A good little tank (IM Nuvo 10 gallon)

Pbh-reef

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After about 8 months of dreaming of a tank and visiting this site and staring in wonder at the tanks here (especially @Lasse's tank!) I've gotten a good little tank of my own. It came at a great price from someone who was leaving the hobby, and so it felt like a wonderful, low-stakes way to explore reef keeping. I've loved reading build threads on r2r for months now, so I thought I'd make one too, for myself and for others.

I've had saltwater fish in the past, but I've actually never had coral in my care, so the reef part of saltwater is very new to me I have a ton of questions (what is the name of one my corals? Am I placing the corals right, is the the wave maker too big, how do I set up the ATO that came with the tank?) For now, I wanted to get a full tank shot up, the specs and celebrate having a tank again after 17 years without one! I also want to just thank my husband, who got me the tank, and who has endured me showing him pictures and videos and talking about a tank for months. I also want to thank the kind and helpful people on r2r, I'd be too anxious to do this without the community!

My plan for now is to mostly keep everything stable for a month before any new creatures go in (except maybe some pods).

Here's a photo taken 20 minutes or so after the tank was re-set up this past Sunday:
unnamed.jpg


Life:

Fish

Royal gramma
Hifin shrimp goby
Pink streaked wrasse

Inverts
Randals pistol shrimp
3 blue legged hermits
Micro brittle stars
Cerith snails
Collonista snails

Coral
Green leather toadstool
Rainbow acan (micromussa)
Green mushroom
Green star polyp
Red Goniopora
Hammer coral
Orange Montipora setosa
Purple monti cap
Jack o'lantern leptoseris!
Green birdsnest coral
Branching pink cyphestria
Green and blue lythophyllon
Green dragon zoas
Fire and ice zoa (maybe?)
Gatorade zoa
Vamp zoa



Equipment
Kessil a80
Jebao pp-4 powerhead and wavemaker
Smart ATO micro
inTank media basket running chemipure blue and filter floss
sicce .5 return pump
 
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James M

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Like the aqua scape , what do you plan on love stock ? The corals seem to be happy as I see in the pics . what is your Powerhead and how many gph? What type of ATO do you have ?
 
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Pbh-reef

Pbh-reef

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Like the aqua scape , what are you planing for live stock ?

Thanks! Its still pretty new and may change. For fish I'm thinking 2 maybe maybe 3 small fish like a shrimp/goby pair and perhaps a tailspot blenny, or a pink streaked or possum wrasse. But going to move slow and not change any livestock for a month at least!
 

Lasse

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Thank you - I´m glad that I could inspire people on the other side of the Atlantic too. The tank look good. I would not hesitate to introduce more hermits and snails before the algae starts to grow. My experiences are that you can avoid "the ugly phase" if you do not have an enough large clean up crew. The general mistake - IMO - is to wait till the algae shows up for your eyes. Believe me - they are already there - the moment that you see these microalgae the biomass will be rather large and you need a very large clean up crew in order to defeat them. It is also wise to chose as many different species as possible - each specie has is own feeding nische. I start my salt water period back in 2006 with small aquaria - this one below was one I design for my grandchild back in 2008. Only softies and mushrooms. The aquaria is less than a year old when I took the photo. It is around 58 litres - 15 gallons


Sincerely Lasse
 
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Thanks @Lasse! When I was explaining how tanks work to my husband months ago I first showed him one of your tank videos, to get him on board. He thought it was very beautiful. Then I showed him a photo of all the equipment under your tank and his jaw dropped! ;Hilarious

Thanks @James M for the coral id on the lepto! I have since moved it lower in the tank since it seems to prefer lower light and less flow.

One question I'm wrestling with now - to add pods should I go for @AlgaeBarn's 5280 pods, which seem like a ton of pods (and maybe even a ton of water) to add to the tank, or do I go for a smaller bottle of pods? I just worry that 5000+ may be overkill in such a small tank and that they'll starve and die. Just wondering what nano tank owners think about regarding adding pods...
 
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Like the aqua scape , what do you plan on love stock ? The corals seem to be happy as I see in the pics . what is your Powerhead and how many gph? What type of ATO do you have ?

It is a smart micro ATO. The strange thing is that the sensor seems way too low in comparison to the water line in the back chamber. It is about an inch below the water line. I don't understand if I just put more water than the previous owner, the sensor fell in the move, or if the sensor should actually be that low in the tank.

The powerhead is a jebeo, I'm pretty sure it is the smallest one (1000 gph). My fantasy is that a random flow generator nozzle could replace the powerhead and I could reduce the number of devices in the tank by one, but that is probably not true.
 

Lasse

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Thanks @Lasse! When I was explaining how tanks work to my husband months ago I first showed him one of your tank videos, to get him on board. He thought it was very beautiful. Then I showed him a photo of all the equipment under your tank and his jaw dropped! ;Hilarious

:) But the photo of the 15 gallon show a tank without everything without foam filter and a circulation pump - not either a skimmer - and it works for many years.

But I'm both a technician and a biologist and I'm well aware that in my latest build, I let the technician take over a little :)

Sincerely Lasse
 

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It is a smart micro ATO. The strange thing is that the sensor seems way too low in comparison to the water line in the back chamber. It is about an inch below the water line. I don't understand if I just put more water than the previous owner, the sensor fell in the move, or if the sensor should actually be that low in the tank.

The powerhead is a jebeo, I'm pretty sure it is the smallest one (1000 gph). My fantasy is that a random flow generator nozzle could replace the powerhead and I could reduce the number of devices in the tank by one, but that is probably not true.
As for the ATO sensor it’s supposed to be under the waterline. And for not having a Powerhead and using the return pump , I believe u need to upgrade the return pump to a higher gph. But don’t quote me on that
 
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Its been 1 week and a day since I got my tank. So far the best part has been sharing it with my husband, who never had a tank before and wasn't totally convinced about getting one. But he's loving it, he even loved pruning hair algae when we did our first water change on Sunday, which if that's not love I don't know what is. It's been wonderful to share the experience with him.

Our cleaner shrimp, Johnny, molted, which was a delight to wake up to on Wednesday. He certainly eats the pellets we give him fast enough! I had a scare where I thought one of the 3 hermits died, but she's doing just fine.

The first water change was intense. I don't think I'll be doing the whole blowing detritus off the rocks with the a turkey baster thing or trying to vacuum the sand with the water change hose next week. The alveopora especially didn't love that experience, but its 2/3 back to normal today. It has been looking great ever since I moved it to be in the direct line of the wave maker's flow on Tuesday of last week.

Otherwise the nitrate's been below 2 (salifert) and the salinity and temp are fine, so what else can you ask for? I've moved the corals around based on what Tidal Garden's very useful website says they like in terms of flow and light. I think if I had chosen the corals myself, I might have picked ones that all like similar flow in such a small tank, but on the other hand I like all the corals.

I'll post some pics in a moment.
 
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:) But the photo of the 15 gallon show a tank without everything without foam filter and a circulation pump - not either a skimmer - and it works for many years.

But I'm both a technician and a biologist and I'm well aware that in my latest build, I let the technician take over a little :)

Sincerely Lasse

Yes, and I admire both of those things about you and your tank! I mostly didn't want my husband to think we could have a tank just like yours right away and without a more serious investment than we're ready to make.

The 15 gallon softie tank's lovely - especially the giant mushrooms! Were there any fish in it?
 

Lasse

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Yes, and I admire both of those things about you and your tank! I mostly didn't want my husband to think we could have a tank just like yours right away and without a more serious investment than we're ready to make.

The 15 gallon softie tank's lovely - especially the giant mushrooms! Were there any fish in it?

I started with a clown (I always cycle my aquariums with help of a small healthy clown). When the aquarium was cycled I took away the clown an ad 3 different gobies as I remember. The aquaria is documented in this article - however it is in Swedish but there is a lot of pictures in it and you will get an idea how it looks.

Sincerely Lasse
 
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Two big things happened today. Or really one big thing and many very very tiny things. I'll talk about the tiny things first, and the bigger thing in another post.

Today the pods and phyto from @AlgaeBarn arrived and their jar was full of life! I got the pods with the idea that microfauna and biodiversity will help a tank stay clean and balanced and also be food for the other inhabitants. I got the phyto to keep the pods alive and also to see if it would really help with nutrient uptake and buffering, as Algae Barn's website says. Seeing the little specks swimming around the jar as it acclimated was so cool. I love the sense of wonder I get from this little tank. As you can see from the photo, I share this wonder with Johnny the cleaner shrimp.
IMG_8605.JPG
 
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Still waiting for the second big thing to be totally ready before posting about it. For now, just wanted to post a little about my experience this week with the tank.

Introducing the pods from @AlgaeBarn was super fun - the corals, especially the Acan, went totally crazy - it released a zillion tiny white feeding tentacles and then got very fat and happy looking.

I also realized that the coral I'd been told was an alveopora is almost certainly a goniopora, since it has 24 tentacles and not 12. I'll post a pic of it in the next post. It is definitely the most sensitive coral I have - it retracts the moment it is touched and took the longest to recover after the water change last week. I am worried that one of its polyps seems to never leave its home, but it could also be that it is a small, new polyp, it is hard for me to tell since I've only had it for 2 weeks. Perhaps because it is my sensitive coral, its also my favorite. When it looks good (like today) I feel good about the tank.
 

AlgaeBarn

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Two big things happened today. Or really one big thing and many very very tiny things. I'll talk about the tiny things first, and the bigger thing in another post.

Today the pods and phyto from @AlgaeBarn arrived and their jar was full of life! I got the pods with the idea that microfauna and biodiversity will help a tank stay clean and balanced and also be food for the other inhabitants. I got the phyto to keep the pods alive and also to see if it would really help with nutrient uptake and buffering, as Algae Barn's website says. Seeing the little specks swimming around the jar as it acclimated was so cool. I love the sense of wonder I get from this little tank. As you can see from the photo, I share this wonder with Johnny the cleaner shrimp.
IMG_8605.JPG
Thanks for the shout out @Pbh-reef, the phytoplankton is awesome and acts as a critical building block towards building a sustainable ecosystem.
 
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If your ATO is a Smart Micro ATO the optical sensor should have a raised portion in the center shaped like a triangle, this is where you want your water line.

D76E3CDA-F9D6-4C85-8444-C6D672485CB2.jpeg
 

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