The Return. 14G NPS/SPS Reef

Ezreal

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Hello everyone. New to R2R but by no means new to reefing however taking a 4 year break certainly makes me feel that way. I started reefing back in 2007 when I was only 12 and rapidly grew up with the hobby but eventually school and then work got in the way. But now I'm back and excited to see all the new changes to reefing and aquaculture.

Let's just jump right in to it. 14g Coralife Biocube.

The hood was gutted and I cut a hole in the lid and put a piece of flat glass designed for a T5 and hung a Kessil 150w ocean blue over it. put some ceramic bio whatevers (little tube looking porous ceramic pieces) in my "sump" chamber. Smashed the majority up and made a mesh bag out of cheese cloth and the rest left whole for micro fauna. Waiting on some chaeto morpha which should be here by the end of today. Took my old reef rock bleached it a while back and cleaned the hell out of it and then let it sit in fresh water with a pump for a few days to make sure everything was reef safe.

Chucked it in then took 14g of salt water from a long established tank and used that along with a dead fungia plate that was sitting in his sump (it came with a clam that buried its self in the rock)!

Added 10 pounds of Fiji Pink Arag-Alive sand and started dosing microbacter 7. Been adding some old dry phyto a little juvenile fish food and reef chilli.

Tried testing for N but my API nitrate test kits are too old so I have to get some more. But that's about it so far. This has been up for about a week now. 0 changes so far. The clam is doing fine too which tells me a good deal, I feed him the dry phyto and reef chilli directly but he seems to mostly come out when the pumps are on which makes feeding a little difficult.

Will be adding a damsel (+ small cleanup crew of 2 nerites, 1 blue leg, 1 turbo) in the next few days as likely my only fish for at least a year. I'm not a fan of fish aside from Shrimp Gobies and Mandarins and the tank just isn't close to ready for either of those.

I hope to eventually cater to NPS SPS and softies maybe a few LPS. Back in 2011-2015 I had lovely reef composed of gorgonians (photo and nps) sun coral and goniopora which at the time was not a common pick but it seems like now people have a better understanding of goniopora and alviopora.
 
Probably gonna do a 1g water change today then do a higher dose of microbacter7. People say not to water change during a cycle but theres dust I need to remove from the sand and adding new water gives me a cleaner cycle. The cycle already should be EXTREMELY soft because of the established water + sheer amount of live bacteria and dry rock so I'm not too worried. I got a BRS value 4 stage RODI system for that nice 0 TDS fresh water for topoff and changes. Using Instant Ocean Sea Salt instead of their crystals. The crystals had a lot of negative feedback but the Sea Salt has some good reviews and has a nice amount of desired specs. Probably will get Red Sea eventually but this is good for now.

Any thoughts?
 
Sounds like a good start. Welcome to R2R!

 
Got my Damsel today along with the snails and a VERY small hermit (LFS ripped me off) not seeing any algae growth the water has been exceptionally clear too. Unfortunately as I was doing a 1g water change and moving around the ceramic tubes for the chaeto I found that my DIY media bags had completely fallen apart and since they collected all that sand dust I got a nice cloudy sandstorm. So I replaced the DIY carbon bag with boiling bags used to make bone broth. Those will inevitably collect more detritus and I'll have to clean em out more until I get some nice filter socks or media bags.

Also got a nice ball of chaeto in the fuge chamber gonna setup a light back there too.
 
Gave the tank a little jab of N. Fed some extra pellets in the tank since the damsel is refusing to come out and eat despite trying to target feed. Gives the blue leg something to munch on along with the waste for the nasarius and turbo. The Chaeto fuge is nice, got a bubbler in there and that along with the natural drainage gives the chaeto a nice tumble so the led on the back can give it full light. Still no hide nor sea hare of algae so I guess its going well. planning on doing a 2g change next week.
 
Just a heads up. If like me you have short term memory loss, do not leave your rodi filling a bucket on the floor. Very glad I invested in a dehumidifier
 
10 days since start. Crystal clear water. doing a 2g change on Sunday.

Its odd. I have never had a tank cycle without getting algae from at least day 2.
 
Does anyone actually read this? Starting to wonder..
 
Hello everyone. New to R2R but by no means new to reefing however taking a 4 year break certainly makes me feel that way. I started reefing back in 2007 when I was only 12 and rapidly grew up with the hobby but eventually school and then work got in the way. But now I'm back and excited to see all the new changes to reefing and aquaculture.

Let's just jump right in to it. 14g Coralife Biocube.

The hood was gutted and I cut a hole in the lid and put a piece of flat glass designed for a T5 and hung a Kessil 150w ocean blue over it. put some ceramic bio whatevers (little tube looking porous ceramic pieces) in my "sump" chamber. Smashed the majority up and made a mesh bag out of cheese cloth and the rest left whole for micro fauna. Waiting on some chaeto morpha which should be here by the end of today. Took my old reef rock bleached it a while back and cleaned the hell out of it and then let it sit in fresh water with a pump for a few days to make sure everything was reef safe.

Chucked it in then took 14g of salt water from a long established tank and used that along with a dead fungia plate that was sitting in his sump (it came with a clam that buried its self in the rock)!

Added 10 pounds of Fiji Pink Arag-Alive sand and started dosing microbacter 7. Been adding some old dry phyto a little juvenile fish food and reef chilli.

Tried testing for N but my API nitrate test kits are too old so I have to get some more. But that's about it so far. This has been up for about a week now. 0 changes so far. The clam is doing fine too which tells me a good deal, I feed him the dry phyto and reef chilli directly but he seems to mostly come out when the pumps are on which makes feeding a little difficult.

Will be adding a damsel (+ small cleanup crew of 2 nerites, 1 blue leg, 1 turbo) in the next few days as likely my only fish for at least a year. I'm not a fan of fish aside from Shrimp Gobies and Mandarins and the tank just isn't close to ready for either of those.

I hope to eventually cater to NPS SPS and softies maybe a few LPS. Back in 2011-2015 I had lovely reef composed of gorgonians (photo and nps) sun coral and goniopora which at the time was not a common pick but it seems like now people have a better understanding of goniopora and alviopora.
Great to have you here. Welcome comrade
 
I have thread " RAISING NPS CORALS MONTH1"
Just found your thread
NPS are certainly a challenge but very rewarding when they take off.

Sun corals for me were the most satisfying to grow from small colonies.
 
Got my API test kit today.

Nitrate at a solid 0. Going to do a 3g water change tomorrow anyway, just to make sure it stays at 0
 
Fun to see the nassarius at work. One is very lazy the other is a non stop work machine. The second the fish food and phyto go in the tank it's there zooming across the sand at a speed land snails and hermit crabs can only dream of.
 
20190129_195221.jpg
20190129_195149.jpg
 
Finally a nice snapshot of the inhabitants.

I can never get a pic of the clam or the hermit crab.

Don't get crabs on your clam folks...
 
Fun to see the nassarius at work. One is very lazy the other is a non stop work machine. The second the fish food and phyto go in the tank it's there zooming across the sand at a speed land snails and hermit crabs can only dream of.
I have some of those snails, when I had tanks with coral sand they like to bury
 

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