minisea
New Member
Marika's hobby nano tank
Disclaimer: first tank, no saltwater or even freshwater experience here, possibly a lot of newbie mistakes. Suggestions or advice are welcome.
My wife (Marika) wanted something interesting to look at in the mornings while booting up mentally and waiting for the coffee to brew. Two colleagues of hers keep small, simple, filterless tanks in the office at work (one mostly macroalgae and soft corals, the other with soft corals only), which we really like. Decided to make our own tank at home. I researched for a few weeks then we took the plunge and set up our tank. I kinda took over and did the setup, and I'm doing the research and maintenance, but we both enjoy the tank.
The starting point was that we set up a small tank on the counter between our kitchen and living room. It will be without any filtration, just live rock, a lamp, a heater, and a wavemaker. Originally we thought of just keeping whatever grows out of the live rock and not stocking anything else (spoiler: couldn't resist buying stuff...). While I was doing my research for 3-4 weeks, the best guide I could find was by Kirk A. Janowiak in the form of a Quora answer (https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-run-a-reef-aquarium-with-just-live-rock-and-powerheads). I really liked the info in this post, where the main message was to do everything real ssssllloooowwww.
At his point, the plan was to set up a tank with a thin sandbed and 1/3 or 1/4 of the final live rock quantity, let it run, and add a further 2-3 batches of live rock in the course of about 6 months (Spoiler: I was not that patient...) It was much later that I found the thread by @brandon429 about skip cycle setups: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/a...kip-cycle-instant-reefs-no-bottle-bac.794146/).
Anyway, we ordered a simple custom tank (45X45X35 cm, 17,7"X17.7"X13,7") from 6mm glass from a local guy. The volume is about 70l/18.5g.
The tank was set up on 28/11/2023 with just 3 liters of DUPLA Marin Reef Ground (2-3 mm course aragonite sand) well rinsed and 2g of saltwater. (I'm using the Blue Treasure SPS salt since the beginning). The next day, 4 kg of Indonesian live rock was received and put in the tank. This batch of live rock was recieved about 4 weeks after importing by the distributor. The shipping of live rock took 2 days in pretty cold weather, but it was fine. 4 pieces of rock were just laid on the bottom of the tank. Installed a 50W heater set at 25.5C/78F, a cheap SOBO WP-50M wavemaker, and a Popbloom 16 Shannon light. I let the tank run without lights for 2 weeks. I was testing ammonia and nitrate every 2-3 days. I screwed up some ammonia tests that showed higher than real ammonia levels, which resulted in a few emergency water changes; I think the cycling was pretty instant: the highest ammonia I measured was 0.5 mg/l, and on day 7, I measured 0. In the next month, ammonia was about 0, and nitrate was around 10 mg/l. I saw bristleworms, feather duster worms, and a small grey blob that later turned out to be a tiny gorilla crab. On 20/12/2023, another 6 kg of Indonesian live rock arrived (again, shipped in pretty cold weather). This batch was shipped soon after importing and seemed to have more crabs and worms, some of which did not survive shipping. These rocks, however, had less coraline. Change of plan: the tank seemed pretty full with all the 10 kg of rock, so I decided to skip further additions. In the coming days, ammonia went up to 2 mg/l but went down to 0 in a week. The next month and a half was spent checking the critters that emerged from the live rock: bristleworms, peanut worms, Colonista snails, some macroalgae, etc.
Since the beginning, I have experienced some brown hair algae (I'm not sure about the ID), film algae, diatoms, and some green hair algae. None of these were overwhelming. During this time, I kept doing 10-30% weekly water changes.
Two Trochus snails purchased from the LFS were added on 5/1/2024. They definitely had stuff to munch on.
To be continued ...
Disclaimer: first tank, no saltwater or even freshwater experience here, possibly a lot of newbie mistakes. Suggestions or advice are welcome.
My wife (Marika) wanted something interesting to look at in the mornings while booting up mentally and waiting for the coffee to brew. Two colleagues of hers keep small, simple, filterless tanks in the office at work (one mostly macroalgae and soft corals, the other with soft corals only), which we really like. Decided to make our own tank at home. I researched for a few weeks then we took the plunge and set up our tank. I kinda took over and did the setup, and I'm doing the research and maintenance, but we both enjoy the tank.
The starting point was that we set up a small tank on the counter between our kitchen and living room. It will be without any filtration, just live rock, a lamp, a heater, and a wavemaker. Originally we thought of just keeping whatever grows out of the live rock and not stocking anything else (spoiler: couldn't resist buying stuff...). While I was doing my research for 3-4 weeks, the best guide I could find was by Kirk A. Janowiak in the form of a Quora answer (https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-run-a-reef-aquarium-with-just-live-rock-and-powerheads). I really liked the info in this post, where the main message was to do everything real ssssllloooowwww.
At his point, the plan was to set up a tank with a thin sandbed and 1/3 or 1/4 of the final live rock quantity, let it run, and add a further 2-3 batches of live rock in the course of about 6 months (Spoiler: I was not that patient...) It was much later that I found the thread by @brandon429 about skip cycle setups: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/a...kip-cycle-instant-reefs-no-bottle-bac.794146/).
Anyway, we ordered a simple custom tank (45X45X35 cm, 17,7"X17.7"X13,7") from 6mm glass from a local guy. The volume is about 70l/18.5g.
The tank was set up on 28/11/2023 with just 3 liters of DUPLA Marin Reef Ground (2-3 mm course aragonite sand) well rinsed and 2g of saltwater. (I'm using the Blue Treasure SPS salt since the beginning). The next day, 4 kg of Indonesian live rock was received and put in the tank. This batch of live rock was recieved about 4 weeks after importing by the distributor. The shipping of live rock took 2 days in pretty cold weather, but it was fine. 4 pieces of rock were just laid on the bottom of the tank. Installed a 50W heater set at 25.5C/78F, a cheap SOBO WP-50M wavemaker, and a Popbloom 16 Shannon light. I let the tank run without lights for 2 weeks. I was testing ammonia and nitrate every 2-3 days. I screwed up some ammonia tests that showed higher than real ammonia levels, which resulted in a few emergency water changes; I think the cycling was pretty instant: the highest ammonia I measured was 0.5 mg/l, and on day 7, I measured 0. In the next month, ammonia was about 0, and nitrate was around 10 mg/l. I saw bristleworms, feather duster worms, and a small grey blob that later turned out to be a tiny gorilla crab. On 20/12/2023, another 6 kg of Indonesian live rock arrived (again, shipped in pretty cold weather). This batch was shipped soon after importing and seemed to have more crabs and worms, some of which did not survive shipping. These rocks, however, had less coraline. Change of plan: the tank seemed pretty full with all the 10 kg of rock, so I decided to skip further additions. In the coming days, ammonia went up to 2 mg/l but went down to 0 in a week. The next month and a half was spent checking the critters that emerged from the live rock: bristleworms, peanut worms, Colonista snails, some macroalgae, etc.
Since the beginning, I have experienced some brown hair algae (I'm not sure about the ID), film algae, diatoms, and some green hair algae. None of these were overwhelming. During this time, I kept doing 10-30% weekly water changes.
Two Trochus snails purchased from the LFS were added on 5/1/2024. They definitely had stuff to munch on.
To be continued ...
