Nautical Nathaniel's IM Nuvo 20

[Typical_Tim]

Tank looks great, following. Out of all my tanks I've had the NUVO 20 has been my favorite.

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

Tank looks great, following. Out of all my tanks I've had the NUVO 20 has been my favorite.

Thanks! It's definitely the favorite out of the two tanks I have done reefs in

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

10/20/2017 Weekly Update:

• My blasto is doing much better and starting to heal after the little mishap I had last week from the nutrient spike.
• The film algae issues and diatom bloom I had from the nutrient spike have also subsided, my snails have cleaned all but the last bit of the dark film algae on the glass. I tend to not clean the glass as often to always ensure they have something to eat.
• I got a new tonga fighting conch to help eat stuff in the sand, he's a bit small though and I'm pretty sure the basic nassarius snail does more work than he does, but oh well his name is Rocky Balboa I also got three more turbo snails since my LFS was out of trochus snails, I asked for baby ones but got two mediums and a jumbo, we'll see how well the jumbo behaves but I may have to trade him in for a smaller one since it sticks out like a sore thumb in my tank.
• My Maxspect Ethereal is continuing to do a good job in the lighting department, however I constantly have issues with the software/connectivity between it and the ICV6 controller. They almost always disconnect within a few hours and then I have to go through the process of resetting both units multiple time to reconnect. I think I have my lighting schedule dialed in but I turned the "moonlight" LED in the center to white and its a bit too bright at night in my opinion. I'll need to sit down this weekend for an hour or so and get the controller and the light communicating again in order to change it to the deep blue color or something a little less brighter. CoralVue support has been no help trying to resolve this issue so I guess I'll just have to deal with it for now. ;Shifty
  
• All of the fish are doing well. My little watchman goby hasn't left the side of his pistol shrimp since they bonded a couple of weeks ago, so I may remove the fish-guards on the overflows that I bought especially for him and restore some of the flow back through my filtration.
• I think I may end up re-homing my melanurus wrasse, which was a baby when I got it, and instead try to get a possum wrasse or pink-streaked wrasse soon. I'd most likely have to order it since my LFS seems to have something against nano fish, but I think it would be a better fit for the aquarium. The melanurus has grown much faster than I anticipated and I was going to upgrade to a bigger tank for it or let it supervise a 20-30 gallon frag tank for me, but I don't have room for such in my tiny apartment

Anyways, that's about all I have going on with my tank right now. My goal for the weekend after getting some school work out of the way is to break out my big camera and try to get some good pictures of everything for here and my instagram. We'll see what happens

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

More coral pictures, because why not!?

Gold Torch:

Jason Fox Sunset Stylocoeniella:

Magician Zoa:

Feel free to ask me questions about anything in my aquarium

 

[hockeyhead019]

glad the blasto is doing better, cool pictures!

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

glad the blasto is doing better, cool pictures!

Thanks, man! I'm really glad too! That coral is what kicked off my obsession and if I were to lose it I would be severely bummed out for a few months!

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

10/27/2017 Weekly Update:

Tank is doing great this week! Not a whole lot to update on:

• This past weekend I got a magician zoa, a picture of it is above so far it is doing great but no signs of any babies yet.
• My main LFS is having an anniversary sale tonight, there's supposed to be some good deals. My wallet is probably going to hate me but my girlfriend is excited to go and maybe get some freshwater stuff so that's a plus
• A fellow reefer in the area has some JF Flame Acro and Blue Dreams Acro frags on the cheap, so I may be getting some of those soon

The only other thing that I would like to talk about are my clownfish. I think they are reaching sexual maturity because they are becoming wayyyy more aggressive about their frogspawn and the rocks around it. My black and white clownfish is probably 2.5 years old and my regular orange ocellaris is about 1.5 years old. They will take swipes at anything besides me if it goes near their frogspawn or rock, I'm actually quite surprised that they haven't started biting me yet haha

If their behavior continues to get worse, I may give the regular orange one to a friend who just started up a nano aquarium, but I don't know yet. I never intended to breed them so having a pair isn't necessary, but at the same time they don't act the same when there's just one clownfish.

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

Super exciting news, I stumbled across the World Wide Corals ebay sales yesterday and saw that they had several corals on there going for pretty good prices so I decided to go all in and try to win some, my main goal was one of these, an WWC Ahhhmazing Echinata:

Well I'm happy to say that I won that coral and got it for an Ahhhmazing price compared to their normal price on WWC's site. I hope I'm not broadcasting the secret to getting awesome corals at great prices

In total I got 7 corals:

• WWC Ahhmazing Echinata
• WWC Snakepolyp (Always wanted some, I think they're super cool!)
• JF Bi-Polar Favites
• WWC Blue Blade Acro
• WWC Vivid Rainbow Acro
• WWC Captain America Zoa (2-3 polyps)
• WWC Neon Blasto

That's more than I actually wanted to get but my reckoning was I had to justify shipping somehow, thankfully I'm still barely in Florida so i get the discounted rate
Now I have to figure out where to put all of them

I'll do a full update of all of these corals as soon as I get them in and make sure they are looking good! Be sure to follow along if you want to see them!

 

[Tim Ly]

I️ Was in the forum today and stumble upon your post. Thank you for the write up, it was a great read. Keep up the good work, your tank looks great!

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

I️ Was in the forum today and stumble upon your post. Thank you for the write up, it was a great read. Keep up the good work, your tank looks great!

Thanks for stopping by! It's definitely not over by a long shot so come on back when you get the chance I'm updating this thread every week on Friday!

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

Quick update that was supposed to be posted last week, grad school got in the way

I've rehomed my Melanurus Wrasse, she is now in a much bigger tank with more fish to interact with. The original reason she was in my tank was that I bought her when she was little with the full intention of upgrading my tank before she got too big. Sadly I moved into a second floor apartment with iffy floor joists so I'm not upgrading to anything larger than what I have now until I move to a place with solid flooring.

The 7 coral frags I got last week from WWC eBay auctions are all doing well and looking good. The Ahhhmazing Ehinata has been given a ton of space after I saw pictures of one absolutely destroying an acan colony from 6 inches away. I think my favorite is the little blasto frag I got, which doesn't suprise me seeing as how my Red blasto is my favorite coral overall. This little blasto is so bright it looks overexposed in every video or photo I take of it.

My little watchman goby must have been eaten by my pistol shrimp, it was looking rather beat up all the time but was eating well, so I was hopeful. Sadly I haven't seen the little fella for over a week and the shrimp has been very active. No sign of the little guy in the back of the tank or anywhere on the floor. I don't think I'm going to try and get another goby for now due to the next part...

I have a small Black Capped Basslet on the way that I ordered through a local fish store, I wanted something uncommon that would still fit in with the rest of the tank. It also needed to be somewhat sturdy since my clowns have turned into little monsters. Hopefully the little guy makes it through quarantine okay and joins my other fish soon

That's all I've got for now, come back Friday for some cool pictures!

 

[bontrager]

Love your tank and the new lighting. I have a question (I have the same tank but not have started as of yet). It doesn't look to me that you have added the so called required 1 to 1.5 pounds of rock to your reef. The reason I am saying this is that I have placed 20 lbs of Carib Sea rock and my tank is almost completely full. Very little room for anything else (I'm going bare bottom).

Thank you

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

Love your tank and the new lighting. I have a question (I have the same tank but not have started as of yet). It doesn't look to me that you have added the so called required 1 to 1.5 pounds of rock to your reef. The reason I am saying this is that I have placed 20 lbs of Carib Sea rock and my tank is almost completely full. Very little room for anything else (I'm going bare bottom).

Thank you

The 1-1.5 lbs/gallon thing with rock is more like a guideline really. Believe it or not, but there is actually 20 lbs of BRS reefsaver in my tank, it was around 23lbs but I took out a smaller rock in the middle that was covered in green star polyps. I think the tank will sort itself out if you have less rock than the lbs/gallon guideline. The most important thing is getting it to look good and function as an aquascpae first, too much rock and you will have a series of dead zones in the tank that will affect water quality eventually.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Love it, hope mine looks as good, cycling it at this time. Really nice.

 

[jazzmik]

Hey @nautical_nathaniel how often are you having to clean glass?

It's driving me crazy right now. Granted tank is going through beginning stages right now, but I'm having to clean glass every hour it seems.

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

Hey @nautical_nathaniel how often are you having to clean glass?

It's driving me crazy right now. Granted tank is going through beginning stages right now, but I'm having to clean glass every hour it seems.

I clean my glass once a week. Unless I'm taking pictures during the week, I will sometimes skip cleaning the glass just to keep my snails well fed. I'm at the point where it takes 2 weeks or so for it to really get ugly. I usually clean my glass right before a water change so I can siphon anything that comes off.

 

[jazzmik]

I clean my glass once a week. Unless I'm taking pictures during the week, I will sometimes skip cleaning the glass just to keep my snails well fed. I'm at the point where it takes 2 weeks or so for it to really get ugly. I usually clean my glass right before a water change so I can siphon anything that comes off.

Yeah I figured that would be the case.

Ordered a small CUC from Reef Cleaners. Hopefully ships today so I can get by Wed.

You probably have it posted above but what skimmer if any are you using?

I had picked up one of those Reef Glass nano skimmer, similar to the Mame skimmer but don't think it's going to work. Not sure if I want to chance a HOB or not.

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

Full tank shot update for everyone

The reef has been doing pretty good lately, I've been making more changes than I would like to make in a month's time but thankfully the tank has adjusted pretty quickly. I've began using Acropower since my SPS corals have lost some of their luster and started to have poor PE. They immediately perked up after the first dose and they are starting to color up some more already. My big Ultra Blasto colony in particular has also perked up after starting the Acropower which is a welcomed sign

After rehoming my melanurus wrasse, I saw a significant reduction in nutrients in my tank, so I decided I needed a new fish to help make up for the reduction in bio-load. I went to the LFS the other day and saw this little pink streak wrasse staring at me with it's big orange eyes and decided I needed to take him home this little guy is definitely more appropriate for my tank and he may or may not provide the same benefits of critter population control as the melanurus wrasse did.

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

Yeah I figured that would be the case.

Ordered a small CUC from Reef Cleaners. Hopefully ships today so I can get by Wed.

You probably have it posted above but what skimmer if any are you using?

I had picked up one of those Reef Glass nano skimmer, similar to the Mame skimmer but don't think it's going to work. Not sure if I want to chance a HOB or not.

I use the IM Ghost Skimmer but it's a piece of junk IMO. The only thing it produces for me are micro bubbles and a little tan colored skimmate water. I'm considering exploring my options with a HOB or looking into the different options from Tunze and the Eshopps Nano Skimmer. I know the Eshopps fits well but you have to make some slight modifications with one of the Tunze skimmers for it to fit.

 

[Tahoe61]

Tank looks awesome.

The Wrasse sounds like the perfect addition.

Interesting about the Acropower. Maybe I need to try it again.

How often do you leave the lid on? Been thinking about getting a third fish but all the ones I want are jumpers!