chopdrop
Community Member
hello everyone, i figured i would do a build thread if only to keep myself accountable and have somewhere better to keep a log of things than multiple scraps of paper scattered throughout my home.
i have intermittently kept freshwater tropical tanks for about, guh, 20 years now. i had a saltwater tank for maybe a week and a half when i was around 13 but my mom was obviously the one stuck with all the work so that didn't last. i had good luck with fw though, so what the heck.
i ordered a jbj nano cube 28g with the flourescent hood and set it up first week of january. used live sand, cured live rock, and off we went. shortly thereafter, added a CUC of 2 emerald crabs (hate these guys) and some hermits c/o my lfs. waited around a while and then ordered whatever the CUC was that john from reefcleaners.org recommended for me. they have been great, reefcleaners is a great business.
eventually, i tired of the flourescent hood but wanted to keep a hood on, so i ordered the jbj led hood with wifi controller. seemed pretty okay until water got into it and it shorted out, which i didn't love so i decided to go hoodless and now have an ai prime hd mounted running the saxby profile, but at something like 20% strength. i have a mesh lid from octo ordered, so once i get that i will start adding fish. (i had a fish, a scarlet dragonet recommended by the owner of my lfs which i a) now realize is not a good addition to a new nano and b) leaped to its unfortunate demise, rip)
other stuff i've ordered has been a new filter media basket, with the top holding filter floss, the middle has uhhhhhhhhhh purigen and then some other thing in there (this may be bad/excessive/stupid) and the bottom one has chaeto. i ordered an ATO but can't really figure it out so i am just every now and then eyeballing the water level and topping off by hand- not optimal and i need to get serious about the ATO.
i have an eheim heater, i think- whatever it is, it works fine.
livestock beyond cuc is a cleaner shrimp, a yellow sea cucumber (another thing the owner recommended to me that i now wish he had not), a sea urchin (this guy is an IDIOT) and a few corals: a zoa frag, two rics, a favia, gsp, pulsing xenia, and something that i'm embarrassed to say i can't recall what it is. there are also a million hitchhikers which my wife and i are the most fascinated by- it is incredible how populations of certain things will explode. at first the asterinas were the kings of the cage, but now worms of all types have taken over. i had a good sized bristleworm living under a rock but i repositioned the rocks a little bit and now i'm not sure where he's living. my shrimp recently molted and i watched something pull the discarded molt into a hole in a rock so that's pretty weird! as posted elsewhere, i have some paly hitchhikers which i should keep an eye on, but it seems like most of my coral are troublemakers anyway so whatever.
i'm at work so i don't have my parameters on hand but everything is, i think, good- my testing vials aren't as clean as they should be (turns out you should read the directions about how to clean them) so stuff might be wildly off but basically sg is something like 1.025, pH 8.0, kH ~9, Ca+ 450, don't remember Mg, ammonia and nitrate both at zero. as i said, all of this could be wrong. i am going to buy some white vinegar and clean the vials proper and test them again soon.
i do a 5 gallon a week water change with premixed h2o i purchase from my lfs, when i also scrub the glass and change the filter floss.
everything seems pretty happy so i guess i'm doing something right. i'm very new and i know mistakes will be made along the path so i'm trying to take it slow.
my biggest issue currently is that i placed the tank in a corner so that we can only see in 2 sides of the tank. i want to slide it just about 3 feet to the right, but the stock stand is kind of flimsy and i'm not sure how i should do it anyway. i'm pretty strong but i am merely one man. my wife is a puny weakling. any ideas? it is on carpet so that is even less slidy than hardwood.
inside the tank, i kind of want to add some more cured live rock because a lot of real estate in the tank is just the sandy bottom. i really like the very tentacle-y lps's like duncans and frogspawn so i want to get some of those. i also like montis but i'm not sure if that's realistic right now.
the picture of my tank i am attaching is actually from a few days ago, before i realized you can either remove coral from frag plugs or just chop the plug down with some wire cutters. i also realized not to put my zoas at the tip top. i will post better pictures soon, i hope.
wow, didn't mean to write a 2666 length novel here. future updates should be shorter, i think! i know that this tank is not very impressive technologically or biologically but it's mine and i love it and it's so much fun. my philosophy is basically just try to learn as much as i can and heed the advice of people who know a lot more than me.
alright, thanks for reading!
i have intermittently kept freshwater tropical tanks for about, guh, 20 years now. i had a saltwater tank for maybe a week and a half when i was around 13 but my mom was obviously the one stuck with all the work so that didn't last. i had good luck with fw though, so what the heck.
i ordered a jbj nano cube 28g with the flourescent hood and set it up first week of january. used live sand, cured live rock, and off we went. shortly thereafter, added a CUC of 2 emerald crabs (hate these guys) and some hermits c/o my lfs. waited around a while and then ordered whatever the CUC was that john from reefcleaners.org recommended for me. they have been great, reefcleaners is a great business.
eventually, i tired of the flourescent hood but wanted to keep a hood on, so i ordered the jbj led hood with wifi controller. seemed pretty okay until water got into it and it shorted out, which i didn't love so i decided to go hoodless and now have an ai prime hd mounted running the saxby profile, but at something like 20% strength. i have a mesh lid from octo ordered, so once i get that i will start adding fish. (i had a fish, a scarlet dragonet recommended by the owner of my lfs which i a) now realize is not a good addition to a new nano and b) leaped to its unfortunate demise, rip)
other stuff i've ordered has been a new filter media basket, with the top holding filter floss, the middle has uhhhhhhhhhh purigen and then some other thing in there (this may be bad/excessive/stupid) and the bottom one has chaeto. i ordered an ATO but can't really figure it out so i am just every now and then eyeballing the water level and topping off by hand- not optimal and i need to get serious about the ATO.
i have an eheim heater, i think- whatever it is, it works fine.
livestock beyond cuc is a cleaner shrimp, a yellow sea cucumber (another thing the owner recommended to me that i now wish he had not), a sea urchin (this guy is an IDIOT) and a few corals: a zoa frag, two rics, a favia, gsp, pulsing xenia, and something that i'm embarrassed to say i can't recall what it is. there are also a million hitchhikers which my wife and i are the most fascinated by- it is incredible how populations of certain things will explode. at first the asterinas were the kings of the cage, but now worms of all types have taken over. i had a good sized bristleworm living under a rock but i repositioned the rocks a little bit and now i'm not sure where he's living. my shrimp recently molted and i watched something pull the discarded molt into a hole in a rock so that's pretty weird! as posted elsewhere, i have some paly hitchhikers which i should keep an eye on, but it seems like most of my coral are troublemakers anyway so whatever.
i'm at work so i don't have my parameters on hand but everything is, i think, good- my testing vials aren't as clean as they should be (turns out you should read the directions about how to clean them) so stuff might be wildly off but basically sg is something like 1.025, pH 8.0, kH ~9, Ca+ 450, don't remember Mg, ammonia and nitrate both at zero. as i said, all of this could be wrong. i am going to buy some white vinegar and clean the vials proper and test them again soon.
i do a 5 gallon a week water change with premixed h2o i purchase from my lfs, when i also scrub the glass and change the filter floss.
everything seems pretty happy so i guess i'm doing something right. i'm very new and i know mistakes will be made along the path so i'm trying to take it slow.
my biggest issue currently is that i placed the tank in a corner so that we can only see in 2 sides of the tank. i want to slide it just about 3 feet to the right, but the stock stand is kind of flimsy and i'm not sure how i should do it anyway. i'm pretty strong but i am merely one man. my wife is a puny weakling. any ideas? it is on carpet so that is even less slidy than hardwood.
inside the tank, i kind of want to add some more cured live rock because a lot of real estate in the tank is just the sandy bottom. i really like the very tentacle-y lps's like duncans and frogspawn so i want to get some of those. i also like montis but i'm not sure if that's realistic right now.
the picture of my tank i am attaching is actually from a few days ago, before i realized you can either remove coral from frag plugs or just chop the plug down with some wire cutters. i also realized not to put my zoas at the tip top. i will post better pictures soon, i hope.
wow, didn't mean to write a 2666 length novel here. future updates should be shorter, i think! i know that this tank is not very impressive technologically or biologically but it's mine and i love it and it's so much fun. my philosophy is basically just try to learn as much as i can and heed the advice of people who know a lot more than me.
alright, thanks for reading!
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