Nano Sapiens 12g - Ye Olde Mixed Reef

[thatsruff]

12th Year Anniversary FTS:

Right side:

Left side:

For this 12th year update I decided to take pics before my weekly cleanup (tomorrow).

Added a bunch of true soft coral for the first time to this nano (Neon Capnella, Xenia and a hitch-hiker Clavularia (fluorescent, colorful morph). Was on the alert for possible chemical issues (allelopathy), but didn't notice anything out of the ordinary even though I don't run any chemical media.

Other corals added this year were a single Duncan head (now seven), a single Blastomussa merletti polyp (now a colony of 12), a small colony of Blastomussa wellsi (three out of four polyps doing very well, just not multiplying yet), a frag of Jack-O-Lantern Leptoseris, and a bunch of Zoas (Rastas, Utter Chaos, unnamed) that I've split up and have in different locations.

This last year had it's share of minor issues, but generally all's well enough (just need to eliminate some Digitate Hydroids)...so 'cool beans'

Ralph.

Beautiful tank and some sage advice recently, glad I came across your thread. Sorry to hear about your goby.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Beautiful tank and some sage advice recently, glad I came across your thread. Sorry to hear about your goby.

Thank you and glad that you find some of the advice helpful.

 

[Aqua Man]

Wow, must of really wanted out to get past your cover! RIP Blenny

 

[2Sunny]

Well Ralph I am extremely happy that you decided to post on R2R years ago and start this thread. I am sad that I didn't find it sooner. As others have said again and again over the years, your tank and this thread are an inspiration. Having kept a large aquarium for 2 decades you could say I suffered from tiny tank prejudice, but since starting a 2.5 gallon Pico and now transferring the inhabitants to a 22 gallon nano, I am pleased to say that I have found the light and exorcised my prejudice

I have been scouring the Nano section for months in search of a tank that is more than a few weeks old and has some long term growth because I am a firm believer in copying others success, and now I have found the perfect example trouble is, it means I have to join the Nano Forum and read your 90+ pages of info . . . ah well . . . first world problems.

In any case, thank you for sharing.

Questions:
1) How do you add the Kalkwasser? Manually or ATO?
2) Your LEDs are quite old now. Do you think they are perhaps diminished? Do you have any plans to replace them?

Joe

 

[Nano sapiens]

Well Ralph I am extremely happy that you decided to post on R2R years ago and start this thread. I am sad that I didn't find it sooner. As others have said again and again over the years, your tank and this thread are an inspiration. Having kept a large aquarium for 2 decades you could say I suffered from tiny tank prejudice, but since starting a 2.5 gallon Pico and now transferring the inhabitants to a 22 gallon nano, I am pleased to say that I have found the light and exorcised my prejudice

I have been scouring the Nano section for months in search of a tank that is more than a few weeks old and has some long term growth because I am a firm believer in copying others success, and now I have found the perfect example trouble is, it means I have to join the Nano Forum and read your 90+ pages of info . . . ah well . . . first world problems.

In any case, thank you for sharing.

Questions:
1) How do you add the Kalkwasser? Manually or ATO?
2) Your LEDs are quite old now. Do you think they are perhaps diminished? Do you have any plans to replace them?

Joe

Hi Joe - Glad you found the build thread. Although I do still try to post every few months or so, with so many reef tanks being updated it's easy for a build thread to get lost in the shuffle.

As you may have already seen on the Nano Reef website forum, I use pet-bottle ATOs that are filled with a mixture of RO and clear super-saturated Kalkwasser.

Funny you should mention the LEDs as I had the same thoughts a few months ago and had brought out the old PAR meter to check. Compared to my last PAR map a few years ago, the difference in intensity was negligible. This DIY array uses an over sized heatsink (no fans necessary), good quality LEDs, on for 8 hrs/day with 135 min. ramp times and only 2 hours of all-5 channel peak intensity. ~7 years and still going strong!

Ralph.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Wow, must of really wanted out to get past your cover! RIP Blenny

I have a 1" lip around the edges which usually does the trick to keep fish inside. This guy must have launched from near mid tank, which is a bit unusual.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Quick corner pic:

Not buying anything for awhile, system and inhabitants are doing fine...so working on optimizing my old DIY lighting, spectrum and intensity.

Have been slowly decreasing white, increasing cyan and decreasing red. Looking online, the closest I can come to the spectrum I currently have is the Radion G5 Blue, which is one of the few that has a healthy helping of cyan. I also used the Apogee compensation factors for the individual color channels I measured and for underwater, so my PAR readings are about as accurate as it gets for my old SQ-120 quantum sensor. Highest reading just under the water is 443 PAR and mid point of the aquarium ends up being 177 PAR, which is a bit higher than I expected, but IME is still in the ballpark for a mixed reef with medium light SPS (but no high-light loving Acros). Will replace all the old Violet and Hyperviolet LEDs when they go on sale as close examination has revealed severe fracturing of all the lens (all other LED lenses look a-okay).

And, a super tiny little R. florida blob that I discovered recently (just barely visible to the naked eye) starting to grow tentacles (10x eye loop + 2.8x camera magnification):

Both green and yellow/orange tips on the same polyp...cool!

 

[Aqua Man]

How’s the Xenia doing? Has it taken over yet!? One of my favorite coral.

How would you describe how much fish food you add daily? How many feedings could you get out 1 cube of frozen Mysis?

I am either over feeding or my bacteria are lazy!!

 

[Nano sapiens]

How’s the Xenia doing? Has it taken over yet!? One of my favorite coral.

How would you describe how much fish food you add daily? How many feedings could you get out 1 cube of frozen Mysis?

I am either over feeding or my bacteria are lazy!!

The Xenia has been surprisingly well behaved and has not spread to any other rocks than the one it is on. Every two months or so I thin some of it out, which helps keep it busy regrowing.

At present, I just try to keep my single blenny full. So each day (alternating) that'd be 4-5 mini pellets, a few flakes, ~10 medium sized mysid shrimp...and a very small earthworm on the seventh day, Sunday.

Since mysid are fed to the fish twice a week and the LPS/larger Zoas once a week, I'm using ~1/4 cube of mysid per week.

Since we typically only feed a relatively small amount each day, its easy not to realize just how much food that is in a week. Super easy to overfeed a small system.

 

[smiley28]

I’ve been watching for the name @Nano sapiens ever since I started my first tank and surfed the nano forum 10 yrs ago. Still amazed when I see how fresh the tank looks.

 

[Nano sapiens]

I’ve been watching for the name @Nano sapiens ever since I started my first tank and surfed the nano forum 10 yrs ago. Still amazed when I see how fresh the tank looks.

Thank you for the nice comment. After 12+ years, it's still enjoyable to maintain and tinker with

 

[2Sunny]

Morning Ralph,

You've inspired me to consider making my ATO a kalkwasser dispenser. I used Kalkwasser more than a decade ago, but I have forgotten the chemistry now. As I recall I had an expensive stirring unit to keep the water super saturated. What is your routine? Do you stir the bottles during the week? How often do you mix fresh kalkwasser? I forget, are there any long term considerations when using kalk? Do you buy pickling lime or aquarium kalk?

Thanks a bunch for the answers!

Joe

 

[Nano sapiens]

Morning Ralph,

You've inspired me to consider making my ATO a kalkwasser dispenser. I used Kalkwasser more than a decade ago, but I have forgotten the chemistry now. As I recall I had an expensive stirring unit to keep the water super saturated. What is your routine? Do you stir the bottles during the week? How often do you mix fresh kalkwasser? I forget, are there any long term considerations when using kalk? Do you buy pickling lime or aquarium kalk?

Thanks a bunch for the answers!

Joe

Hi Joe - In keeping with KISS, and some might say old school methodology, I use a supersaturated Kalkwasser solution in my ATOs along with R/O in a ratio sufficient to keep my alkalinity/calcium stable. You can create the supersaturated Kalkwasser by thoroughly mixing two teaspoons of kalk/gallon and then seal it from air and let it sit for a few days (no mixing/stirring, just let it sit undisturbed). Then just carefully decant or siphon off only the clear supersaturated solution and add to your ATO along with the R/O (unless using it full strength is what you need to keep alkalinity/calcium stable). You can either toss the residue, or just add some more kalk to make the next batch (I tend to toss it after ~5x and clean the container with vinegar).

I have used both 'for reef aquarium' and 'Ms Wages pickling lime' and didn't notice any differences, other than a big difference in cost.

Things of note: Try to keep the saturated kalkwasser contact with air to a bare minimum (forms a crust of calcium carbonate by reacting with CO2 in the air). Stuff is caustic, so try not to breathe in the dust or leave residue on your skin. After some time of use, the calcium level in the system will very slowly rise (usually takes months). Every once in a while I just add an alkalinity only product for a short time (while slightly decreasing the kalkwasser portion) which then allows the calcium level to drop back down again. If pure Kalkwasser alone is not sufficient, you can add vinegar to the solution:

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-01/rhf/#7


Ralph.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Adventures in carbon dosing (vinegar) without a skimmer:

I was able to drop nitrates from 25 ppm to 2 ppm in slightly more than two months using a maximum dosage of 1/2 ml/day/10g water volume added to my ATOs containing a Kalkwasser/RO mixture. In lieu of a skimmer, I used a combination of scraping all the walls to dislodge any bacteria film, vigorous blasting of the live rock to dislodge detritus/biofilm, sand bed vacuuming and a filter sock attached to my return pump outflow with every week's cleaning/water change. Looking at this objectively, I believe that the carbon dosing in combination with the somewhat enhanced cleaning protocol required to remove the light bacterial films was responsible for the reduction.

My main concern with carbon dosing was driving my typical consistently low PO4 even lower and thus causing starvation and possible bleaching. I started to see mild signs of stony coral bleaching at around the 4 ppm NO3 mark ('0' ppm PO4) and so started immediate vinegar ramp down and increased coral feeding by around 25% to supply additional phosphate/nutrition. Only two stony corals in particular have shown issues during this time frame; a Leptoseris that lost some tissue in higher light areas and a Ponape Birdsnest that lost all it's green fluorescent pigment. However, I can't say for certain that other factors didn't play a part with these two since other coral/false coral came through this just fine.

Pumps and rotating nozzle needed to be cleaned twice as often as normal to maintain proper flow due to the bacterial film buildup.

Now can I keep NO3 below 10 ppm NO3 naturally...or will I have to resort to carbon dosing again...hmm...

Really small H. bowerbanki I picked up last weekend (dime and nickel sized) under ~14k:

Actinics...

Happily snagged a half dozen baby 3/8" Trochus and a pair of large Stomatellas (haven't seen those in a while!) from the LFS. Would be awesome if the Stomatella spawn survives.

 

[Nano sapiens]

What could be more appropriate for Halloween?

Still a little fella, maybe half way grown up.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Well, color me surprised! This Halloween Hermit is chomping through my well established colonial hydroid clumps like a champ

 

[Aqua Man]

Cool Hermit and it looks like he/she has a limpet hitching a ride!
Makes sense that something would eat those hydroids. If only we could find something that reliably eats vermitid snails.

 

[imchuco]

Beautiful tank! Looks super clean!!

 

[Nano sapiens]

Cool Hermit and it looks like he/she has a limpet hitching a ride!
Makes sense that something would eat those hydroids. If only we could find something that reliably eats vermitid snails.

Funny thing is that limpet never moves! Looks like it's a shell that somehow become cemented in place.

Vermetid are a tough one to control biologically. Some have reported success with Bumblebee Snails, but then you have to hope they don't go after other desirable tank organisms...

 

[Nano sapiens]

Beautiful tank! Looks super clean!!

Thank you!