10g Super Simple Nano Reef, First Marine Tank

[terraincognita]

Thank you so much! I am in love with it for sure and I'm super addicted now. Getting my next tank in motion already.

if you’re trying to go bigger and better.

Take the 2nd one slower.

If you can try to either get one with bulkheads and plumbing or DIY it.

nows the time to start getting a little fancy, so by the time you’re on your 5th tank you might stop upgrading

I’m on my 14th? Now, I was too afraid to go big at the beginning.

but looking back now, I would’ve just gone big on my 2nd tank, but more slowly.

 

[HomebroodExotics]

if you’re trying to go bigger and better.

Take the 2nd one slower.

If you can try to either get one with bulkheads and plumbing or DIY it.

nows the time to start getting a little fancy, so by the time you’re on your 5th tank you might stop upgrading

I’m on my 14th? Now, I was too afraid to go big at the beginning.

but looking back now, I would’ve just gone big on my 2nd tank, but more slowly.

Honestly, my bigger tank will be very similar to this. Keep it simple brings me the best success.

 

[HomebroodExotics]

2 MONTH UPDATE

Since the last update I decided it was time for fish. I purchased a Madagascar Spotted crouching goby, a mandarin dragonet, and a firefish from liveaquaria. Well, the short story is they got extremely cold during shipping and temped in the 60s when they arrived at my house. Really poor shipping job from Liveaquaria IMO. Will not be ordering from them in the winter again. 4 days later I lost the firefish and then the mandarin dragonet, they just didn't seem to fully recover. The crouching goby I figured wouldn't last either but amazingly he did and I still have him. I was kind of disappointed to have spent the money on him because he was pretty boring, but now he comes out more and loves to eat so he's been a lot of fun to watch and I've changed my mind, I'm gald to have him and hope he keeps coming out more. About 2 or 3 days after losing the mandarin and firefish I was pretty fed up and decided I needed some fish in here and went to the LFS and picked up 2 blue damsels, this was on the 22nd of Dec. Now is when I'm really starting to see the big difference between reef fish and freshwater fish. These fish are like fish on crack. They really love to eat and I definitely overfed them a lot the first week because they were just so hungry and honestly a lot of fun to watch. Now that they have fattened up, I cut back on their feeding and they spend time redecorating the tank which is exciting and terrifying for me to watch.


Corals are doing coral stuff. Most seem to be growing. A few with issues, mostly my Bowerbanki. It's not happy at all and I think it's my fault I just moved it around to much. It has new mouths growing and the old one seems to be dying but maybe this is just it transitioning to my tank. I know water parameters were thrown off with the fish additions and things are just starting to get back settled so I think it should be better from here. I have some more coral coming in about a week and I'm very excited about it. Leptastrea has become my favorite coral for the moment so I loaded up on it with the sales going on along with a few other things I've been eyeing. One of the biggest things I'm struggling with at the moment is my lighting. I feel like my corals did a lot better when I ran the lights extremely blue but I would like to have more white to make it look better but the corals don't seem to like that as much. Very possible this is just in my head though. I will try my best to hold off a few weeks before I mess with my lighting again though and see how it goes because I really like the way the tank looks now.

Refugium filter thing seems to be working pretty well. It's pretty nasty in the filter box to be expected (I really overfed) and my tank looks pretty spotless, coraline algae is starting to spread from my frag plugs to the epoxy putty which is pretty cool. I'm nervous about my clean up crew having enough food to eat so I actually dropped in an algae waffer last night. Might do this occasionally if it doesn't mess up my water quality. While taking pictures of the filter today I found what looks like a baby snail and I got pretty excited to see that. Hope it sticks around.



In these 2 months, I have only scraped the viewing side glass for maintenance. Clean up crew has done the rest. I dose about .5ml of all for reef a day currently. I feed about .5ml of vinegar eels w/ the vinegar, a couple ml of phytoplankton every day. I feed live baby brine and frozen mysis every other day and feed pellets and flakes whenever I feel like it.

Now that this aquarium is set up and set to easy mode for the most part, I plan to start setting up a 40G breeder. The build will be very similar to this, only bigger. I have a couple new ideas that could make the tank more efficient at removing nitrates and wastes and staying stable, but we will see.

 

[HomebroodExotics]

3 months. I think it's decent.

 

[HomebroodExotics]

5 months old.

Absolutely love this tank.

Just got over a big Dino problem

There’s been a lot of ups and downs and i’m still struggling with the lighting the most. I’m planning on getting a seneye soon, I think, so I can really get a better idea of how par works.

I started to get a good bit of detritus buildup on the rocks and corals so I decided to remove the mini refuge. I just put the box filter back with polyester filling that I change out occasionally now. Ideally having the mini refuge setup and another mechanical filtration method would have been best but I really want to keep equipment to a minimum.

starting to think more about flow and if I should add an additional power head or stronger power head. Like lighting it’s hard to tell if you have too much until you have too much.

All in all I love this tank and I keep trying to figure out where I can add more coral.

 

[HomebroodExotics]

We are closing in rapidly on 7 months and boy has it been a doozy. I was probably within minutes of tearing this tank apart but decided to stick it out and man I’m finally starting to be really happy with it. Lots of things I would do differently.

First. The substrate was a bad choice to go deep sand bed. It does not process nitrate nearly enough to warrant having it. It is largely crushed aragonite so maybe if it was sand it would actually process nitrate but for anyone who wants to try this it is a waste of time. Instead it would have been better to layer the substrate extremely thin on the bottom to barely cover the glass. I love substrate and don’t like the bare bottom look so I prefer to have just enough to see in the tank. Especially since I now know that it doesn’t process nitrates enough to warrant all the taken space of the tank. I will be using other methods to remove nitrates instead. However there is a ton of life in the gravel. Tons of pods, worms, brittle stars and baby snails. The life in this tank is truly amazing. I watch it for hours.

Second I had to evict my 2 damsels. I absolutely love them but their favorite pass times were digging under rocks, feeding my corals gravel, and terrorizing the clean up crew. They were a huge part of the problems I had with keeping corals the past couple months. They are in their new tank which is doing well. I’ll be getting a mandarin dragonet for this tank shortly and I’m really looking forward to it. There’s tons of pods and life in here now and I think it’s going to go well.

Other than that it’s been a matter of learning to control parameters, lighting, and letting the tank mature which has been a learning curve. A big lesson I’ve learned is every time the lighting changes it’s a big deal and alk and other parameters need to be monitored closely if you want to limit damage to corals. Stability is important and I’ve definitely shot myself in the foot several times by trying to figure out exactly how everything should be set.

The future of this tank is it will function as kind of a frag tank along with keeping some permanent corals but it will likely be changing fairly often for the foreseeable future.

I’m currently working on setting up an actual display tank, a 40g breeder. I’m waiting for it to cycle and have a few more months to go before it settles out.

But maybe I’ll just having to start selling phyto plankton if this algae doesn’t clear up

Not really sure if I’ll continue to update this. We’ll see I guess.

 

[Aqua Man]

But maybe I’ll just having to start selling phyto plankton if this algae doesn’t clear up

That’s a good bloom you have there! Was is self imposed or accidental?

love simple tanks! Thanks for sharing!

 

[HomebroodExotics]

That’s a good bloom you have there! Was is self imposed or accidental?

love simple tanks! Thanks for sharing!

Accidental. Not really sure how it happened. It’s kind of impressive huh? It’s been filled with water since April 13. I even turned lights out for 2 days and that didn’t help. So I transferred some pods from the 10 gallon using a sponge recently so hopefully they get busy and I’m just going to ride it out. I put clean up crew in about 3 weeks ago and the algae bloom started soon after that.

 

[Aqua Man]

Accidental. Not really sure how it happened. It’s kind of impressive huh?

Surprised it hasn’t cleared up yet. I once dumped 2 cups of phyto in a 20 gallon with live rock. Looked about like your tank above. Was trying to get some pods going in a separate system. Took a couple weeks to clear up but it did eventually clear on its own.

Adding pods is a good plan! Should see an explosion of pods soon. What species did you add?

 

[HomebroodExotics]

Surprised it hasn’t cleared up yet. I once dumped 2 cups of phyto in a 20 gallon with live rock. Looked about like your tank above. Was trying to get some pods going in a separate system. Took a couple weeks to clear up but it did eventually clear on its own.

Adding pods is a good plan! Should see an explosion of pods soon. What species did you add?

I initially seeded my 10 gallon with the eco pods pack from algae barn and it’s covered with all kinds of critters now. I just stuck a sponge in the 10 gallon tank for a day and moved it to the 40 gallon. Looking forward to the pod explosion.

 

[HomebroodExotics]

Figured I'd do an update again because I'm extremely happy with how this tank is going. Corals are really starting to take off. I started using zeovit products and wow what a difference. The zeovit products work so well that it blows my mind. It kind of aggravates me that I don't know whats in it but can't say I blame them because they got it figured out.

I finally put my all for reef on a kamoer pump and that is working out amazing as well. Extremely worth it.

I haven't done any water changes and barely have to touch the tank besides dosing, feeding, top off, and change the filter floss occasionally.

If you made it this far. Here is the 40 gallon ready to roll using the same methods as the 10 gallon. A little over 3 months in now.

 

[Aqua Man]

Figured I'd do an update again because I'm extremely happy with how this tank is going. Corals are really starting to take off.

Looks great! The 40 is coming along too. Water cleared up nicely! Interesting about the zeovit, I thought is was mainly for SPS tanks. Looks like what your doing is working!

 

[HomebroodExotics]

Looks great! The 40 is coming along too. Water cleared up nicely! Interesting about the zeovit, I thought is was mainly for SPS tanks. Looks like what your doing is working!

Thank you for the kind words. So the 40 gallon was thick green for a while with no end in sight and I decided that I was tired of waiting honestly, and I was interested in playing with zeovit anyway, so I figured Id put it to the test and see what it would do. In 2 weeks the tank cleared up completely like you see now. I was and still am blown away.

 

[HomebroodExotics]

Sad update. Lost 3 tanks thanks to hurricane Ida. I literally just received an order of fish that I had been planning for about a week before the hurricane. Luckily I still have a house and that’s not being dramatic so In the grand scheme of things we were extremely lucky. This is just a minor setback. I will have it up and running again as soon as I possibly can.

 

[TriggersAmuck]

Ouch, I'm sorry to hear this. Living in Florida I worry about this all the time. As you said, there are much more important priorities in a situation like that, so glad that your family and house are ok.

 

[ifarmer]

your tank came along well, very nice.