Nano Reef Project - Going Marine!

Jen Pigs Fly

Had a check there, sorry thought your tank was a 60l!!

See how the banggais go, and if changing the rocks around doesn't work bringing them back would probably be for the best. Get an alternative to hpthem instead.

There will always be bickering .... Never went a day without a few scraps :rolleyes:

Sleepy

Found something growing all over my live rock, I'm guessing it's aptasia but wondering if anyone could ID it from the attached pic. The tiny white / pale green "flower" like things?

It's a heavily zoomed in shot with my phone so quality isn't great. They're only a couple of mm in size so far but I'm finding them everywhere in the tank.

él statutorio

Doesn't look like aptasia to me, aptasia tends to look like a brown stringy anemone in my experience.

Hard to tell what it is though.

Sleepy

Yeah, it's not matching any pics I can find of aptasia or anything I'm seeing in hitchiker identification guides on-line.

Will try get better pics tonight.

él statutorio

It might be something nice....maybe even some kind of softie?

Sleepy

They currently look like tiny flowers and quite pretty but as a fishkeeper I've learned to be a pessimist about such things!

Jen Pigs Fly

Do they match asternia stars?

Sleepy

I don't think so, particularly as I've not seen any on the glass, only "upside down" on live rock...

Sleepy

A "fun" weekend...

The pump on my Juwel filter gave up the ghost. Can't really be that surprised since it was secondhand and the tank being a Rekord 96 would indicate that it wasn't that new when I bought it. Then when I was testing the fuse to see if that was the problem I mixed up the plugs and ended up leaving my heater unplugged for 24 hours.

Since I needed a new pump I decided to upgrade it and picked up a 1000lph eccoflow. Expensive damn things (apparently made worse thanks to the Sterling rate atm) but I didn't feel I could wait on an internet order and leave the flow on my tank reduced to just the 1000lph powerhead on it's own.

Noticed the heater being out yesterday evening when fitting the new pump and temps have been slowly coming back up since plugging it back in but certainly not my finest hour as a marine aquarist!

Jen Pigs Fly

Sleepy wrote: »

A "fun" weekend...

The pump on my Juwel filter gave up the ghost. Can't really be that surprised since it was secondhand and the tank being a Rekord 96 would indicate that it wasn't that new when I bought it. Then when I was testing the fuse to see if that was the problem I mixed up the plugs and ended up leaving my heater unplugged for 24 hours.

Since I needed a new pump I decided to upgrade it and picked up a 1000lph eccoflow. Expensive damn things (apparently made worse thanks to the Sterling rate atm) but I didn't feel I could wait on an internet order and leave the flow on my tank reduced to just the 1000lph powerhead on it's own.

Noticed the heater being out yesterday evening when fitting the new pump and temps have been slowly coming back up since plugging it back in but certainly not my finest hour as a marine aquarist!

I once had a heater smash in the tank and didn't notice, I think it was a good few days before I realised I was only running one 200w heater in the tank, was wondering why all my fish were hanging out by the inflow pipe! I was running a 300w and 200w eheims in the tank, I think the water going into the sump was Arond 18 degrees, lost no corals though they just didn't open much.

Luckily it's warmish so the tank will be fine! We've all done it ....

Sleepy

My week of disasters continued last night, while heating up the water for my weekly change I took the heater out for a second to add in calcium and PH buffer only to have it blow as soon as I added it back in.

I decided not to risk using the water in case it had any small particles of glass and I've chucked out the jerry can (I had a spare anyway) as I'd be too nervous to use it again.

My green nephthea seems to be suffering quite badly from the temperature drop but I'm hopeful that it'll recover now that temperatures are back to normal.

Jen Pigs Fly

Sleepy wrote: »

My week of disasters continued last night, while heating up the water for my weekly change I took the heater out for a second to add in calcium and PH buffer only to have it blow as soon as I added it back in.

I decided not to risk using the water in case it had any small particles of glass and I've chucked out the jerry can (I had a spare anyway) as I'd be too nervous to use it again.

My green nephthea seems to be suffering quite badly from the temperature drop but I'm hopeful that it'll recover now that temperatures are back to normal.

I wouldn't worry too much about the tree coal ... Nephathea sp family tend to be fairly hardy. He'll sulk for a week or two and will get very wilted and the. Once the sulk is over he'll be back to normal. I had a sacrophyton coral who would have been very similar, look at him wrong and he sulked for three weeks :pac:

Ahh the joys. I'm setting up a pico/nano reef, depending on size, so I'm looking forward to the stress, heartache and total confusion that's ahead :cool:

Thinking on a 30l glass tank, be perfect for a sps, lps, montis, maybe a chalice, and ricordea set up. I'll be investing in a lot for lighting, dreading that purchase :rolleyes:

Sleepy

Mrs Sleepy set up a nano shrimp tank lately in a 30l, delighted with it so far, the build quality is superb:

http://www.aquael.com.pl/en/products/akwarystyka/kompletne-zestawy-akwariowe-szafki/174-shrimp-set-smart

She's already thinking of converting it to a marine tank, I'd suspect the light it comes with would be fine for soft corals at the very least as it's pretty powerful. Whether it handles the full spectrum, I don't know.

Jen Pigs Fly

Sleepy wrote: »

Mrs Sleepy set up a nano shrimp tank lately in a 30l, delighted with it so far, the build quality is superb:

http://www.aquael.com.pl/en/products/akwarystyka/kompletne-zestawy-akwariowe-szafki/174-shrimp-set-smart

She's already thinking of converting it to a marine tank, I'd suspect the light it comes with would be fine for soft corals at the very least as it's pretty powerful. Whether it handles the full spectrum, I don't know.

30l marine is considered "advanced" level of fish keeping, so little water any tiny parameter spike can cause problems. The picos and nanos are a head wreck even a 500ml of evapourated water can cause salinity changes, ph to change and temp to fluctuate.

As they say the bigger the easier .... I'm only going for a nano because I haven't done one before and I only feel after probably 10 years of keeping marines that I'm ready for the challenge!

A fair few people set up a small tank with softies etc and then realise they can't add any fish to it or can't add the fish they want and give up :pac: I'm hoping this won't happen with me by filling it with temperamental corals who will keep me on my toes with it. Might get a sun coral ..... However at a couple of hundred a pop as well as feeding a few times a day I may need to forget about that :rolleyes:

Try the 30l but don't be shocked when things crash quickly .... I once had a customer who attempted it despite my prior warnings, it took his tank 30 mins to completely crash and loose his livestock because he wasn't monitoring everything to a tee.

You can get computerised monitoring systems, they're a couple of hundred and can link up to your iPad, fairly nifty and I'm out of touch with aquatic products now but at the time a few years ago they were €800-€1500 roughly.... If the price has dropped I might get one!

él statutorio

Nano's aren't as difficult as you think.

I've kept marines for about 5 years before this and various freshwater fish for about 15 years before that.

I've been running a Nano almost a year now. It's an 8 US Gal (30L). it's my 2nd nano (the first was about 50L).

Some thoughts from my experience.

Fill it with live rock, as much as you can get in there, break up live rock and stick it in the pumping chamber at the back of the tank.

Don't put damsels in it. You'll end up with just one, I just have a pair of clowns and a boxer shrimp, a few tiny hermits and assorted snails. The clowns are spawning weekly.

I went with a variety of soft corals (my lighting isn't really up to hard corals), all are thriving, to the point where I'm clipping them back to create room in the tank.

I'll respectfully disagree with xxxJennyxxx in relation to the crashing and difficulty. I found the while process straightforward and hassle free (apart from the damsels). The key is taking your time and adding things super slowly.

The only issue I have now is a slight cyano spike but I believe that might be due to overall temperatures here (circa 30 C) and my inability to keep the temperature down lower (averaging in the high 20's). Not a lot I can do except buy a chiller but I don't have room for one.

All in all I'm happy with it, I'd like a bigger tank but I don't have the room or the money for one currently. I may overhaul it later this year. I'll keep the clowns but I might consider a small anemone as an addition.

Jen Pigs Fly

él statutorio wrote: »

Nano's aren't as difficult as you think.

I've kept marines for about 5 years before this and various freshwater fish for about 15 years before that.

I've been running a Nano almost a year now. It's an 8 US Gal (30L). it's my 2nd nano (the first was about 50L).

Some thoughts from my experience.

Fill it with live rock, as much as you can get in there, break up live rock and stick it in the pumping chamber at the back of the tank.

Don't put damsels in it. You'll end up with just one, I just have a pair of clowns and a boxer shrimp, a few tiny hermits and assorted snails. The clowns are spawning weekly.

I went with a variety of soft corals (my lighting isn't really up to hard corals), all are thriving, to the point where I'm clipping them back to create room in the tank.

I'll respectfully disagree with xxxJennyxxx in relation to the crashing and difficulty. I found the while process straightforward and hassle free (apart from the damsels). The key is taking your time and adding things super slowly.

The only issue I have now is a slight cyano spike but I believe that might be due to overall temperatures here (circa 30 C) and my inability to keep the temperature down lower (averaging in the high 20's). Not a lot I can do except buy a chiller but I don't have room for one.

All in all I'm happy with it, I'd like a bigger tank but I don't have the room or the money for one currently. I may overhaul it later this year. I'll keep the clowns but I might consider a small anemone as an addition.

I ran a 60l years ago and find parameters were impossible to keep control off in the long term. Maybe I'm spoiled by the big tanks but I just found from personal experience that nanos are harder!
Wouldn't put a damsel in any tank haha they're angry little fish, had one wipe out a tank I had, very angry 1 inch little fish :rolleyes: he did well with groupers and triggers in the end!

Check phosphates if you're having a cyano outbreak, I find it's generally due to nutrients over heat. Had a 300l run at 31 degrees without noticing and had zero algae bloom oroblems - diatoms, cyano, etc, as my phosphates were kept at zero through using NoPox. Each tank to their own however and what may work for me may not work me if you get me.

I would just be hesitant if you're only in the game a few months to go into the deep end figuratively and then cause a crash which could be avoided. Last thing we want is something to go wrong and then that gives a bad opinion if the hobby.

My plan for my nano is sps, Lps, gorgonia, chalice - difficult rating corals with dwarf sea horses it'll be fun

Sleepy

A quick phone pic after tonight's water change:

Sleepy

Been a while since I updated and as today is mine and Mrs Sleepy's anniversary, it's pretty much a year since I started down the Marine path. Looking at my first post, the €500 budget I'd originally set myself seems laughable now! I'd say I've over €1,500 sunk into the tank at this stage (along with a nano 30l tank too!).

The tank is absolutely teeming with life, in terms of livestock we now have:

2 x Banggai Cardinals
1 x Jeweled Blenny
1 x Firefish
1 x Bluestripe Pipefish
1 x Fireball Angel
1 x Cleaner Shrimp
1 x Sexy Shrimp
1 x Pompom Crab
2 x Banded Trochus Snails
3 x Hermit Crabs
1 x Large Fanworm

Coral wise we have (most visible in the photo above):

Pink Branching Hammer Coral (doing really well)
Green Nephthea (not doing great at the moment - a very fussy coral IME)
Kenya Tree (doing fine)
Button Polyps (growing well, have doubled the number of polyps or thereabouts)
Metallic Green Star (growing well)
Green Button (just spotted a new head at the weekend!)
Green & Red Zoanthus (finally doing well after a very difficult first few months)
Pink Zoanthus (not doing great at the moment but a recent repositioning seems to be helping)
Green Striped Mushrooms (separating from the original rock and have repositioned in the tank, seem to be multiplying)
Red Mushrooms (multiplying slowly)
Ricordea Mushrooms (visible in the centre of the above pic)

I'm currently battling a massive outbreak of green hair algae and a skimmer that's decided to start pumping out microbubbles again after a thorough cleaning. All parameters look perfect on my test kit but I think I've been leaving the lights on too long (the aimed for 8 becoming 9/10 far too regularly) and possibly adding too much phytoplankton.

I've reduced feeding (of both fish and corals), added Phosphate remover into the filter last week and over the weekend I set the lighting on a timer and picked up a Triton ICP Test kit in Seahorse which I posted off to their lab in Germany over my lunchbreak today.

Why the Nephtea is still sulking is baffling me. I've tried moving it about a few times with no success and, as I said, water parameters seem perfect. If anything, I think my problems may be down to having too much nutrients in the water, or perhaps I have some heavy metals or something like that? Hoping the Triton test might provide some answers (it'd want to do something for €35!).

The nano tank is going absolutely superbly, it's given me far less issues than the larger tank (besides one hitchhiker crab who was promptly dispatched). It's stocked with:

2 x Green Clown Gobys
1 x Fan Worm
1 x Hermit Crab
1 x Banded Trochus Snail

1 x Small Toadstool Coral (moved from the larger tank and doing much better in here)
2 x Green Striped Mushrooms (moved from the larger tank, doing fine)
1 x Cabbage Leather Coral (going fine)
3 x Pulsing Xenia (growing like weeds - this started as 1 small frag!)
A group of beautiful brown mushrooms shot through with turquoise that I can't identify!

Will try and get some updated pics for you over the next few days! I'm still loving having a little piece of reef in the corner of the sitting room and, as we're now looking to buy a house, Mrs Sleepy is having a great laugh at me judging houses based on where I could locate a tank - thinking of perhaps breaking down my Rio 180l and converting it to marine with what I have in this tank instead of simply moving this one!

Marine is a real step up from Freshwater and the ongoing costs are much higher but I'd highly recommend it. I hope this thread has helped show that you don't need a huge budget to start: the nano tank has probably only cost me about €300 or so including the tank and stand and while I've put a fair amount of cash into the main tank at this stage, it's really been a case of €50-€100 once a month or so above my usual 25l of premixed saltwater (€8 a week) rather than shelling out everything up front.

Sleepy

Got my results back from Triton and apparently I have the following issues:

Aluminium: 125.6ug/l
Copper: 7.5ug/l


Calcium is a tad low at 421 mg/l
Potassium is low at 354.8mg/l
Boron is reported as low at 2.18mg/l (never heard of trying to maintain Boron in relation to reefs!)
Sulfur is reported as low at 594.2mg/l (never heard of trying to maintain Sulfur in relation to reef tanks either!)
Zinc is high at 7.16 ug/l
Iodine is way under at 12.55 ug/l


I have calcium at home and suspect the Zinc and Copper have gotten into the tank from me dosing too much of the Fluval Sea Trace Elements. I'll hopefully get this down with water changes but may need to find some way of removing them from the tank? Will have to do some reading on dosing Potassium, Boron and Sulfur though!

Sleepy

So I dosed some Calcium Monday night and picked up some Iodine on my lunch break yesterday which I dosed with last night according to the measures on the bottle.
I also got some Polyfilter which I've added to the filter box to try and remove the Copper and Aluminium.

Trying to find kits for measuring Iodine and Copper at a reasonable price atm. Seahorse want €50 for the pair! :eek:

fungun

polyfilter might be the way to go, i got on to the council a few years back when i had copper in the water and they found a shedding pipe, but it really needed to be fixed at source. Testing these on an ongoing basis is expensive

So the upgrade costs 50-100 extra a month you say? Im interested! Looks lovely btw, great job

fred funk }{

Up to €100 extra per month? Didn't think marine was that expensive.

Sleepy

Like anything in fishkeeping, slow is better than fast so my livestock grew over the course of the year, a coral frag one month, a fish / some additional clean up crew another month so that's what the €50/€100 per month figure would be about, the cost of building the tank up over the year.

My on-going running costs would be:

€8 per week for 25l of pre-mixed saltwater,
€3 per month for R/O for top offs (I buy 25l per week but use 20l of that in my freshwater tanks).
On top of that I dose PH Buffer, Calcium, Iodine and Phyto Plankton for the corals but they last ages so maybe €50 per year for the lot.
There'd be other occasional costs like Polyfilter, Filter Floss, Phosphate remover, test kits etc. so say another €100 per year for that - Polyfilter is expensive!).

So that's about €600 a year in running costs or €50 per month (excluding electricity).

You picked an interesting time to pop up here fungun, we'll be moving house at the start of the summer and the plan is to break down the 180l tank I bought from you all those years ago (which we're still running as a freshwater tank) and convert it to marine with what we've accumulated for this tank!

fungun

Aw glad its still going strong!!

My wife still gives out a little about that, cos she feels i sold one that looked like a piece of furniture and in good nick....and the one I upgraded to is bigger but had a lot of scratches on it and doesnt look as nice. Its a 550l cichlid tank that Im considering for marine...but want to be prepared for what it will take.

Basically Ive stable tanks but at times I let them go a little, and dont want to be in a situation where I **** up a marine tank due to being busy or being away for a few weeks....like its ok getting a neighbour to feed them while Im on holidays but I cant really ask any more than that...

Sleepy

A 550l tank would be huge and larger tanks are always going to be more stable. A sumped tank would be easier to keep stable over short periods of neglect with a powerful protein skimmer, macro algae etc.

I'd be inclined to sell the 550l and put the proceeds towards a 300l sumped tank. If it's something you're prepared to wait a while for, give it a year or so, my guess is that there'll be a flood of second hand marine tanks hitting adverts and donedeal about 6 months after the release of Finding Dory. That might sound flippant but it happened after Finding Nemo!

él statutorio

Sleepy wrote: »

A 550l tank would be huge and larger tanks are always going to be more stable. A sumped tank would be easier to keep stable over short periods of neglect with a powerful protein skimmer, macro algae etc.

I'd be inclined to sell the 550l and put the proceeds towards a 300l sumped tank. If it's something you're prepared to wait a while for, give it a year or so, my guess is that there'll be a flood of second hand marine tanks hitting adverts and donedeal about 6 months after the release of Finding Dory. That might sound flippant but it happened after Finding Nemo!

I'd actually forgotten all about that, that's the time to strike!