DaJMasta

Yeah, more filtration is probably the answer. Getting a whole-house filtration system is probably the best bet, but if that isn't an option for whatever reason, I would double the number of sediment filters (run a coarse and a fine size in that order), get a second membrane with a high rejection rate (the higher flow 96% versions are no good in this case), and get a second DI. Not cheap, but more prefiltering (sediment filters) means longer membrane life and 2 membranes means longer DI life. I'm certain that there is a whole house filtration option which would probably lessen the need to clean out your plumbing (sediment in the hot water heater probably will be a problem with that kind of TDS), but it is possible to do in just part of the RO/DI system. Good luck!

I've heard of people keeping monti caps and arcos under PC, but the growth is fairly poor and the colors are just as bad (all brown for the most part). I personally wouldn't do it because I don't think they'd be healthy and they wouldn't be as resilient because of that.

LEDs sound like a good option except for price. You need high intensity in a relatively small area... but if your frag rack is only 6" wide maybe you can light that alone with the high powered stuff? I've got a jbj nano glow that would fit the size requirements, but at only 4W it's not really enough for SPS even in that small of an area. There are some other options though, and there are a number of relatively lower color temp 8-12W LED bulbs available (look for fewer LED numbers and a big heatsink) priced under $50 which use relatively standard light fixtures.

It's not going to grow SPS in the bottom half of the tank.... at least not quickly. The dissipation as it travels through water can often be pretty steep. Why not go all out and get a similarly spectrum'd metal halide from home depot? They sell them as outdoor security floods, and while they're a bit more than that, you can get 50W or more versions, they usually have a few, for way less than a competing aquarium products. It also may be worth looking into the cheaper nova extreme T5 fixtures. I've got an 18" 36W fixture over my main tank that was something like $45 from lnt.com

There's potential for it to leech stuff, there's potential for things to be alive/dead and decaying, and there's potential that it's simply got some pollutants on it from being on a beach.... If you're really looking to use it in your tank and aren't interested in whatever was/is alive on it now, I believe the standard is boiling it, then putting it in the sun to dry for a long while (a week or more). It doesn't prevent leeching (though soaking it and water testing could probably tell you if it was), but it gets the organics on the rock pretty well gone.

Clear body, at least in my experience, doesn't mean aiptasia. It could be a hydroid or another kind of nem, it's really tough to see much of anything with that pic so at least for me it's not much use. Hydroids can be a problem, especially if they are colonial as they can bother corals, but solitary ones I haven't heard bad things about and they are said to usually go away once their food source is used up, as it's often a specific thing.

Looking good

The return pump I've got a regular sand bed, chaeto, mangroves, and live rock at the moment. Hopefully will add some more LR for seeding and filtration purposes. The mangroves have barely done anything, but I think that is mostly my own fault.

I don't know where they keep it all! I ended up moving the acan frag nearish to it because it looked like it had been hit. Everything else seems ok so far.....

And the tank is looking fine. As of a little less than a week ago, I added my first and probably only fish: a rainfordi goby. He's a bit shy... he was out in the open quite a bit when first introduced, but seems to prefer the less visible areas of the tank now. It's too bad because he looks really cool and seems to enjoy just hovering in one place. Still, he seems to even get along with bandie (which is rare, let me assure you) and aside from a little sand on my acan, he's been great to everything else in the tank. The corals seem to be doing mostly well, I wonder about one little patch of green zoas near the front right of the tank, they have shrunk in diameter dramatically in the last two days... but they still are opening and I don't seem to be loosing polyps or anything. I've been keeping an eye on that area to try to see if there is some kind of hitchhiking critter which could be bothering them, but I haven't seen one yet. I seem to have lost one frag of zoas from the recent 10 pack so I've been watching closely, but that could have been something unrelated.... it's hard to say. I still have plenty of zoas which are doing great, so I will keep my eyes open and hope for the best. Since the last update I've also been fortunate enough to pick up a 24G jbj nano cube and a 150W MH clip on lamp from another member - to be my upgrade when I move apartments over the summer. I've got some basics and some dry rock arriving soon to get it going, I hope to get the tank seeded, cycled, and on the road to maturity by the time I move, and I'll begin stocking after that. Not sure if the 7.5G's contents will end up in it or if I'll keep more than one tank......... aside from getting another ATO that's fine with me I've also determined that my LED refugium light sucks. I bought a cheapish ebay one rated for 5W from a chinese seller advertising it to grow plants.... since it was only a fuge I figured it was a good shot. Well after having the inside of my ball of chaeto die because the light couldn't penetrate it far enough, I decided to test how much power it was drawing from the wall - I've had a watt meter from testing my computers earlier - and it drew 1W. So what I thought was enough light to grow out some macro in the fuge turned out to be enough light to just barely keep chaeto alive.... so a jbj nano glo arrived today to adequately light my current sump and eventually be transferred to the nano cube. I also had a couple of aiptasia growing in the sump - I tried to coax peppeh into moving down but couldn't get him in a few tries so I gave up for the night. A couple days later he had gone through the overflow himself and with a little help to get out of the initial drain chamber, chowed down on the pest nems and has been transferred back into the display. And finally, if you've ever seen a hungry serpent star eat..... you'll know it's scary. My little maybe 4" star is sometimes seen nearly sprinting across the tank towards food, then sticking his greedy arms into it and rolling the food into his mouth. It's rather entertaining when bandie, a mithrax crab, and a hermit are all doing the same thing and they end up in a heap in the tank, but seeing a starfish dart out of a crack, stuff itself with food and return with an oral disc maybe 4x the original height is a scary sight. Trust me. And now, 4 months of maturity and growth give me this: And the new fish, anyone have a good name for him/her?

An easy enough mod with a HOB filter and thanks to it's design there's really no chance of draining your tank to the floor. It seems like both the in tank and external prebuilt ones are rather expensive, though the Aquaclear filter mod is pretty cheap.

Looking good, the water is a bit yellowed, but I would say your problem is on it's way out if you're only getting that much yellow through feet of water. Think of how much easier it is to see any issues with water clarity when you're looking through 3+ feet of it vs. 2 or less in a smaller tank... it's probably better than you think. Also sounds like you've saved quite a bit from the DIY option.

I think it could work fine, but they are meant for tanks viewable from at least 3 sides, if you're going to have most of the focus on one or two sides there's really no advantage of having it there vs. on a wall or in a corner. You can also usually get them in clear glass and acrylic, which will minimize critters' ability to hide. If it were me with an overflow like that, I would build up a column or pininsula of some sort to cover a good portion of the overflow. That way you hide it somewhat and you minimize the open space surrounding it, which makes it less viable as a hiding place.

I don't know my snails, but that shell has a point somewhat similar to a whelk, if it is I would put it back - they're predatory. Limpets can be good, but keyhole limpets tend to be bad. I've got a good one in my tank at the moment, but I hear keyhole limpets can eat corals and such, while other varieties are mostly herbivores.

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You've probably seen or heard a warning about sweeper tentacles before, it's pretty common to see them about certain kinds of LPS and it usually recommends to keep them a distance from other corals when placing them in your tank. As a new reefer I heeded these warnings, but in a nano tank there is so much space you can provide - a torch coral was simply out of the question and even frogspawn was an iffy choice to make. I didn't expect to see them coming out of a maze brain coral in anything close to the length they can be though. These tentacles were the reason for my introduction to the smell of paly toxin a few weeks ago and have proven to astound me once again - one of the tentacles seen today has surpassed the diameter of the coral, nearly 4 inches long. What's more is that my frogspawn I've never seen sweepers come out of, and both the acans and the blastos only have very small feeder tentacles that I've ever seen. To demonstrate to those who don't know about sweepers, I've made a short poor quality video of my maze brain in action... taken about half an hour before normal lights out, so I'm not sure why they were already fully extended. The palys/gsp rock to the right is some inches back and has not been hit since it was moved there, I can't see any damage to the gorgonian, but it had some trouble earlier and is gradually growing back. Neither of the acans or the zoas in front of it have been hit either (or even the frogspawn, as far as I can tell), but the size of these tentacles really astounded me. When I move to a bigger tank (and it's looking more and more inevitable ) I will be sure to give this coral the clearance it deserves. http://www.medpants.com/reef/mar27/sweepers.wmv As a frame of reference, the coral is just about 3" in diameter.

If my tank was big enough for a tang I would have posted a pic

I've seen a few fixtures at aquatek, but they seem to be a little low on the watts to use them on deep tanks or use them for growing SPS. Most of the high power LED systems i've seen are custom builds, but there's also some market for modded hoods and point lights (nanocustoms.com most notably).

Some zoas just have brown skirts. Unless you have reason to believe they shouldn't and they're just discolored, let them be. More actinic light (higher kelvin rating light colors, lower wavelength actinics, or UV really) could bring out the color they have more perhaps.

Yep sounds like diatoms. As far as I know they're pretty typical in a cycle and should subside on their own. CUC members and pods both eat them, so one way or another they'll go away. I've actually heard that small diatom blooms during the life of the tank are good because they replenish the pod population.

It looks almost like it's growing outwards, almost with rings... is that about the color of it when it's under full light? I know coralline comes in a lot of colors and there's a chance it's that. Also have you poked it? Whether it's slimy/spongy/rough/etc could go a long way to IDing it.

Very much yes. Austin tap water is relatively low in terms of TDS but has rather high KH/GH. No ammonia though? Was your live rock already cured? I would have expected a *little* ammonia at least.

Easy solution, measure the salt and salt mix supplements before and add water until you hit the right salinity. Just have to do it in the other order. I think the more important application is listed in the description - you get to decide what proportion of supplemental salt mix is added. If your non-salt element demand is especially high (tons of corals) you can mix up a salt that starts at a higher Ca, Mg, Alk, etc content than someone running a FOWLR tank. You get to customize certain aspects of the salt, though you still have to use the non sodium chloride part of everything in the proportions they have mixed up. I would hesitate to go as far as saying it could be used supplementally - I don't think they intended to have this mix mimic the loss of nutrients in a tank just because the demands of each tank are so different - but preemptively raising nutrient levels in your fresh batches of water could be useful. I think unless you're using an expensive salt or this is especially cheap, this won't be much of a cost reducer.

So while I may have actually been out of space for more stuff for some time now, I will officially declare that my nano has as many corals as it can comfortably hold with a little growing room. Hopefully this declaration means that my wallet will get some time to recover properly. In the last week I got a ricordea, some zoas, and some nassarius snails from a reefs2go group buy and got a huge number of zoa frags from a mr. coral specialty pack advertised at nano-reef.com. So not only do I have something like 15+ kinds of zoas in my 7.5G tank, but I've also taken up most of the real estate on the rocks and a good portion of the sand bed. I ended up wanting a little more height in my display and decided my best bet was a corner frag rack, so with a clear magnetic rack got off ebay, I brought a piece of live rock from the sump up and with the new zoas I have a cavern of sorts and an elevated zoa rock. I think it was a good choice. I also had some access to a car in the last few days and visited two more of the local fish stores to browse and gawk, I ended up picking up a bundle of chaeto for the sump but couldn't really justify anything else. I was really thinking about a galaxia frag at fishy business.... I really like the looks of that stuff, but I just don't know where I would fit it in the tank so I decided I'd leave it to a more spacious home. Yesterday I caught the larger of the two mithrax crabs pinching at the gorgonian polyps and then at the base of the brain coral.... so after a couple hours of manouvering a net and a chopstick, I managed to fish him out and dump him in the sump. I had seen a little bubble algae in there before and wanted to move one, so this just gave me an excuse to move him over now. Even with the nipping though, the gorgonian is looking better. If you compare today's FTS to the last one, there are some areas where the outer skeleton is growing back - it almost looks like it's bleaching because it's more white than yellow - but since it wasn't there a week ago I am considering it a good sign. The ricordea are starting to take hold, the green has looked good from the get go, but the blue has taken root and is getting bigger. The yellow one was knocked off once more, so it's still in limbo, but it does seem to be doing well, and the new tricolor orange that came on thursday is larger than it was and is anchored securely. I really like the look of ricordea. The blastos have all gotten bigger and they're looking great, a very colorful addition to the tank - and the little burn they got from touching an acan is almost totally healed. There's growth pretty much across the board, but those are the ones that seem to be the most noticeable. Since I'm fairly out of space at the moment, I think that growth will be the focus of later entries. At the end of the last week I also redid the overflow and return plumbing one last time - third time really is the charm because I got a great looking and perfectly working setup. I used the gray schedule 80 PVC for the parts in the tank and the whole setup is less visible now. I also adjusted the height of the T in the back of the overflow so that the suction is fully broken and if I get a power failure for an extended period, the siphon will stay primed without any help and will start right back up with the sump. I even switched over to rigid tubing for the overflow to sump line, since I was having kinking problems with 3/4" flexible clear hose, I adjusted things a bit and got it working with 3/4" rigid tubing and a union. I also reworked the return line to reduce kinking in the flexible section (still uses 1/2" flexible because of the pump output) and to swap to gray fittings on the U and direction elbow in the tank. The bryopsis treatment worked! I got the magnesium to about 1500 ppm over the course of just over a week and suddenly all of the bryopsis disappeared. I had seen the mithrax crabs pinching it but not eating it before, I think the magnesium made them tender enough to be eaten. I left it to simmer at 1500 for a few days following it's disappearance, then I did a much needed water change and it's back down to 1350. Hopefully it won't come back, but that treatment worked well and I didn't see any ill effects in my corals or inverts. Without the bryopsis and with a little more manual removal of some of the macro growing on the rocks, algae problems are basically a thing of the past - the chaeto should ensure this in the long run. Finally, I got a test kit for Ca and some supplement because it seemed my tank was low: little invert molting, high alkalinity, little noticeable skeletal growth, no coralline growth on the glass, etc - but it turned out to be all in my head. I brought it home and tested up and got between 400 and 450 Ca 3 days in a row (since it was normal, I didn't bother with the more accurate test). I was convinced it could be a problem, but seems like with no SPS and somewhat frequent water changes there really isn't any problems for the tank. I also think the coralline has been growing, but it's been mostly confined to the rocks for the moment... the powerhead is picking some up though. And with that, here's a full stand and full tank shot showing the relatively high density of corals with hopefully lots of space to grow. The rock in the upper left has all new zoa frags - 6 of them - and I'm really looking forward to when that grows out completely. Sorry I haven't been able to make the sand look anything but whitewashed.... not sure why it seems to get so much more exposure with the camera. (yes that's a hermit scaling the back wall of the tank) The custom overflow hard at work with the piece of pipe holding it up at the right height. The pipes coming out the back are angled for a lower profile and the cap with the air holes can be completely removed for cleaning/first fill/whatever. Having the overflow behind the powerhead also means there's more time in the main display when I feed food for the filter feeders.

That's a huge amount of LED power!!!! I hope your light cycle isn't too long and you can shade some of your corals because 160W of even fairly low efficiency LEDs is equivalent to hundreds (probably well over 300W) of watts of PC. If you want to grow SPS on the bottom of your tank, you should now be able to. I've never seen an LED fixture that powerful and those 30W LEDs are insane.