biophilia
Well-Known Member
I never got around to making a build thread for my main tank (an IM Nuvo 10 set up as a mixed reef). The tank is about 1 1/2 years old now so better late than never!
Living in a small apartment with my fiance and two dogs doesn't leave a lot of room for a proper reef tank -- so my main goal with this system has been to keep a little bit of everything in a tiny footprint. In practice, this has meant continually tip-toeing the line between a healthy and dynamic coral community and all-out nematocyst-fueled chemical warfare.
Here's where my little 12" cube stands today:
Inhabitants:
Equipment:
Maintenance:
I feed a lot. Two or three times per day. Usually pellets in the morning and frozen mysis, frozen cyclops, roti-feast, oyster-feast, phyto-feast, 24-48 hour artemia, and Reef Roids in the evening. I broadcast feed in general, but also target feed mysis to the tubastraea and dendrophyllia)
Living in a small apartment with my fiance and two dogs doesn't leave a lot of room for a proper reef tank -- so my main goal with this system has been to keep a little bit of everything in a tiny footprint. In practice, this has meant continually tip-toeing the line between a healthy and dynamic coral community and all-out nematocyst-fueled chemical warfare.
Here's where my little 12" cube stands today:
Inhabitants:
- ORA Snowflake clown
- Pajama cardinal
- Royal gramma
- Porcelain crab
- 2x sexy shrimp
- Lots of hermits, trochus snails, astraea snails, and micro-herbivores doin' their part to keep the algae at bay
Equipment:
- Two AI Primes (one HD, one non-HD) staggered, angled inward, and running at half power to eliminate hot spots and the shading issues that come with point-source lighting
- Jebao DP-4 doser (fully saturated kalkwasser, vinegar, and sodium silica dosed via one head, B-Ionic two part diluted and dosed via heads two and three. Hourly dosing to deal with the ~3DKH/day alk draw of the system without swings)
- Inkbird temp controller connected to a heater and a desk fan
- IM Desktop Ghost skimmer
- IM media caddy w/ filter floss, ChemiPure Blue nano carbon, and Siporax
- Smart ATO micro
- Aqamai KPS wavemaker
- stock return pump connected to a UPS battery backup
Maintenance:
- 2 gallon weekly water changes (Red Sea blue bucket w/ Mg boosted up to 1400 ppm)
- lanthanum chloride drip as needed for PO4
- swap the filter floss every few days and bag of carbon twice per month
- test alk every two or three days (Salifert)
- test Mg, Ca, NO3, PO4 when I finally become too racked with guilt for being lazy about it (once every couple months... maybe...)
- I'm constantly fragging things and shuffling stuff around to keep aggressive corals from overtaking others. I inject the perimeter of the ricordia garden with vinegar in a hypodermic needle to keep it contained. The Stylophora and Seriatopora grow fast and need lots of clipping to avoid shading the corals underneath as well.
I feed a lot. Two or three times per day. Usually pellets in the morning and frozen mysis, frozen cyclops, roti-feast, oyster-feast, phyto-feast, 24-48 hour artemia, and Reef Roids in the evening. I broadcast feed in general, but also target feed mysis to the tubastraea and dendrophyllia)
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