New City, New Tank

[TroutWithLegs]

Finally settled down in Charleston SC, and decided it was time to set up a new tank. Breaking away from my lagoon/frag reef I had in St. Louis, and going to try to build a floating peninsula style, with KISS as the design intent. Was able to find this IM Nuvo 14 from a local and started it this week. 1st picture was leak test/disinfection with some vinegar. Second is its position in the office and testing my XR30 G5 blue. It might be a bit much in the light department.....

 

[vetteguy53081]

Make sure to investigate the water quality in your area so you can work with the water accordingly.
I just went from well water to city water and what a change

 

[TriggersAmuck]

Interesting placement....should give a strong sense of depth with a relatively small tank.

 

[TroutWithLegs]

Interesting placement....should give a strong sense of depth with a relatively small tank.

Actually kinda something im trying to work with. I've never had a nice peninsula tank, so im trying to make the most of that. Trouble is gonna be building a platform and scape long enough, sturdy enough, and light enough to do that. I have the plans drawn out, just need to cut all the acrylic.

 

[JumboShrimp]

Fantastic project! If you’ve ever been to World Wild Corals or Top Shelf Aquatics, it is absolutely amazing what they do ‘to scale’ with small tanks. Kind of like an HO scale train set. Best wishes!

 

[TroutWithLegs]

Got the acrylic platform shaped, bent, and glued up last weekend. Adding water, sand, rock and bio media today. pictures coming soon.

 

[TroutWithLegs]

Here's some photos from the past few days with the platform going in.

Built it out of 24x18x0.24" acrylic sheet I picked up for $30 at home Depot. Cut two 5x18" pieces out, and one 16.75x11.5 sheet to cover the tank.

I cut all the acrylic on a table saw, but have used a jigsaw, skill saw, chop saw and hacksaws in the past. Table saws just get the best finish on the edges before you can actually finish them.

All the holes are offset from each other so I don't create a weak spot in the center or vetween the two. They were cut on a 1.5" hole saw. Always predrill acrylic carefully and run your hole saws backwards or you'll crack the whole piece.

Bbent the platform piece at 6" creating a 5x6" glue surface and a 5x12" platform for the rock scape.

Finished the edges with a propane torch for a mostly clear edge profile.

Glued everything down with black aquarium silicone and made sure to press all the air bubbles out then left it clamped in the garage for a few days.

 

[TroutWithLegs]

Today after work added substrate, water, rocks, bio media, and all my other equipment.

Keeping It Simple I'm just running the Mightyjet pump that came with the tank, a 100w finnex heater leftover from another system, and the XR30 from my old tank. No more equipment in the cabinet. Hopefully the acrylic cover should slow my evap a lot and I won't need a ato, and it's such a small tank that I'm not going to bother dosing, just water changes.

I did upgrade and add a random flow generator from Vivid Creative Aquatics. Ive used their larger ones at work in the past with good results and I'm happy to report that so far, the flow patterns look great. Did need to buy a 19mm drop adapter though since this is an older Nuvo. Some of the newer Nuvo 14s have a 16mm outlet port.

Not sure how long ill keep the sand bed this deep, but 10lbs of Fiji Pink fits pretty nicely.

Rock scape is some smaller pieces all glued together to give me a lot of horizontal space for some acros and vertical space to mount some of my montis and chalices. Total weight if the scape is about 1700g. The acrylic sheet should support a few kg based on when the other piece I cut broke while I was flexing it while I was working on the scape.

I made sure to leave a lot of room for stuff along the edges and in front so I can grow some of my favorite Stylocoenllia on some rocks down on the sand bed.

Cycle should be chugging along by this weekend thanks to a shot of Fritz turbo start and a generous pinch of ammonia chloride.

Now ive just got to get a date to get some of my frags mailed to me and I'm very excited.

 

[TroutWithLegs]

Fantastic project! If you’ve ever been to World Wild Corals or Top Shelf Aquatics, it is absolutely amazing what they do ‘to scale’ with small tanks. Kind of like an HO scale train set. Best wishes!

I was lucky enough to visit WWC's store in Orlando a few months back and fell in love with the little 5 gallon desktop tanks they had. I wanted to do something like that initially but found this tank and stand for basically peanuts and wasn't going to turn down this opportunity.

 

[TroutWithLegs]

It's been a few days and there's some good updates. One, I have only needed to top off the tank with RODI once so far, so the lid helps a lot, and makes my life easy. NO ATO ever anymore if i can help it.

Dropped into the local fish store and picked up some unnamed and funky corals to be the first ones into the tank. A fun little chalice frag that was in the "we dont know what it is so it's cheap" area, and a cool piece of some kinda favia that was labeled "FRAG! ULTRA FAVIA BRAIN" which is useless to me, but hey, I love weird brain corals. If anyone can ID them now, shoot, if not we'll see when they grow out.

 

[TroutWithLegs]

So, I accidentally took in a whole reef of animals now. A local reefer whos moving was selling his tanks and livestock, and someone bought the tank before the livestock were sold, and REFUSED TO TAKE THE ANIMALS! I was very concerned and confused about that, and so was the owner. He was able to safely move them and hold them in some 5gal buckets for a day before i could pick them up, but once I saw them i couldn't believe anyone didn't want them. A beautiful pair of clownfish, one snowflake and one gladiator, a big ~6" green BTA, a 4" Black Cap Basslet (Yes I know she's a little large for the tank), and one skunk cleaner shrimp, 2 fire shrimp, and a very angry pistol shrimp!

The Male Snowflake clown, and the nem in the home I wish he'd stayed in. Would've been fun.

Gladiator clown, the female of the pair, with the smaller fire shrimp.

Pistol shrimp in the cave they and the basslet dug out.

Hard to see, but the little bump in the cave on the left is the Basslet. She's incredibly shy when the pictures were taken.

Now, yeah, I know that they are a large bioload for a 15gal tank, but anything is better than a 5 gallon bucket, and I'm no stranger to tanks with large bio loads. At work I've had a some systems where 100% water changes were a daily occurrence, and I dont love it, but I'm doing regular NH3/NO2/NO3 testing for them anyway, so I am comfortable with a high biomedia-tank volume ratio and weekly water changes in my personal.

As for fish behavior, the clowns are normal clownfish, behaving normally. They've all been in about 12 days now, and have acclimated well. The shrimp love the rockwork, and the nem is still changing positions every 2 or 3 days, no surprise there. The basslet is the one who concerns me the most though. While she does come out to eat when offered s-krill or real chunky food, she otherwise stays very hidden. I know they're cryptic fish, but it makes keeping an eye on her and monitoring stress and body condition tough. I was concerned about aggression, as shes the big fish in the tank, but I haven't had any mysterious injuries to shrimp or fish yet (knock on wood), so she doesn't seem to be lashing out.

 

[Lance A. Lot]

Doesn't look like enough space for a Snowflake Eel lol. When you are ready to send a shipping label Logan and I are ready here.

 

[TroutWithLegs]

Wow okay haven't posted new updates since November, but the tank is really growing into itself. We're gonna make two posts here today. One is my little show-off post from the Joe Knows Reefs live sale back a couple months ago. I picked up some really choice acros and really started getting the tank to where I want it. And a funky favia just because i can never resist.

Is there a show-off thread yet? These frags look great and I cant wait to get them off the rack soon. Acros are the "Slimer" which looks a lot greener in person, the "Pink Caddy",

the Plum Crazy which I love, Bill Murray,

Greased Lightning and Fruity Pebbles

. I'm also in love with the WWC Blood Diamond Favia and I genuinely cant decide if I want to put it on a tile to grow out, or find a really nice rock to mount it to.

I went ahead and chopped up the WWC Blood Diamond into 3 smaller frags. One on a nice weird shaped rock for display, one on a disk to grow out and trade, one on a tile to grow out big. All the acros have been mounted and to this point theyre all encrusting, except the MAC Greased Lightning, which won't stay on the rock where I've mounted it either by choice or by force, and the "Pink Caddy" which really didn't take to where I put it initially, but is starting to color back up and show some polyp extension again. The TGC Plum Crazy, the Bill Murray, and the Fruity pebbles are all over their glue and showing great growth edges.

 

[TroutWithLegs]

Now for the most recent update too. Reef Dream's of Charleston SC was this past week, and the tanks ben doing so well I had to pick a few things up you can see here. But, there were a few additions from before then that I wanted to highlight too.

First, this beautiful piece of Walt Disney i got from a local reefer. I've never seen an acro with this kind of polyp extension all the time. It's been in the tank about a month, and is growing off he plug already, and has great look. I actually moved my Stylocoenellia out of the way to give this the choice spot in the front of the tank its been doing so good.

Next, are a few shots of some of the other standouts from last week. I've never had montipora have this much polyp extension and was super pleased with this. Also a fun shot of one of my very hardworking snails and the MAC Greased lightning on a new gob of CA glue, over the old one, over the old epoxy.... not loving this one falling off.



Last the dump of every other photo. Loving how my old favia's and stylos are doing since they got here from @Lance A. Lot in St. Louis.



Theres also a little look in the full tank shots of the few I picked up at Reef Dreams, theyre due for another tank that I'll have setup soon for inverts only.