10 Gallon Reef Adventure

[corgiguy5]

We have had a 125 FOWLR tank for the lat year or so, and decided that we wanted to try and keep coral. We purchased the Innovative Marine NUVO Aquarium - Fusion Nano 10 and have added in the skimmer, spinning return nozzle, filter socks, and had the Skkye Light until we replaced it with a Astra 20 Marine. To start the tank off we bought a couple pieces of live rock, and a 10ld bag of live sand. We took a small piece of live rock from our main tank, and 10 gallons of water and filled up the Nuvo. We went to our LFS and bought 2 $10 frags. Here is where we let our inexperiance show. The frags started out doing great, but we put in a small clean up crew, 1 green crab, 2 scarlet hermits, a brittle starfish, and 1 snail. Our clean up crew decided to "clean" under the frags, and was knocking them of the rocks almost daily. We finally went and talked to our LFS and asked what we could do and had no idea that there as such a thing as reef glue. Now this little tank seems to be doing better, but we do have a little nuisance algae, hence the hermits,to get rid of. This tank has by far been a lot harder to maintain that our 125 FOWLR, but hopefully soon we will begin to grow corals in that tank as well. We are hoping to use this 10 gallon as a small frag tank for our large tank and hopefully one day have a large reef tank going as well.

Let me know if anyone has any tips or tricks for continuing this little adventure we have been on.

 

[pluikens]

I didn't see you mention it so I'd add that you should be monitoring for at least alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, nitrate, and phosphate. I'd encourage you to create a build thread for this new tank, it sounds awesome! Post some pictures and your parameters and we can likely help you out with the algae (not sure which kind you have). You may end up running GFO in one of the IM reactors or a similar reactor but I wouldn't suggest anything likely that until the parameters I mentioned above are known. Welcome to reefing!

 

[Ron Reefman]

Your new little tank has cycled, but that's still a long way from being 'mature' where it becomes much less of a maintenance issue. New tanks have algae and bacteria blooms after they've been cycled. Just do your best and in 6 months I bet it's doing a lot better.

One other tip you might consider. I use a concrete drill bit and drill holes in my rocks so frag plug stems fit in snuggly. That way they can even get used on vertical walls.

 

[corgiguy5]

I didn't see you mention it so I'd add that you should be monitoring for at least alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, nitrate, and phosphate. I'd encourage you to create a build thread for this new tank, it sounds awesome! Post some pictures and your parameters and we can likely help you out with the algae (not sure which kind you have). You may end up running GFO in one of the IM reactors or a similar reactor but I wouldn't suggest anything likely that until the parameters I mentioned above are known. Welcome to reefing!

So far we have been just taking our water samples over to the LFS, we are there at least once a week, and having them check it out. We have been dosing Reef Complete as necessary based on their recommendations.

 

[corgiguy5]

Your new little tank has cycled, but that's still a long way from being 'mature' where it becomes much less of a maintenance issue. New tanks have algae and bacteria blooms after they've been cycled. Just do your best and in 6 months I bet it's doing a lot better.

One other tip you might consider. I use a concrete drill bit and drill holes in my rocks so frag plug stems fit in snuggly. That way they can even get used on vertical walls.

I'm hoping that with the use of all the live material the cycle timeline with shorten considerably. It didn't help that my 3 year old son decided to pour in a bunch of the reef roids food when we weren't watching one day. The skimmer is doing all it can, but I know there are a lot of excess nutrients in the tank right now.

 

[pluikens]

So far we have been just taking our water samples over to the LFS, we are there at least once a week, and having them check it out. We have been dosing Reef Complete as necessary based on their recommendations.

Do they tell you what those parameters are? I'm not sure what frags you have but I would imagine there's some alkalinity demand. Are you keeping up with this demand with water changes? Since you brought up an algae issue, I'm more interested in nitrate and phosphate numbers but like @Ron Reefman said, your tank is going to have some algae issues as part of its maturation.

 

[corgiguy5]

Do they tell you what those parameters are? I'm not sure what frags you have but I would imagine there's some alkalinity demand. Are you keeping up with this demand with water changes? Since you brought up an algae issue, I'm more interested in nitrate and phosphate numbers but like @Ron Reefman said, your tank is going to have some algae issues as part of its maturation.

They tell us these levels, I just don't remember them, and recommend what we should be dosing. We have the marine alkalinity buffer to maintain that and PH. We do a 1-2 gallon water change once a week with fresh R/O Saltwater made with instant ocean reef crystals. We use a gravel vac and clean the top of the sand as well and sediment that may have settled on the rock. When we went in last week our nitrates were up, but not too high, and we are hoping that with a little bit of Prime and another water change we should be good. We will probably be headed there tonight so I can ask them what they see in our water as well.

 

[pluikens]

Sounds like you have a very helpful LFS. Are the two frags you bought doing ok after they got attached with glue? What corals did you get? If they're looking good, you may just need to stay the course through the ugly phases of your tank.

 

[corgiguy5]

Sounds like you have a very helpful LFS. Are the two frags you bought doing ok after they got attached with glue? What corals did you get? If they're looking good, you may just need to stay the course through the ugly phases of your tank.

We have 1 xenia frag, and 1 polyp frag, and they are doing great the xenia has been out and flowing with the water since day two. The polyp frag was doing great until it got knocked real hard about 4 days ago. We had to reglue it, and it just remade an appearance yesterday. In using Astra 20 we were able to drop the spectrum of light down as well to hopefully fight some of the algae. We think the Skky light had a little too much white in it and was encouraging growth. We started turning the pump off when we feed so we can do really target feedings, and are using less than the recommended amount for now. Hopefully these steps will bring this little tank back around.

 

[Ulee]

I recommend turbulent flow on that 10g. It's going to be very ugly for a few months , with the new tank syndrome and all, expect hair algae, brown slyme ,etc. Hermits are good, a turbo snail will kick but in there.

Just the evaporation sucks , get a lid for your 10g.

 

[corgiguy5]

I recommend turbulent flow on that 10g. It's going to be very ugly for a few months , with the new tank syndrome and all, expect hair algae, brown slyme ,etc. Hermits are good, a turbo snail will kick but in there.

Just the evaporation sucks , get a lid for your 10g.

We are seeing a lot of evaporation, but for flow we got a Hydor Koralia Nano 240. the corals seem to be loving it. Attached is a pic of this little tank. I know the blue light is hard to see through, and I will try and get a better pic tonight.