Back to the business reef - Waterbox 35.2

Erik the Red · Mar 24, 2021

I’m back with another update. About a week ago I bought 2 Ocellaris clownfish from a LFS and yesterday I received my coral frags, a Plexaurella sp. goniopora, a Sarcophyton and a Ricordea.

I also mounted a second MP10 because the rockscape kind of limits the water circulation. I’ve been thinking to place both pumps on the bottom corners of the tank, but I am afraid that the gentle flow created in the front part of thetank won’t be enough to stir the detritus up. At the moment both pumps are on reef crest 40% anti-synch mode. I am planning not to have my hands in the tank for a week or so, in order to give the clowns time to settle in and not to be overstressed.
Fishes seems doing good now, even though I think they’re still getting used to the tank.

All corals are still on their plugs because I want to adjust the flow before glueing them on the rocks.

Next step in the tank population might be to get a Wurdemanni shrimp to fight an early spread of aiptasia (I think I have 1 or 2). I am not a big fan of shrimps. Otherwise, I believe the tank has enough fishes, so next purchases will be corals only in a few months, if the tank thrives.

As you can see, my rocks are not really clean and I can’t figure out whether that’s because of the low flow or if is a problem of algae bloom during the early stages of the tank cycle. In any case I attached a close-up picture, so I’m glad if you come up with some suggestions on what to do

Feel free to drop a line and give some advices.

commanderwho · Jun 7, 2021

Anymore updates!? Any other new fish/inverts?

Erik the Red · Aug 14, 2021

So a queick update which will be folowed by a major one, later during the week.
I’ve been seeding about 20 pounds of Belize Branch dry rocks and let them stay with Dr. Tim’s NH3 for about 4 weeks. Today I am testing the parameters and will do the switch with the live rocks I currently have in my tank.
The reason is that i got the LR online and i couldn’t choose the shapes. The water circulation not is not optimal with lots of dead spots…
I will be harvesting the critters from the live rocks to keep them in the tank, moreover i have some live rocks in the sump compartment which hopefully will help the transition

Erik the Red · Aug 14, 2021

Plus i figured out my tank was low on nutrients because after 3 weeks of vacations, the acanthastrea and other corals doubled the size (automatic feeder helped)

Erik the Red · Aug 15, 2021

Here it is the longer update:

after some weeks of summer vacations, the tank needed a thorough cleaning:

fortunately, just before leaving i put some of the Belize Branch rocks in a bin with saltwater, small bits of live rocks and some drops of Dr.Tim’s Ammonia. When i got back, they were ready to be moved into the nanoreef.

The “old” Fiji rocks gave me some troubles with aiptasia and caulerpa (which it definitely played a positive role in keeping the nutrients at an “acceptable” level during my vacations!). Moreover the water movement was not optimal in my point of view and the acquascaping did not satisfy me. This is why I switched to Belize Branch.

The AI Prime 16 HD running an adjusted Saxby’s schedule with higher values except for red/green/whites.
Tunze 9001 is running well and in 3 weeks it just filled the cup once. The skim material was really really dark and rather dense for such a small skimmer.
In the technical sections of my tank, i switched from a 700 l/h Sicce to a 1.300 l/h pump of the same brand. The Osmolator is plugged off now because i need to understand where the balance point of the water level after i upgraded to a more powerful pump.

as you can see in both the previous images, i keed some smaller live rocks to help support the cycle. They’re out of sight and still help managing the nutrients.
So far, i haven’t had nutrients issues, unless we want to consider an issue having too few nutrients in the water column. In fact, when i got back from vacations, the acanthastrea almost doubled in size and I suppose this is due to the richness of no3 and po4 in the water.

so, i guess that’s about it…i am getting 1 Wurdemanni to get rid of the few aiptasia left, as well as 1 amboinensis to give some movement to the tank. I’ll have to see if the water movement will be too much for the shrimps (now about 50 to 75% of alternated power on the MP10s), as I like to keep a high flow to help the corals dissipate the photosynthesis waste products and therefore avoid any bleaching. Moreover, i see that with higher flows the fishes look more fit