A year into Reefing, and finally a hello
- Hello
- Thread starter KindaAntisociaL
- Start date
- Tagged users None
Jimbhoy13
7500 Club Member
Welcome to R2R and the salty world Nick. Tank looks great. Lots of knowledgable and helpful people here who will support and advise you when needed.Hey everyone! I'm a bit late on my greeting as I had formally joined R2R last year, but have been a long time lurker prior. I wanted to start becoming more of a presence in the forum and network with other hobbyists as well. I had been a freshwater hobbyist since I was about 11 years old. After initial success in keeping fish, I dove neck-deep into planted aquaria and lived there for years. As of last year, I decided to try my hand at reefing. I can't lie and say I wasn't terrified and excited all at once. My mother had a larger reef system when I was very young and I was hit with the stories of " it's so hard to upkeep, much more involved than freshwater." So, naturally, I had been scared off of the idea for a LONG time.
So here we go, last June I purchased a Waterbox 20 cube kit and started from square one. Using live black sand and several lbs of dry rock and came up with this. I then added a CUC and later, 2 mocha-gladiator clowns. This was the process with my first 2 purchases: the lonely taro tree and candy cane coral back in 2019.
A few days ago was the 1 year birthday of this tank and I wanted to share my experience and the progress of the tank. As you can see I get a little carried away with my coral purchases XD, but I love this tank like a child and wanted to share it and see what everyone thought!
Happy Reefing
-Nick
Livestock:
2 Mocha Gladiator clowns
Yellow-banded possum wrasse
Helfrich Firefish
blue leg hermits
dwarf ceriths
astrea snails
1 ultra rock flower
Corals:
Favia (cookies and cream, Alien eye), Hammer (green splatter, blue/purple), Frammer, Duncans (lavender, green), Taro Tree leather, Rainbow montipora, Orange montipora palawanensis, White polyp, toadstool, Green Florida Richordia, Leptoseris (acid rain, blood orange), Bicolor candycane Acan (juicy fruit, flame, blue neon,rainbow) Yellow Birdsnest, Rainbow Rhodactis mushroom, Meteorshower Cyphastrea,
Zoas (utter chaos, Petroglyphs, pink zipper, magician, decorated giraffes, one I can't remember, Jarvis, Boom asteroids, Dragon eyes)
Welcome to Reef2Reef! Your reef is looking really good, nice job 
El_Guapo13
Valuable Member
Welcome to R2R!!
Personally, I never bothered to create a new mwmber thread for myself when I joined. I joined R2R, in the middle of a World Wide Corals live sale back in January 2019. And somehow I still made friends and became slightly well known on this site lol
Personally, I never bothered to create a new mwmber thread for myself when I joined. I joined R2R, in the middle of a World Wide Corals live sale back in January 2019. And somehow I still made friends and became slightly well known on this site lol
alimac122
Well-Known Member
@KindaAntisociaL
So now that you are a year in, let's hear some reflections! Was it as hard as you thought? Any big hiccups/learning curves/mistakes?
Whats your favorite part of this tank?
Do you love the reef now more than planted??
So now that you are a year in, let's hear some reflections! Was it as hard as you thought? Any big hiccups/learning curves/mistakes?
Whats your favorite part of this tank?
Do you love the reef now more than planted??
OP
OP
KindaAntisociaL
New Member
Beautiful nano cube! Thanks for sharing! Next step build thread?
I'd love to! I just set up a small 6g edge frag holding system, as soon as I'm done tinkering there I'm sure the tank bug will bite again.
harley32907
Valuable Member
Welcome to R2R!
OP
OP
KindaAntisociaL
New Member
Honestly, some days the thought of mixing water, because I am working with a portable RO unit and unable to make a station, is daunting. I do ashamedly miss water changes and push it for another week sometimes. As for difficulty, having the right basic equipment plays a huge role in success. little things like getting the hang of a refractometer before even having livestock and having prior knowledge of testing procedures definitely lessened the blow.
As for hiccups, I have lost 3 corals, one being a mystery monti that was a freebie from AquaSD (love them). I just don't think my tank was sps stable at that point. And the other was a zombie blastomussa, that loved the tank for months and one morning it was a skeleton.... everything else was fine. So that spooked me a bit. The third one was 2 different frags of birdsnest who just never extended polyps. One lesson learned over time in building my rock structure is. Having heavily shaded basically vertical stretches of rock is both a blessing and a curse.
My favorite part of the reef has to be my zoa garden, and recently my toadstool. It just gives it such a whimsical touch.
I do still love the planted tank hobby. But reefing has stolen my heart in terms of color and obsessive learning. It has also inspired my artwork (paintings) as of recently because my cube is in my studio space.
Similar threads
