little frustrated by the camera that I have set up to watch the tank. We have three Blink cameras, one outside and two inside, and while I have been out of town I left a camera pointed right at the tank. It has been nice to flip it on and see nothing went catastrophically wrong, and I even caught the auto feeder malfunctioning about a week after I left the first time around. The door had slipped closed and was no longer dropping any food. It wasn’t a big deal, we had someone coming over twice a week to check on the house, so I just had her feed the tank when she was there and the fish were fine. However, it seems like my internet won’t stay on, and every time it goes out I lose the cameras. I am not sure if it is my router or the local service as we have been getting alerts from the company, but either way my security blanket is gone. I’m not too worried about losing anything in the tank, since I only have hardy fish in there, but it would be nice to know if the water level was getting high as the filter filled up. This hobby is a little more stressing than I thought it would be…

Time for better news. While I was in town last weekend, I made a couple updates. The first was to swap out the power strips I had for an American DJ PC-100A power center. This has been a wonderful upgrade. The individual toggles definitely make certain maintenance aspects easier.

I also went ahead and scrapped the filter sock. It was severely clogged after three weeks and I just don’t have the funds to purchase multiple socks right now, especially since WaterBox made these socks at 2.75 inches in diameter and I can’t find any source for that size besides through them. The solution? One cheap plastic up that I hacked up and added filter pad too. It’s very shallow, so there isn’t any room for a bag of carbon or GFO at the moment, but this was the best temporary cup that I could find that fit inside the ring.

After a little hit with sandpaper, it was good to go.

Hopefully I get absolutely no phone calls from the house sitter informing me of a problem in the next 2 weeks. Send good vibes.

 

[lostcause]

Best of luck with your boards. I'm sure everything will be ok with your tank while you study.

 

[Medical_Reef]

Best of luck with your boards. I'm sure everything will be ok with your tank while you study.

Thank you! I agree, it looks like its getting hairy but I'll deal with that afterwords. Maybe it'll even be good for it if I just leave it alone for a couple months!

 

[Medical_Reef]

Plans changed a little this summer, so I am finishing my study from home. So I did a quick water change and a scrub, thus we have ugly fish tank...


And less ugly fish tank...

Love algae...

 

[Medical_Reef]

Well, I lost a fish. Our Royal Gramma hadn't come out of the rocks in a day or two, and it turns out she passed on. She was still wedged into her hiding spot in the rock. I'm not really sure what happened, but here we are. Another bad day.

In other news my tank was disgusting and now its slightly less so. Yay...

Also I threw a zoa and gsp frag into the tank a week ago, and they are kind of opening up. We'll see how it goes.

Maybe the tank will mature one of these days.

 

[NY_Caveman]

Bummer about the Gramma

 

[Medical_Reef]

Bummer about the Gramma

It was rather disappointing. I always feel bad when we lose a fish, and this one I don't have an answer for, which almost makes it worse.

I am wondering if smaller tanks are harder to manage not only because they are more prone to swings, but without a tang in the tank, it seems like it's much harder to keep a handle on the algae. The next tank I start will DEFINITELY be large enough for a nice bristle tooth at the least. I've also been thinking that live rock may be worth the investment on such a small tank... Cause this dry rock is taking forever.

The good news is that I took my board exam yesterday! I get a whole 11 days of vacation before starting up rotations, time to get some sleep. lol

 

[NY_Caveman]

It was rather disappointing. I always feel bad when we lose a fish, and this one I don't have an answer for, which almost makes it worse.

I am wondering if smaller tanks are harder to manage not only because they are more prone to swings, but without a tang in the tank, it seems like it's much harder to keep a handle on the algae. The next tank I start will DEFINITELY be large enough for a nice bristle tooth at the least. I've also been thinking that live rock may be worth the investment on such a small tank... Cause this dry rock is taking forever.

The good news is that I took my board exam yesterday! I get a whole 11 days of vacation before starting up rotations, time to get some sleep. lol

Nice, enjoy the 11 days!