DaJMasta

Ceriths also seem to like right up next to the water line, only of my 3 kinds i've never seen stay up there are the nassarius.

youch! That's what gloves are for though, eh?

Wow, a huge project! Looks like you guys are no strangers to good workmanship though, nice clean edges and a really well thought out design. Can't wait to see it stocked, but I can understand that's still quite a ways out

Neat idea.... the huge sump/fuge would be perfect for only feeding minimally, since you'd be getting all sorts of pods and other growth coming back through the return lines. While my experience is quite limited, I'd say slow and steady is an even more important thing in a setup like this. First you need a good long time for the fuge to get really creating enough food to feed corals and still maintain it's own population, then you need to be sure that adding another coral to the tank doesn't get to the point of starving the others for food or depleting the fuge colony... so it could take some trial and error to get balanced. If you are indeed using the fuge as a food source, it could be an option to culture phytoplankton to feed to the pods and such in the fuge - I've heard it's a good way to keep their numbers up.

Today was relatively normal, nothing showed dramatically new behaviors, I didn't find any new species in the tank, and as expected the newly aquired corals are looking better with their second day in the tank. The ATO works quite well, the params are good, the smell is less than it was..... but the overstocked CUC has been hard at work. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves: Yesterday: Today: The results are simply staggering.... this is 23 hours worth of change.... needless to say I am no longer concerned with my algae problem. Of course these results come with a caveat, I'm overstocked on CUC. I've got a 7.5G tank with perhaps almost half a gallon in the fuge (less with the sand).... right now I have: 8 blue leg hermits (2 of which I paid for ) 3 orange leg hermits 1 dozen+ dwarf cerith snails 5 nerite snails 5 nassarius snails 1 small brittle star + hitchhikers I don't think they will be too much of a problem so long as they're fed when the algae dries up, but I may end up having to give some away because of the sheer numbers I've got (and did not plan for), though this won't be any sort of problem for some time yet. In other news, the mushroom hasn't done a whole lot, but looks a little healthier than it did yesterday. The sea whip has gone almost no where as well.... not notable deterioration, perhaps slightly more definition on the bumps on its arms, but no white fuzzy looking branches covered in polyps - at least so far.

I think that's typically 10-25 ppm or so worth of TDS, but if you added a DI chamber then you'd be at zero or at least less than 5 ppm for sure. The final carbon stage - at least as I understand it - is more for a decent taste to the output water when used in drinking systems than it is for reducing TDS. Provided of course that the membrane has a fairly high rejection rate and that it's kept in good working order.

The tank is officially more than 3 weeks old. To 'celebrate' this, my order from Sea Life Inc arrived in great condition and was added to the tank late in the night after a full day of school. Unwrapping a package of new stuff for your aquarium is a great experience - especially when loaded with freebies. I got an extra orange leg hermit, an extra nerite snail, 5 blue leg hermits, and a small frag of a different zoa all free with my $63 order (including shipping), and after 2 days in transit and 6 hours or so in a mailbox, everything seems to have arrived alive and well. I drip acclimated the inverts (snails, hermits, starfish) and used a separate tank for the starfish to be sure it didn't get picked on - turns out it was a lively one and probably would have been fine either way. Without fancy lugols solution or flatworm exit or anything like that, I gave the zoas and the mushroom a 6 minute dip in freshwater (in hindsight, I maybe should have reconsidered the mushroom, as I didn't have specific evidence that it would be fine, but it seems alright). This turned out to be probably for the better - the bag that had the zoas I had ordered smelled foul and I thought I saw some movement. When I dipped the zoas from that bag I saw little shrimp like things literally jumping off and curling up. After some inspection it looks like these were amphipods, so they were probably harmless, but the combination of movement and foul water with a new coral probably isn't a good sign. About an hour in I turned off the drips and got everything into the tank - the yellow sea whip gorgonian was the only critter I didn't do anything to acclimate.... because I couldn't decide what would be best. I figured a freshwater dip probably wasn't advisable because it wouldn't normally see freshwater at all in its environment, and since it was partially unsubmerged with a piece of paper towel keeping it damp, I didn't think dripping water in would be much use, so I inspected it and found a place in the tank. By the wee hours of the night the hermits and snails had dispersed, the brittle star had crawled partially under a rock, and a few zoas had partially opened - little glowing green bits at the heads of the polyps under a UV flashlight. By morning things had changed - but certainly not for the worse. The hermits had begun clearing a patch of the live rock from algae (and the area has been getting bigger steadily all day)... it's interesting that all of them are working in the same general area, it's not like there's an algae shortage anywhere. The brittle star had decided that the upper left corner of the display was the place to be, and stayed there hugging a nerite snail who was taking a break for hours, only to descend to the rock below at sundown or so. Zoas on all frags had opened up, though one part of the ordered green ones (not the smaller freebie greens of a different variety) seemed more reluctant to open. Peppeh also spends more time trampling those ones, but I'll give them some time yet. 12 hours to having most heads open after 2 days in a bag is pretty good odds. In fact the only thing that doesn't seem to be doing just great is the gorgonian - I see no polyps of any sort on it, I also expected this to be the latest to open because of shipping, and I'm unsure of the eventual polyp size so I don't exactly know what to be looking for, but I will give it some time before I wonder what to do next. In the afternoon I got the packages with the ATO equipment and got to setting it up. The mounts provided for the float sensor looked too big and intrusive for my tastes in a nano, so I jury rigged my own solution. It's not particularly durable or pretty, but it is small.... I will probably end up making a proper mount when I get some time to go to the hardware store. After a little testing, it works perfectly. I've got a JBJ ATO system connected to a TOM Aqua Lifter pump, which runs to a 2 gallon bucket used for freshwater. The freshwater bucket has a low-level water sensor, the tank has the top off sensor, and the return is mounted conveniently on the HOB fuge with a suction cup. It pumps at 4-6 drips per second and seems to be the perfect setup for an ATO in such a small tank. After the dust had settled (and I stirred up a bit of it) I took some pictures and ran a full set of tests. Despite being the 4th day with no water change (though I added maybe a half gallon of fresh seawater after disgarding the acclamation water yesterday), the parameters look great. Because of the length of time since the last one and the ever so slight smell to the tank (probably from the sinky zoa), I will probably do a small WC tonight, but it doesn't really seem necessary. In fact, despite the tank being really young, my params have been great for some time: And now for some pictures: Full tank shot (algae is still very much a problem, but look at that patch on the right.... go go hermits!) The algae removal patch, revealing a beautiful coralline coverage that I thought had bleached and gone away more than a week ago. The full stand, new pump on the left, ATO controller clipped to the outside right, and Red Sea Coral Pro - the salt I'll be trying next thanks to advice on the forum and reviews at the store. I'll be doing an intermediate period of 50/50 with my current instant ocean for a gradual change, but I hope that it does a bit better to keep the nutrients up which I can't yet measure for and am only now getting organisms that will use The green zoas I ordered. They advertised 15-20 polyps, with the freebies I probably got 35+ with the order. Are they.... supersonics? The small freebie zoa colony.... looks to me like green crossettes. A tiny hermit riding a larger hermit.... who still isn't a big hermit. Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! For anyone who doesn't know how porous live rock is..... brittle stars can show you. By the way, I'm calling him Little Brittle.

AIOs make it easy to have a display with a hidden functional sump - but the skimmers built into any of these kits are usually mediocre at best. That being said, there are plenty of people (myself included) that think nanos can operate fine without skimmers. I've got a 7.5G tank going now (another blog entry soon to follow) with a HOB filter modded to a refugium. You have to be somewhat more careful with things since bad things happen quickly in low volumes of water and you have to choose livestock that won't outgrow the tank, but it's all manageable and has been done thousands of times before. I recommend nano-reefs.com - some really helpful people, some not so much, but plenty of ideas and successful tanks all over the boards and a collection of articles that deal specifically with small tanks. Nanocustoms can come in handy because most AIOs and other kits sold as one-stop saltwater tanks only have enough lighting for FOWLR or low light corals, if you want to keep the look of the kit but keep a full blown reef, nano customs can definitely help with that.

If you're using the macro in the fuge as nutrient export, then yes, it does not export nutrients from the system until physically removed. It will continue to use up available nutrients in the system, but if it reaches a size limit because of the available nutrients or physical size constraints it will stop working or worse, start to die and put those nutrients back into the system. By trimming it you are physically removing some of the nitrates and phosphates you're trying to minimize with it and you are ensuring enough growth space in the future.

It's an unusual approach, but what about lining up the lights parallel to the smaller tank dimension? So if your tank is 6'x2' for example, you buy maybe 4 2' fixtures and arrange them all parallel over the length of the 6' side. It would probably result in better coverage if that is a concern, though it also probably increases the number of fixtures used. If you're looking to make as few fixtures as possible, an aluminum or wooden box of sort to contain the fixtures would probably look best. Even just a wireframe style box in place of a normal canopy would hide some of the cabling and mounting of each fixture and unify its appearance somewhat into one light unit, while maintaining more openness than a canopy. It would have to be built, but it wouldn't be a huge job or a really difficult build by any means. If you're really looking for minimal fixtures, a pair of Halide fixtures (perhaps 150W each) would give you lots of light in a fairly small pair of fixtures, each of which could probably be suspended from the ceiling by a single mount in the center, and each fixture would probably be only 1'x6" or so, leaving a lot of open space to keep the canopy-less feel of the tank. Of course then you've got no actinics unless you use LEDs. On the LED option, maybe mounting several recessed lights in the ceiling above and using high powered LED bulbs would get you the look you're going for. That would make the top of the tank completely fixture-less, the lighting hidden somewhat, and it allows actinics. You would have to be sure to use fixtures rated for high wattage bulbs to have enough ventilation to use the LED bulbs to full effect, but with wider optics you wouldn't even need that many of them.

Just read through the algae guide.... there's quite a few of them! While early on I did see a few fern-like algae bits growing, I can't see any of it now (good thing), and most of what I have seems like your run-of-the-mill hair algae.... there's just a lot of it and only a few hermits to graze on it. I actually think the stuff growing on the tunicate is dictyota, I will see how that all goes but for the moment it's growing much slower and presenting much less of a problem. It also seems like a emerald crab is sort of their universal fix for algae. I think my little HH crab is a red mithrax, so I may have a young helper already in there. Because I want a second shrimp down the line and I'll have 5 hermits and a HH crab on wednesday, I'm hesitant to go with an emerald just because of potential overstocking. That said, I'll certainly keep it in mind. Oh and don't worry about me giving up, I've spent enough time and money at this in 2.5 weeks that I have no interest in giving up without months of fighting

Haha it's no aversion, I actually like going to Aquatek quite a bit, but i've got a couple of unusual situations which can make it less than easy: My primary and fastest mode of transportation is my bike... so distance can be a problem especially with my 14 mile round trip to school commute 5-6 days a week and carrying large or heavy things is difficult if not impossible. This also means that other than Aquatek, there really isn't another store that I can regularly go to, or at least not another one that is close enough to make a casual errand run to. I'm a full time student with at best the equivalent of a part time job, so while I don't want to get cheap quality stuff, I don't have the money to really afford the good stuff - but I'm a pretty good online bargain hunter. And third.... I've actually sort of got a CUC going, what i've got coming is probably considered a little bit overkill in total with what I have, 3 blue leg hermits, more than a dozen cerith snails, and 5 nassarius snails, plus peppeh (who is from aquatek). Thanks to the reefcleaners group buy I was able to get those very early on and get to build up the CUC gradually and see how the tank reacts.

A month seems about right, so long as the params are stable, just don't expect it to be able to accommodate anywhere near the full capacity of the tank worth of fish for some more months yet. For the seaweed any brand will do, so long as there are no additives, just dry sea weed - even regular grocery stores should have some near the asian food section because they're pretty normal for human consumption too. The japanese word for seaweed is nori, so I'd expect it to be marketed as such. Out of curiosity, how long did you acclimate the new stuff and what params are you testing for?

Another day passes, the algae gets a tad bit longer. While everything in the tank seems healthy, I can't help but be disappointed that the algae is covering up so much activity and color in the tank. Yet, since even my phosphate readings can't explain the bloom, I am still chalking it up to being a new tank. Today I took a look at the refugium (HOB filter) intake and decided to change it again. If you recall, I started with a large sponge block with a hole cut in the middle to allow a large surface area for intake and some basic mechanical filtration. Nothing was really wrong with it, but it was big and got dirty fast, so it wasn't the greatest to look at. So on the advice of a nano-reef.com member, I cut a smaller chunk of sponge (smaller than a ping-pong ball) and basically jammed it in the end of the filter tube. Lower profile and less noticable - yes - but still looked about the same. I would have kept it too except I started noticing a film on the top of the tank, especially after a day without a water change. I had seen 'surface skimming' mods for intakes before made of two PVC elbows, basically routing the filter intake upwards instead of down and cutting notches in the crown, similar to the teeth in an overflow box. I figured it was cheap enough and easy enough to do that even if it only helped a little it would be worth it. To make the mod was a bit more difficult, mostly because of how the filter is put together. The deep sand bed I've got goes above some of the holes for letting water out into the main body of the filter, and the sand is kept out of the impeller with a chunk of sponge. Of course, to take off the intake tube - because it snaps into place - you have to take out the sponge to be able to insert it back in place. I fumbled around with trying to get things to fit properly, eventually cutting the sponge cover for the impeller in two, a wall to keep the sand at bay and a chunk to surround the tube and hold the other piece in place, then I beveled the second piece to make the U tube easier to insert at an angle, since the sponges had to be in place to keep the sand out. I then pumped and sucked the sand out of the impeller hole with a turkey baster, dropped the impeller in, and snapped the U tube in place. The added extension is made of two gray PVC 3/4" slip elbows (< $3 for the whole mod), a piece of one of the intake tubes as a connector between the two PVC tubes, and the end strainer of an intake tube, cut down to one row of teeth to make the strainer on the top. The strainer end can be raised or lowered a bit to adjust for the optimum water level and each PVC elbow has a 1/8" hole drilled in back. This lets water in to reduce noise when the water level gets low enough that the strainer is almost completely above the water level. The holes are small enough that the strainer intake is still the primary intake, and in fact you can see a little vortex even when it is running at a full water level. Today is a day of a small water change (just over a gallon) and a full battery of tests, as yesterday I did neither. However, despite my algae growth my parameters are stable and near optimal: SG: 1.024 Temp: 77F pH: 8.2 Ammonia: 0 ppm Nitrate: 0 ppm Nitrite: 0 ppm Phosphate: 0 ppm Alkalinity: 12 dKH You read that right. That's why I'm chalking the near 1" long algae on most of the tank as a symptom of being a new starting ecosystem without a whole lot of CUC. And of course, I have my already mentioned goodies coming for next week. Wednesday will probably be the day with 2 new hermits, some new nerite snails (new species for the tank), a small brittle star, a small green zoa frag, a small yellow gorgonian frag, and a red mushroom (**** good for $55 shipped). But since I still have a bit in the paypal account from selling some computer parts and since it's been on my list for a while... I also ordered an ATO system. I ended up going the prebuilt route mostly because a lot of the DIY kits are larger or uglier than the prebuilts, and in a nano with no space to hide things that does matter. My ATO will consist of the JBJ ATO unit with 2 float sensors, a TOM Aqua Lifter pump, some airline tubing, and my trusty 2 gallon bucket currently holding the manual top off water. Especially to keep the 'skimmer' going without noise, regulating the water level in the tank accurately and often is important. The coming week looks promising: new livestock (more than just CUC even!) and a new level of automation on a tank which actually keeps getting easier to take care of, now that neither testing nor water changes happen every day. A couple random things I've noticed recently: A new kind of sort of bladed leave macroalgae growing, mostly on the big tunicate and on the rock it's based on. Little baby white bristle worms, maybe 1/4-1/2" long wriggling in the current the night before. I caught one (a very fast swimmer) in a test tube and took a look, seems those worms like it here. I moved one mangrove out of the fuge.... 6 was a bit much for that little space anyways, so I'm hoping on trying the simulating tides thing with the one in the main tank, where you hold it out of the water sometimes to promote those picaresque mangrove roots to grow, so now it's rubber banded to a chopstick in the main tank looking slightly conspicuous. Now here's some pictures of how things are going: Yes, there's algae. Yes, a lot. Yes, I know. It may yet be tap water's fault and I may yet buy an RO/DI and scorn my current ways, but my testing kits aren't showing it and I have some patience left in me. Fresh from a molting peppeh is as adventurous as ever. A white bristle worm resident towards the front of the tank.... I haven't seen all of him but I have seen him fully retract from this position into his den faster than the blink of an eye. The final version of the skimmer intake, the holes are drilled but are in back so they're not visible here.

Nanos are good In fact, there's plenty of people with sub 10 gallon tanks with a pair of clowns, anemones may be difficult if they've got long tentacles, but clowns can spawn on other things too and perhaps a smaller tentacled variety would be a good choice in a nano. For lighting upgrades, nano customs is basically THE place for upgraded lighting hoods and has a good selection of DIY parts. If you're looking to loose the hood, there's some T5HO and clip on Halide options which are good alternatives as well. There's fewer options in LED lighting, but the DIY option isn't a fairly difficult one and it is well documented, while a standard lamp with a LED bulb in the right spectrum and with wide optics could make the housing a piece of cake. Take a look at the site www.nano-reef.com , they have a fair amount of articles tailored to how nanos typically work, lots of sections for nano-specific questions (what lighting options, how to DIY, what makes good stocking in a nano), and a section of member's aquariums ranging from about half a gallon to the 50s or so.

The second full week that the tank has been operational has come and gone. The tank is running quietly and correctly, the nutrient and chemical levels I can test for are all looking healthy, and all of the critters I know of are still around doing their thing. Peppeh has become more adventurous, one of the hermits has taken up the awesome looking almost zebra striped shell as his home, and the snails are quietly roaming the sand, rock, and glass in search of whatever they want to eat - as there's plenty of it. Yes, I've got an algae bloom on my hands. I've read that the order with new tanks typically goes cycling spikes (mostly avoided thanks to insane water changes), diatom bloom, green hair algae bloom..... and my tank is no exception. The two days after adding the shrimp I fed the tank with some micro pellets, the algae had already started cropping up then, but has almost doubled in size since, despite undetectable nitrate levels. It is certainly out in full force, but I also don't plan on feeding anything for a couple days, and it seems to be growing more slowly. My mangroves have also seemed to take root and the macroalgae on the live rock is growing at it's somewhat slow but manageable pace. Even so, I've bought a phosphate measuring kit to start monitoring that and have priced out a 4 stage RO/DI system if I still have problems in a couple of weeks (about $150 with chloramine treatment from bulk reef supply, about $110 for a 6 stage dual DI from ebay - of lesser quality) In celebration of 2 weeks of successful operation.... I caved and bought more stuff. Luckliy, it was from sealifeinc.net, and subsequently won't arrive until the tank is about three weeks old (priority mail shipping plus monday and tuesday shipping days). The order included 3 easier difficulty small corals, a small green zoa frag, a small yellow gorgonian frag, and a red mushroom, but also included a bit more to beef up the clean up crew: a pair of orange legged hermits, a few nerite snails, and a small sized red brittle star. Now I'm fully aware that in a tank this small the CUC doesn't need to be very substantial, but I like inverts and I know that I can still feed them if I need to and they are pretty friendly in terms of tolerance of other critters, so I think the increased diversity and numbers will be fun additions to the tank. Yes this is also running somewhat counter to the 'slow start' plan I began with.... of course these are chiefly CUC members and the cycle was much faster than I expected. I also don't plan on adding fish for weeks to come (don't even know what I'd get at the moment), though when the tank is fully mature I'm looking at a fish or two and a cleaner shrimp plus some corals for the final total. And finally, the 13th day was the first day sans-water change, today was the first day with neither a water change nor a full suite of tests. I will however do both tomorrow, but the tank parameters have remained stable even with less maintenance - a great sign. I've seen tons of pods in both the fuge and the main display now, and what I thought was a majano anemone either died/was eaten, moved, or only existed in my imagination as I haven't seen it for the last two days. And a FTS, with all of it's green-algae-carpet spendor:

I don't have experience with it, but from what I've read - more than 1/2" depth of crushed coral is a no-no. It traps debris very easily and doesn't have the same surface area that sand would to accomodate the beneficial bacteria. I've also seen that with almost any depth of crushed coral it's a good idea to regularly gravel vacuum it to remove the accumulated waste. From the nitrate problem, a deep sand bed may actually help, but it would be a fair amount of work and expense - even using dry sand - to fill a 75G tank with 4-6" of sand.

Price lowered to $20 - would also trade for a cleaner shrimp, a colorful zoa frag, or a gorgonian.

Today is all about pictures, as little has changed since yesterday's additions. The peppermint shrimp (now named peppeh) has really livened up since feeding today - I tossed in some little sinking pellet food and the shrimp came out and the nassarius snails popped up. After the frenzy of minute proportions subsided, peppeh hid under a rock near the front of the display - not atypical at this point. But after the lights went off, peppeh went all over the display including investigating the sponge and the front panel of the tank rather thoroughly. He also met the little HH crab who was doing his nightly laps, but after somewhat of a mock skirmish they both went their own ways and acted disinterested. Peppeh even did his job as a peppermint shrimp within just hours of being in the tank - the only aiptasia I could find before is gone. I still see another small anemone in the tank - it could be a majano, but I couldn't get a clear pic so IDing will have to wait a bit - but it's still quite small and in an out-of-the-way place. He did not take a bite out of that one. The mangroves in the fuge have perhaps gotten a little bit firmer, but I noticed little black flecks on the sand, presumably the same black flecks on the plants themselves, indicating they're doing something. I've also found a couple new things which I managed to get pictures of, tiny fan like things coming out from what I thought was partially alive macroalgae - a picture will follow, and little colonies of what I think are white tunicates - they have the same general shape and are slightly translucent, my picture is a bit blurry though. The numbers for the tank are also running well and despite a good amount of time with all circuits on, the GFCI has not retriggered, perhaps I had dripped on something, but it's nice that it's not failing. Numbers: SG: 1.024 Temp: 77-78F pH: 8.2 Ammonia: < .25 ppm Nitrate: 0 ppm Nitrite: 0 ppm Alkalinity: 13 dKH And the all important pictures: A better shot of my tiny lap-swimming hitchhiker crab, when he takes a break on the silicone (this shot is sideways). Peppeh the shrimp. A hermit climbing on some halmedia. A nassarius snail surfacing for the smell of sweet sweet pellet food. The feather duster has grown! The white patches with circles are (I think) the new-found tunicates, the yellow thing is a sponge that survived the trip here. It's feeding/breathing/venting/whatever holes have always been free from debris, though lately the diatoms have made it somewhat less yellow. And the mysterious white feather coming out of a macro (at least so it seems). Another filter feeder for the tank?

I'm amazed. 11 days and the tank is already cycled and stocked with a basic clean up crew. Plants are growing and things are alive all over the place. I've even dropped the daily water changes to 1 gallon or so a day, so half again of what I had been doing - but the parameters are actually looking better with that. Yesterday my numbers looked something like this: SG: 1.024 Temp: 78 F pH: 8.0 Ammonia: 0 ppm Nitrates: 0 ppm Nitrites: 0 ppm Alkalinity: 13 dKH (that's like in the acceptable range!!!!) And today they've continued in good standing: SG: 1.024 Temp: 78F pH: 8.0 (though this test kit is ambiguous.... the color doesn't really match any of the 8.0-8.4 range but it's got elements of each.... 8.0 is the closest match) Ammonia: 0 ppm Nitrates: < 5 ppm Nitrites: 0 ppm Alkalinity: 12 dKH (so long as it doesn't keep dropping, this is good.) The diatom bloom is a thing of the past and the halmedia is really coming in well. I've got a few little patches of what appears to be normal green algae, but it doesn't seem to be growing particularly fast - will keep my eyes out. Yesterday the reefcleaners order came in (thanks to everyone who helped set it up and who received the package!) and I got a handful of ceriths, some nassarius, and 3 hermits all introduced to their new home. I also got a bunch of mangroves planted in the fuge (along with a nassarius in there as well). It was interesting to see them all react, they all did things similar to others of their species. The nassarius snails were the first to move in the acclimation bucket and the first to move when dropped in the tank. The hermits in both cases came out of their shells and waved their antennae around at about the same time, but didn't move much for a while. All the ceriths were the slow ones of the group, they seemed together enough in the bucket but they all seemed disoriented when they were dropped in the tank. The Nassariuses all dove into the sand before anything else could wake up, the hermits woke up but stayed in one place for the better part of an hour just picking at the sand, and it took the ceriths more than an hour to get all of themselves righted with only about half making it more than a few inches from the drop zone. Regardless of the slow ceriths, they all seem healthy and crawling around the tank as expected and the collection of new hermit shells that came with the order (which one hermit changed into within a couple hours of being in the tank.... in the middle of the sand with the lights on) all look nice in the tank. That night I saw the little tiny HH crab again - it's a nightly occurrence now, I think he just goes for a late night jog of sorts around the tank. Today rolled around with almost no discernible change from the day before. Snails a-climbin', hermits perched on various places on the rocks, macro growing silently, and the sun shining in through an open window into the tank - only for a few minutes, but I thought it looked quite nice. I can see why T5's don't cut it for high light requirement corals - the sun is a powerful thing. All was not peachy though in the land of the reef, overnight the GFCI had tripped and according to how far the light timer was behind it had been out for more than 4 hours. I had one other short trip earlier yesterday, so today I switched off the mixing pump and heater to see if they were the culprit - the GFCI did not trip today. It could have been a one time thing (two time thing?) as i'm mixing again for tonight's water change and it hasn't tripped, but it has me worried. Not only about the tank missing out on flow, heat, and light, but that something is shorting and I don't know what it is. Process of elimination begins now I suppose. Later in the day I managed to stop by Aquatek for a mag float (even the smallest size is a bit big though....), some sinking food pellets, and a peppermint shrimp. Ended up being the same price as the reefcleaners one would have been, just needed to pay tax. I gave him an about 40 minute acclimation treatment with about 4-5x the initial water level and dropped him in. After a while of cowering behind a rock and then the heater, he's explored most of the back of the tank and the rockwork and seems to be fitting in nicely. Quite frankly I'm amazed I've been able to add any kind of livestock this early - the tank isn't even two weeks old but all the signs I can tell are saying that he's going to be alright. It's still going to be a while before an actual fish arrives - at least 2-3 more weeks - but I may end up with a cleaner shrimp or a couple of coral frags before then. Since I've got some hitchhikers though, I've been wondering about what feeding would be appropriate before I get frags or another shrimp. I got the sinking pellets for the peppermint shrimp for a day or two from now - hopefully giving him time to whet his chops with aiptasia - but I certainly want to keep my hidden cup coral, my tunicates, and my feather duster. Since two are filter feeders, would it be worth it to get a phyto or zooplankton food source to feed them? I assume the coral would want something bigger, but since I'm currently at one polyp I think spot feeding frozen food is a bit wasteful. I do expect to get a copepod colony going in the fuge, but I'm not sure how long it will take to develop and whether it would be able to feed a tank's worth of mouths (even if there don't end up being a huge number). Also, if I were to pick up some frags in the next week or two, what would be good choices? Remember, 36W of T5 in a 7.5G tank, so probably no SPS, but I'm also a bit of a beginner so something somewhat hardy may be better. I don't mind feeding them but if I were going to get two I would get at least one photosynthetic if I had the option. Any opinions? Zoas? Shrooms? Gorgonians? Thanks for reading

For saving some money on live rock, a lot of people recommend buying some live and more than 50% dry base rock. That way you get the amount you ultimately need for totals but you get the organisms only from the live stuff. It takes longer, and you get fewer hitchhikers (good or bad, you decide), but you essentially culture your own live rock with some as seed. Base rock is often half the price of the live stuff if not cheaper. A lot of things I've read suggest that good live rock is essential to the health of your tank - but so long as you end up with the right amount of good quality it doesn't seem to make a big difference. If you've got good quality seed rock you can get as much live rock as you need with time - it will just delay the time before the tank is fully mature.

Today was a day of additions, both the new refugium built out of an AC70 filter and of a new electrical switching system. I'll begin with the latter. I began the tank with a simple 5 outlet GFCI power strip, then just enough to get everything covered in terms of sockets and all was good. Within a couple of days of doing water changes (big ones that required the powerhead to be off, and switching on and off the pump and heater in the bucket to fill the tank from it and to start anew) I realized that I was going to wear out these plugs mighty quickly if I were to continue like this. I also got the distinct impression that hands covered in salt water shouldn't be the norm when dealing with this. The next day I went to lowes and picked up a couple of extension cords and a couple of inline lamp switches - mainly because I couldn't find any remote switch extensions that I was actually looking for. While these worked, the switches were rated for very low current (though still under the maximum draw I'm quite sure), they were far from watertight, and while I could make drip loops through clever positioning of them, I still had to grip the entire thing to turn it on or off. In switching the one attached to the seawater blending bucket, I could have sworn I even got a small shock when switching it. So those obviously wouldn't work, but for the two cords and two switches it had been only just over $5.... no big loss. So I went off to lowes today with a better plan after researching remote extension cords and wirelessly switched outlets - build my own switch box to make this easy. I opted for a single gang metal box rated for outdoor use and a double switch and faceplate. Because I knew having the sockets in the box would both get the water closer to the electrical contacts and make the project cost increase, I opted to use extension cords for the outputs. I rigged the whole thing up complete with 3 prong grounding for just about $30 and I think it's built covered enough for my use. I color coded the switches and output cables (which have 3 sockets each) and zip tied them to my stand (making permanent drip loops in all cables) and it's up and running flawlessly. It was more expensive than I had hoped - the double switch was sort of expensive, the box was a bit more than I expected, and the cables were reasonably priced - but I wanted them color coded so I got 3 of them even though I only needed 2. In the end, if I was doing the super-budget version, you could probably shave off $10 by buying two pronged cords and only two of them. Regardless, I ended up with this after only a half an hour of work and basic tools: There is no gasket under the faceplate, and there isn't covers for the switches, but I don't think I need it to be completely water proof. Then I had determined that the refugium that was curing overnight was about ready to go, but in a conversation with a friend I found a way to screen the impeller in a better way, allowing something I didn't think was really an option with the setup: a deep sand bed refugium. After reading the benefits of it and using a sponge to help screen out the sand, I proceeded to add almost 4 inches of sand to my former filter and hung it on the back of the tank. Since this is a 70 gallon sized filter, I also had to trim the impeller blades for less flow, but I ended up with this: Since I've got a bunch of mangroves on the way from reefcleaners (arriving tomorrow!) I'll be planting them in the fuge with the hopes that they'll be tall enough to get some natural light from above the windowsill. I also managed to get the heater in there and out of the main display, though it has to be turned up another degree or so to keep the temperature up properly. Again last night I saw that hitchhiker crab struggling to swim in the flow of the tank, but this time I managed to get a blurry picture of it happening: (that's actually the least blurry of several pictures of him...) Other than that, the measured levels are in line with what they should be - though the alkalinity dropped rather sharply; I want to be concerned, but then again it's much closer to a normal reading now. The water is clear and smells fresh, and the old plastic hotel key I used as an algae scraper did pretty well on the diatom bloom, though a mag float is still in my future. So without further adieu: The numbers: Specific Gravity: 1.024 Temperature: 77 F (working on dialing in the heater to be in the fuge) pH: 8.0 Ammonia: 0 ppm Nitrates: 0 ppm Nitrites: 0 ppm Alkalinity: 14 dKH The pictures: And the newly reorganized stand complete with switch box:

A nice combination of a lot of the ones in the other guides, the info about the stuff they typically come on is good too

If it's just for storage rubbermaid is certainly an option (or even a 5 gallon bucket really), also 2.5 and 5 gallon glass aquariums are pretty standard sizes available at a lot of LFSs. Then there's the online option with a few nano setups around $50 which are a bit more complete and a bit nicer to look at. Also like was said, there's a lot of fish bowls and betta tanks about in that size range which would probably do the job.

I had 2 UPS packages stolen from my doorstep just a month back (on the same day)... who knows why as they were both fairly cheap computer parts and we've had other (pricier) things left at the door which have been fine. Sad part was that the policy is to leave them at the apartment office, not the door if no one is home, so they would have been fine if they had just delivered them properly. Anyways, you have to go through the shipper to file a missing package claim with UPS, I didn't have much trouble with mine, but it does take a couple of weeks. If it's actually stolen or missing UPS is liable and while it's not convenient for the company to deal with it, they will get reimbursed. It's also worth asking your UPS driver (if you get a chance) to recheck the truck, and I wouldn't file a claim until after a day or two goes by to be sure it actually is gone.