DaJMasta's Nano Reef Blog

[DaJMasta]

Just two days shy of a full month, and my next update arrives. During the time past I've spread the rocks out just a bit and rearranged one of the pieces in back so that the tank feels more open and looks larger. I've done one water change of about a gallon and a half and the ATO has been working flawlessly.... probably pumping close to 2 gallons already since the installation. The CUC has brought it's A-Game to the tank and has cleaned up a lot of the hair algae, though I certainly see some Bryopsis now, which will call for my intervention. All of my existing corals have grown, the red mushroom has expanded slightly and flattened out a bit, the sea whip is now covered in little polyps with their filter feeder tentacles waving in the current, and almost all of the zoas have opened, with the majority of them larger than when they entered the tank and them having a firm anchoring in the sand. I bought a Banded Coral Shrimp at Aquatek and though he tends to stay on one side of the tank and doesn't completely get along with peppeh, he seems to be doing quite well. The macroalgae has also grown considerably since the last update.... but the time had come for some manual removal.

Today I made another few additions and changes. I manually removed a fair bit of algae: hair, bryopsis, and macro alike, cleaning up the look of the tank considerably and doing a little nutrient export in the process. I expect to have to do this again before the tank really reaches a pristine condition, even the macro removal, but this was a step in the right direction and will hopefully concentrate the CUC's efforts on the remaining algae. I also picked up a couple of corals from a member [email protected], which I got to acclimating and got placed in short order and are already mostly opened up, and have a lot more diversity in my corals now. I got a small two heads of frogspawn mounted towards the back, I got a rock with star polyps, a red and green zoa polyp variety, and a blue mushroom, and a handful of other mushrooms he had sitting around the tank. Not only was the frogspawn already opening in the acclimation bucket, but within 3 hours of dropping them in the tank the mushrooms had begun to conform to their new resting places, the zoa polyps had partially or fully opened, and both heads of the frogspawn were showing probably half of their full size. I can't wait to see them all in a couple of days when everything has really settled in. Peppeh, as usual, lived up to his name and went nuts with the new additions, being sure to poke at everything at least once... and decided that all the mushrooms needed to be rotated after the lights were out, but seems to have accepted his new non-motile tankmates. The same cannot be said for Bandie though (Bandie McShrimp is the Banded Coral Shrimp), who grabbed one of Peppeh's whiskers with his claw at one point - perhaps a disciplining measure like pulling someone by the ear.

There was a sponge that came attached to one of the zoa bits that came from sealifeinc which apparently didn't make the trip. I believe this is why the bag smelled somewhat rank, but within a couple of days a portion of the sponge was gray and it has since almost dissolved away (though some of it is properly colored and still there). I also found a copepod of some sort scooting around the tank at night.... they are fast little suckers.... I think there's another but the one I found I caught and removed, while they could be ok... they've got a fairly bad hitchhiker reputation and I figured it was best taken out. I think the sponge decaying dropped a little ammonia into the tank, my test tonight measured something above zero (but less than .25 ppm), but the parameters seem stable enough... especially considering the last water change was 50/50 with the new and old salts and there was a few cold days where the draft from the window kept the tank a couple degrees below optimum.

Anyways, a picture is worth well over a thousand words, and I think this picture shows that the tank is on the up-and-up.

[DaJMasta]

My 7.5G nano tank, the subject of this series of ramblings, is a month old. I bought some new corals from a member just a few short days ago and am getting in on a group buy early this coming week, so I do not have any new additions to celebrate with, but I want to show you how far this tank has come and why it's astounded me over the last month. The ideal tank is still months away - there's still some algae, there's only a few corals, some of the support system for the reef is still in a building stage and so on - but one month's time has really brought about a lot of growth and a lot of good.

So the night of setting up the tank on the 6th of January looked like this:

By the fourth day, I had a tank stand and could finally fill the tank all the way, but it hadn't changed a whole lot:

With one week elapsed, the cycle was essentially finished and the diatoms had come out to play:

On the 11th day, my initial CUC was in place, the refugium had been built, and plants had started to sprout:

And at two weeks of age, the tank showed it's first plume of green hair algae, a problem still being fought off:

The algae got thicker and the mods to the tank continued, but the super CUC had just arrived along with my first purchased corals when the weeks ticked past three:

On this day, the tank's one month anniversary, the algae problem has significantly diminished (this is only 1.5 weeks from the last picture), I did some manual removal of bryposis and macro, and the most recently added corals are beginning to show their true colors. A splendid sight to see in just a week, but there is still much to be done.

And as an interesting note, you can see all 3 large inverts in this shot. Peppeh in the upper right under the powerhead, Bandie hiding behind the red condo tunicate, and Little Brittle wedged in next to the heater.

So what's next? Well some of the mushrooms I got a few days ago haven't yet taken hold yet, though some have, and I'm trying to encourage them to root to shells in the sand under them in lieu of rocks with proper water flow. I'll have a couple of new corals - an acan frag and a couple polyps of a purple zoa - coming early next week, and I'm going to begin the bryopsis treatment reported to work most often next week as well, so I'll be picking up some Kent Tech-M and a magnesium test kit. In the mean time I'm going to let the CUC continue it's awesome work cleaning up the algae, though it's probably only just over half done, and will probably start feeding a meatier coral food with the new corals - right now it's just been pellets for the shrimp once a week or so and phyto every other day.

Thanks for watching

[DaJMasta]

The tank has passed it's 5 week birthday and has had a few great new additions in terms of corals. I got in on a second group buy with Vivid Aquariums (Thanks Marc!) and picked up a polyp of Mohawk zoas and a frag of red and green blastos. I got a pair of acan frags from another member (Thanks GrimReefer!) which came with a couple of pulsing xenia as a bonus. Not only have the acans opened up a bit since their addition to the tank a mere 3 hours ago, but the xenia was pulsing in the acclimation bucket and with just a little bit of super glue seems to be running at full tilt in it's new home. Combine that with the zoa/star polyp rock, the frogspawn, and the mushrooms from the week before (Thanks Nadeem!) as well as the initial sealifeinc order.... and even the two hitchhiker corals.... and I'm starting to get a healthy amount of diversity in the system. I'd like to eventually get a couple of ricordea (for the rock all the way to the left), at least one more type of zoa, and maybe another lps or softie of some sort.... an acan, a dendro, goniopora, maybe even a brain... but those will all come later. I would consider zoas or rics in the coming weeks, but I want/need to let the stuff I have grow out a bit before I make any more purchases. My wallet will also thank me on that one.

My algae problem is gradually diminishing. I've manually removed a good deal of macro which I cleared mainly for space for corals, I've even manually removed some of the microalgae, but the CUC has been doing a steady job to clean off everything. I've got a bit of green film algae appearing now, but it's much less magnitude than the GHA outbreak of a few weeks back and is probably a partial result of all the GHA being eaten. What I find most interesting is the tunicate growth..... I have them everywhere. White, orange, green, colonies, individuals, it's all there and they're really neat. Other than that, there's enough nuisance algae to look the whole thing look a bit busier than I'd like, but given time I don't think that will be too much of an issue.

Some random issues i've had:

A couple more GFCI trips. These ones not after working in the tank... actually both during a rain storm outside...... The computer on the same circuit never seems to have a problem, but it could be an issue. I'm conisdering getting a UPS in place of a GFCI, which would also give me some power outage protection to keep my little tank from getting too cold.

What to feed corals. I have sinking pellets for the shrimp (maybe twice a week, this is probably too often), and I had freeze dried phyto for the filter feeders and such (every other day at the highest frequency), but I ended up getting frozen rotifers. I haven't used them enough to really see results (put in 1/4 of a block today as my first feeding) but my hope is that a bit meatier food will promote growth and give a little variety in their diet.

ATO timeout. The aqualifter pump only pumps at this height a few drops per second, so one day I came home to find my water level maybe 1/8" of an inch from where the ATO kept it at and the ATO marked as on but not pumping. I deduced after restarting it a couple times that it was hitting a failsafe pump time limit meant to keep your tank from overflowing in case of a faulty sensor - a useful feature - but with a pump that pumps so little, the default setting for how long to wait didn't actually do enough to satisfy the sensor. So I opened up the back of the ATO box and adjusted the potentiometer to a bit more than 2x the time - hasn't had a problem since.

Red mushroom. I ordered a red mushroom with my sealifeinc shipment weeks ago, and while it hasn't discolored or anything, it also has grown very little and goes underappreciated in the area under the power head. I figured it would do better with more light and moved it up to the rock just below the frogspawn, I look forward to growth similar to the other mushrooms, which has been really pretty impressive in some cases.

Magfloat cleaner. I'm torn. I like the idea of the magfloat, and it is easy to use and store.... but it just doesn't give me the results I've been hoping for. I have a couple areas of the tank it can't easily get to (my bad, okay), it sort of lurches along making a lot of disturbance in the water and splashing when near the top of the tank, and it doesn't clean that well.... I have to go over a given area maybe a dozen times sometimes to get all of the film off. I ended up getting a standard algae scraper today and it worked just great, so I may end up dropping the magfloat. It would be great if I couldn't reach in the tank or something, but that simply isn't the case with a 7.5G nano.

Problems and plans aside, the tank is starting to look pretty nice. Would love for the rocks to be the cleaner and the colors/quantities of coral to be better, but I have time.

Also I should get the tripod out and stop taking with flash pictures. Even after some color and gamma corrections in software, I think it looks a little cleaner and crisper in person.... maybe I need to figure out what the secret to the between macro and low auto focus on the camera is, both come out slightly fuzzy. Oh well, old point and shoot, I don't have too high hopes for it

[DaJMasta]

Well I have a decent start up reef going, but also now have a source of income. Invariably, that means I have the itch to upgrade (despite going for only about a month and a half now). Yet, I think the upgrades will be substantially beneficial and will be done in a smart manner. I'm focusing on two things, an RO/DI system and a sump.

I ordered the RO/DI unit on saturday night after weeks of contemplating it. You rarely find a single piece of equipment that so many people in a hobby all swear by, and for us RO/DI is it. Only a day later, I noticed a bit of a green film algae bloom on the front glass and a little bit more length in the algae growing on the rocks.... this was just a bit over 24 hours from a 20% or so water change using treated tap water, though the algae growth during the week before the change had been fairly minimal. What ultimately convinced me to go with RO/DI was the math though:

My city tap water regularly tests in at about 165ppm TDS. My water conditioner is added to water at something like 250-500mg per liter. So even if it's totally inert, nontoxic, and unusable to algae, that's .4-.7 or so grams of other stuff for every liter of water added to my tank. My ATO system goes through 8-10L a week, resulting in probably more than 5 grams of 'stuff' in the water that is added to the tank every week and which does not dissolve. By keeping up with your water changes, it does not just completely keep adding up, but this is still a significant amount of stuff you didn't mean to have in your reef.

Since the salt mix gives a fairly good representation of good water, and there is food added as well as supplements as needed, you can maintain the proper environment without any of the misc elements that tap water changes can offer.

I ended up going through ebay, mainly because it was cheap, but I picked up a 6 stage RO/DI with dual carbon (Austin city water uses chloramines), and a 150GPD membrane - rated for 1.1-1.5:1 waste water:product water production. Even if it doesn't make that, and I don't totally expect it to, I figured it was cheaper than going with a similarly priced system and adding a permeate pump to get a similar ratio. In the end it was $115 minus 8% bing cashback, a goooood deal so long as it works well.

And the sump. I had been considering a sump and drilling the tank even before it was set up, but because of the cost and the plumbing risks and blah blah blah, I never ended up doing it. After seeing a few working all-PVC hang-on overflows (meaning I don't have to pay the $50 or more for an overflow box), and with a fair bit of clutter gathering along the back of the tank, I figured a sump would make for a fun and useful project. Not only would it give me a 50% or so boost to total tank volume, but it gives me more tank to play with, something new to build, and a place to hide most of the unsightly bits of the tank. So if all goes as planned, it should be:

5 gallon glass aquarium, 3 baffle bubble trap for separating the fuge and return section

all PVC homemade overflow and return pipes sized in 1/2" because it's a nano

deep sand bed (maybe), chaeto, mangroves, and some area to keep specimens out of the main tank as needed

dual 50W heaters (one has trouble keeping the tank temp correct below 70F room temp, without the sump, and redundancy could be useful in the long run)

150GPH return pump (will be less at the 2'+ it has to raise the water)

ATO mounted in the sump

5W LED fuge light, possibly on reverse cycle with the main tank, but I don't think pH stability is a big problem

Now the best part of this is the price:

Light: $28

Pump: $19

Heater 2: $20

Timer 2: $8

Baffles: $8

PVC parts and tubing: $22

5 gallon tank: hopefully cheap

For a total of less than $150 with some stocking. Sweeeeeet. I will be posting something on the sump's construction when it has been constructed. I've got the PVC overflow bits dry fitted and measured out, but I have yet to buy the tank and am waiting for some parts to arrive still. In the next week I should have it at least tested if not part of the tank. If the RO system gets delayed then this does as well though, I'm not going to fill it with treated tap water now that I've seen proof of it's algae inducing properties

Finally, my GFCI has been giving me random trips again. I really don't think it's a problem with the parts, and I can no longer link its tripping to weather, people around, work in the tank, etc. So I'm going to buy another and hope that the second works properly. I've heard of people getting a bad one and replacing it to be fixed, so I'm going to hope for that but save the packaging for a return if it comes to it. I was considering a UPS as well, but there's no need for that at the moment if I can't even get the GFCI situation straightened out.

So it will be an expensive week for the reef, but hopefully one which will prevent problems down the line. This also means if anyone is looking for an AC70 modded into a fuge, I may be able to hook you up

[+mcallahan]

the best part of owning your own RO/DI is that you don't have to go to the LFS and get tempting by everything you see = more money in your pocket!

[DaJMasta]

The hardware shuffle has commenced and there's a lot of change for it. The RO/DI unit arrived on thursday of last week and was hooked up friday for it's first use. Since then there has been virtually no film algae growth and no film on the surface of the water. 'Nuff said.

The sump has been constructed, it took two tries as I cracked the first tank trying to take off the top rim - didn't bother the second time. It's a basic design with a small chamber for the water intake, a fuge and return chamber, and a pair of baffles as a basic bubble trap - no need for anything fancy because it's a low flow sump with no skimmer. There's a small leak in the back side of the first baffle, but I could really care less.

When I tested out the plumbing I found a few interesting things out though:

The return pipe is too resistant with all those elbows - not a problem for flow but it kills the venturi effect which would give you the self priming U tube.

Even without it being self priming, the U tube will hold it's own siphon quite well.

The T going to the sump on the overflow is located too high. Basically, it's in a good place for the water level, but when you factor in the height of the flow in the pipe, the pump can only be run significantly turned down for the overflow to be able to take all of the water and return it.

The siphon break hole in the return pipe is too low - not a huge problem but it means the water level drops almost a full inch when it shuts off.

Now all problems aside, the system does work. Since all of the PVC parts cost $22 (and I still have a couple of elbows and plenty of 1/2" pipe), I'm just going to build a new one and switch it out on thursday. The new one will include such features as:

Removing the bottom elbow in the return line to decrease the resistance slightly, also shortening the pipe as it is needlessly long. The siphon break hole will actually be 2 1/8" holes instead of one and they will be drilled into the base of the top downward facing elbow, to keep it from draining too much water and to keep them from getting blocked.

The overflow will be quite similar, but the T going to the sump will be lower in height overall, this may end up being entirely below the water line as some are before, the size of the pipe is more of a flow constraint than I had expected at 1/2", so it may be more important for restriction's sake to just drop the height of the edge below the final water line. I also may change the teeth on the skimmer intake.... not sure yet, but something taller to really break the surface would be nice.

That should let me crank up the flow and keep the water height at a much more comfortable level. Now that I think about it, it may even be worth looking at a larger return pipe - 3/4"

Other additions include:

3 pounds of live rock to the sump for extra filtration

The extra sand from the original fill to fill out the sump sand bed

A blue backing sheet to the main tank for looks - though it looks like there's some bubbles there..... we'll see how it looks when I'm home long enough to see it under the tank lights

Other than that, I'm waiting on the fuge light still and sealifeinc had ricordea in stock.... so I splurged and am expecting something wednesday

The sump and associated plumbing:

The full stand with sump and dangerously high water level Yes, some water will be removed from the sump so the ATO can properly function without the salinity skyrocketing first.

[+KeeperOfTheZoo]

I built a couple PVC overflows for my tank. One for the display and one from my fuge to my sump. After about 4 months of use I'm having issues with both of them loosing siphon (the smaller one in my fuge more so than the big one in my tank). They worked perfectly at first, then just started failing and I'm not sure why! I suspect they need to be cleaned but the way mine are installed I can not easily remove either of them to clean them. I'm pitching them and getting a drilled sump/fuge and a standard overflow box for the main tank. I think if I had designed the one for the display to be taken off and cleaned that might have solved its problem. Yes, the flow is MUCH lower than advertised on the sites promoting building your own overflow.

I drilled a small hole in the top of the overflow that carries water were it hangs over the edge of the tank then siliconed an air check valve in place. This lets you hook up airline tubing and suck out the air to start the siphon (which I've been having to do a lot of lately). You could also hook an aqualifter type pump up that way to suck air out if loss of siphon down the road becomes a problem. I had thought about doing that but I need more flow anyway so not gonna bother.

Good work on your tank! Are you going to be at the Feb meeting? I'm about to have an empty 20g tank that I'm considering turning into a nano but I've read so much about how hard the nanos are to run that I'm a little scared to try it! Would love to chit chat about your tank.

Liz

[DaJMasta]

I've heard of people having similar issues, but I'm giving it another shot. In the end the rebuilt version uses a 1/2" return and a 3/4" overflow, but I also removed the priming adapter.... I've heard that because it's another joint to seal and it's typically weaker than a PVC-PVC bond, especially using silicone designed to bond to glass, that it's often the cause of the increased bubbles in the U tube. So this time around I went with a solid U tube and stuck some airline tubing in to get it started (a pain to do with the U for the intake, but folding the end of the airline tubing to unfold at the first elbow up will get it done pretty well) and manually primed it. I think I'm going to drill another hole in the intake elbow, just because there's enough flow/suction to add a few more air bubbles each time the system shuts down, and there's not enough flow from the return pump to flush out these bubbles on it's own, but I think a second hole (same design as my AC70 fuge intake mod) will keep the bubbles from collecting. The larger overflow than return thing is working really well, though because the flow isn't really high, there is some air in the sump hose it does make a little noise.

I won't be at the meeting (little far to bike to, especially on my first and only day off this week), but I don't think nanos are as daunting as they've been made out to be. You have to have your research done and you have to be able to keep up with your water changes and really watch for things that indicate changes for the worse, but this is my first saltwater tank and I think it's been going just fine. Nanos are really quick to cycle because you can do a lot of water changes without too much effort (my tank cycled in about a week and a half), though your stocking options are quite limited. I think at some point my coral banded shrimp will be way too big for this tank, and while I can probably still add 1 fish, it may only be thanks to the extra volume of the sump. If you're looking for nano advice and ideas, I'd recommend nano-reef.com. Lots of tanks, DIY projects, stocking ideas, etc... even if the people aren't as nice as around here sometimes

I'll have another post in a day or two with details of the new and improved overflow, the pods growing in the sump (and there's a lot already), and the new additions (mithrax crabs, ricordea, one more kind of zoa).

[DaJMasta]

It's been a while since the last update and a fair bit has happened, though there's also been a lot of just letting the reef run itself. Last week in particular left me with very little time to attend to the reef, though it has managed pretty well on it's own. The sump fuge light arrived today (so nothing has had time to really grow) but I figured it would make a good progress shot. The light is a cheapy 21 LED fixture off ebay - the clamp wouldn't fit on the rimmed tank, so I velcroed it to the bottom of the main display stand base.

Towards the end of last week I rebuilt the overflow pipes to be a 1/2" return with a ball valve built in and a 3/4" overflow without a priming attachment. This setup has worked great (once I figured out how to get the airline tube in to prime it), but almost worked too well initially. The move to 3/4" tubing brought a lot more flow and the lowered height of the T joint brought more potential for suction - while the overflow can easily handle more than the pump can put out, when the pump goes off it would suck in enough water in the overflow before the suction was broken that it sucked in air and killed the weir. I started drilling 1/8" holes in the back of the overflow pipe to help, and they did improve it, but they didn't go far enough so that if I were to loose power for long enough for the tank level to drop to the normal off level, the weir wouldn't quite be able to keep up with the pump when it came back on. I've since drilled many more holes, including a few towards the bottom of the lower elbows, and this has improved, but i'd still like to check it a few more times to be sure.

Just before the install of the new overflow however, my second sea life inc package arrived crammed with goodies. I had ordered a mithrax crab because I like crabs and he was supposed to help with the algae problem - they sent a second as a freebie. I also ordered some blue zoas (send more polyps as freebies), 3 ricordea, a smaller serpent starfish, and a different kind of snail to diversify. While the zoas took a little while to open fully, all of the new stuff is doing well in the tank. One ricordea didn't take the glue well and couldn't be balanced on anything or packed into a crack, but the others seem to be doing better. The green ric was in amazingly good condition and was on a rock which dropped into a hole in the live rock quite nicely, and it was fully open, colored, and growing from the start of the second day. The mithrax crabs are entertaining little buggers - they're quick and somewhat timid, but at the same time they're at work pretty much all day so I see them pretty often. I've observed them sqeezing corals (ricordea, zoas), but after a couple mild pinches they seem to have determined that corals aren't food and left them be. I know people are always wary about crabs, so I've been keeping tabs on them, but they seem to be going fine in the tank.

Growth from previous additions is all good. The Mohawks have a couple new budding polyps and the largest polyp is quite impressive, the xenia has expanded and pulses all the time, the GSP and palys on the rock in the center have thickened and colored up a bit - I think there's more polyps but to be honest I don't know how many were there and can't really tell if there's more or they're just bigger. The acans have healed a couple of rings fully and have the inner section of the ring and feeder tentacles healed up well, the frogspawn is getting larger all the time, the red mushroom which was without a real base for a while has unfurled and expanded at least 1.5x its original size. The blastos have gotten a bit bigger, but only two days ago an acan was pushed by a hermit into one of the heads..... the acan won.... so there's a little bit of skeleton showing on one of the three heads of the blastos - though the largest head almost looks like it's trying to split.... Finally, the gorgonian had some problems with it's lower portion, probably due to lower flow, initial algae interference, not really sure - but the higher parts that are clearly alive have great polyp extension and size, so I'm hoping for the best.

The algae problem is gradually receding. Growth has essentially halted or been cut into tiny pieces by the switch to RO/DI and the macro algae removal done earlier in the week is starting to give the reef a cleaner look. It's still there and it is still gradually growing, but thanks to the massive CUC and the better water quality, I have a feeling the problem is a thing of the past and this is the decline. The bryopsis is still present though, never did get the test kit and tech m a few weeks ago, but that will be coming soon because it's good to get it under control before it spreads. I've tansferred some of the hitchhiker algae to the sump where it lived in a week or so of darkness, hopefully as a nutrient vacuum and export method, I may try to get some chaeto if this stuff doesn't cut it though.

After 2 days shy of 2 months, all is well in the land of reef.

FTS:

The mohawk frag complete with coralline growth (this was part of the last vivid order.... that was fast!) along with peppeh and some of my original green zoas:

Here's a shot of the GSP and paly rock I picked up locally about a month ago (also showing the gorgonian some xenia, little brittle)

And the frogspawn picked up at the very same time (as well as the original red shroom):

Then a mithrax crab holding on to the bottom of my iconic tunicate (now covered in smaller green tunicates) and some blurry rics in the foreground.

[richie reef]

For a sump you can always get pieces of glass cut at one of the local Binswanger's and use the correct type of silicone and you will have a nice custom sump and 1/4 of the cost.

[Brooks]

Looking good! Your algae is pretty much gone!

[DaJMasta]

Well thanks to the tank used for the sump being a standard and cheap size, it ended up being $16 something including tax. While I could see plate glass and silicone would be 1/4 or less of the cost of one of those commercial acrylic sumps, I doubt it's cheaper than my 5.5G AGA conversion

[DaJMasta]

On the day of my tank's two month anniversary I headed over to aquatek with a goal in mind: buy some kent tech m and a magnesium test kit to kill my bit of bryopsis, but also to take a gander at what they had for corals. And gander I did.

I ended up walking out with a maze brain coral after considering an interesting looking orange zoanthid rock and a white and green favia in the same price range. I decided the brain was a good option because: I thought I was cool, it isn't too hard to care for, and it's tall so it would give my aquascape some much needed height. I brought it home and got it acclimated pretty quickly, since then it seems to be happy, with massive more than 2 inch sweepers at night for the last two nights, and has gotten a tiny bit more color and has filled in a small injured area.

The bryopsis treatment is also well on its way, I'm 3 days in and my magnesium is rising, though it's still at about 1200 because it was a bit low before. I hope to get this problem taken care of in a couple of weeks, then use the magnesium only supplementally if need be.

Of course the new coral demanded a rescaping, and armed with some more superglue I went to work. I managed to get most of the zoas glued to something and got the acans and frogspawn to really stick in place. It may not look perfect now, but I think they all have some room to grow and shouldn't be fighting with each other. Of course I didn't expect the length of the brain's sweepers to be so long, so last night one of them hit a paly and the whole room and tank smelled a bit funny (paly toxin at work!!). It didn't seem to harm any livestock, and after moving the paly/gsp rock and the brain a little farther apart I have broken it up for now, that wasn't what I was hoping for and it gave me a temporary new concern - will this nuke my tank?

I have since moved things a bit more with more emphasis on separating the faster growing and meaner corals from the friendlier ones, everything should have a bit of space before I have to start fragging or rearranging. I've also decided that this tank will have no fish. Fish are cool, don't get me wrong, but I also like inverts and I really like where this tank is going in terms of coral and invert stocking. I'm probably pretty close to the maximum amount of stuff you'd want to put in a tank which will still grow, but that's just fine with me.

Since the tank is two months old and I have a fancy new coral, I've included a higher resolution FTS as well as one which labels the corals and some of the critters i've got for those of you curious about it.

I plan on getting some nassarius snails, another variety of zoa, an orange ric to complete the ricordea area, and probably a filter feeding crab (got lots of inverts, but they do seem to be playing nice and he won't go eating corals or other crabs at the very least). I also want to remake the overflow one last time. This one works fine, but the T joint is a little too low to keep the U tube full when shut down = power outage flood potential. For the next variant, I'll move up the T between 1/4 and 1/2", I'll not glue the vent cap to the drain pipe for easier maintenance and priming, and i'll angle the T so it's not perpendicular but at another angle with the back of the tank, this should reduce the kinking tendency of my flexible line to the sump somewhat, though it's not a problem in it's current state.

[Brooks]

Your tank is really progressing, and just so you know, I LOVE reading your blog!

Keep up the amazing work!

[JamesL]

Very nice looking! You have some great tentacle extension on that maze brain (and your acans too).

[+Lamont]

This is a nice set up! i think it really looks like the ocean. how do you keep your sand bed so clean? the blasto really stands out.

[DaJMasta]

Thanks! Funny about the sand thing though, I definitely think mine is dirty, I think the camera flash bleached it out a bit for me. I do have a substantial clean up crew considering the size of the tank - which I'll be adding some more nassarius snails to tomorrow.

I sort of didn't know what to expect from the blasto, but since I've gotten it under any light it looks sort of UV reactive red. I've seen some pictures of orange and green blastos that look like these and they look just as sweet!

[DaJMasta]

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.

[DaJMasta]

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.

[+lewk]

My maze has some huge sweepers as well. Killed a few heads of caulastrea recently.

[+Lamont]

I kind of went through the same thing. i bought a small frag of Hollywood Stunner Chalice an the tentacles were about 4-5 inches long. The frag was only 1 and a half inches. that amazed me!

[DaJMasta]

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?

[DaJMasta]

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.....

[Salty Jeff]

How about Sherlock Holmeslice? He looks crafty AND like a fish who would enjoy pizza.

[DaJMasta]

A lot has happened. I've been meaning to post something on the tank more than once before, but I always got swept up in something else or distracted or just plain forgot. I'll give you a run down since the last update:

Green zoas got zoa pox. Lost a few, got Furan2 and did the dip as prescribed on Zoaid (though I used a slightly stronger formula by adding less tank water). It cleaned up the pox right good, but then I had fewer of the greens.

Moved some greens and the gorgonian to the new (now not so much) 24G tank.

Added a neon goby and some chestnut turbo snails. The tank looked like this:

Moved to a new apartment: breaking down both tanks and putting the critters in buckets, driving them over one at a time after hauling the tank and sandbed around on a sheet of plywood, adding everything back in with relatively little new seawater. In the process of the move I restarted the modded AC70 as a fuge and turned the 5.5G sump into a sort of quarantine/fallow tank. The aquascape was completely redone, and I think it looks better.

Then I went out of town for nearly a month. I left food and checkup directions with a friend to watch over the tanks. Both got an extra large ATO bucket and a fresh waterchange, but the time away made me nervous.

Got back after nearly a month, I was greeted with a couple of nearly softball sized macros of dictyota - the invasive type which came with the rocks and I had been picking off bit by bit. Despite that however, the tank looked pretty good. The mohawks were a bit bleached, but all of the corals made it. It seems that I lost Hector - he was looking a little sickly in the weeks leading up to the move and I left only a few days after moving the tanks. I had hoped that the extra feeding regimen would be enough to keep him happy, but I haven't seen him since I left in june. The other tank had a wall full of green algae, but the SPS had actually colored up quite a bit despite the less than ideal water quality... however the geometric pygmy hawk - a shy little orange fish maybe an inch and a quarter long - which I hadn't seen for a few weeks before the move, which I rediscovered in a hole in the rock while moving, and which I thought may have been bullied by the saddled blenny in the tank..... was in one of the back chambers of the 24G. So I promptly moved him to this tank and he seems to be quite a bit happier. I also moved the brain coral to the 24G, I just couldn't find a space in this tank where it could happily grow without hurting things or rolling over. The tank, after moving over the fish and pulling out a solid pint worth of macro, looked like this:

With all that macro still hanging out though, I decided I would do a 'three days of darkness' style treatment... though it lasted 4 full days. I covered the whole thing with towels... when the time was up I moved some corals around and let everything open up, and as of a couple days ago the tank looked like this:

Not the cleanest of layouts, but certainly very alive. The tank has had a bit of a flatworm problem for a while now (look at the blue mushroom up front), but it's never gotten to the point that it's excessively invasive. I've been considering dealing with it somehow, but basically neither tank can properly contain a biological solution like a six line wrasse (both are open topped) and I think nuking it with FWE is a bit overkill for what amounts to some unsightly brown spots on certain corals.

Anyways, I've got some plans for the next couple of weeks. My birthday is coming up and I plan on treating myself to some new frags and critters.... mostly for the 24G which looks fairly sparse now, but I'm hoping to get some nice bright zoas to add to my rapidly expanding collection in this tank. I may get something like a twinspot blenny for this tank, as they're rather small and herbivores, but I'm still undecided. I think the water quality for this tank is good for the stuff in it now, but the 24G with some SPS has made it clear to me that for SPS with fish I need a skimmer - so I've got a little AquariumLife Mini Skimmer 115 coming for use in one of the back chambers. Hopefully that will keep the SPS a bit happier between water changes, the chaeto in the fuge area doesn't seem to want to keep up the pace with the nitrates and they seem to hover a bit above 10. I've noticed that after a large water change I see a fair bit more SPS polyp extension though, so it needs to be done.

That's all for now. Maybe next time I'll finally introduce you to the 24G. It looks great to me, given the age and the fact that I started with seed rubble and dry rock and all that, but it looks sparse and dead in all my photos. Maybe the skimmer and another fish or frag or something will do. Oh and I definitely need a new camera.....