Competing Coralland IOAOI Classroom Tanks

[gastone]

Here's the view from my desk in my classroom. We are on spring break so I brought my son in to work with me to hang out for a bit while I did some catch up/clean up.

Tom @IOAOI is a great contributor here on R2R. He'll often ask us to test his items and provide honest feedback for the company. In the past 15 months or so I've tested 3 skimmers and a nano pump. I still use 2 of the skimmers (the other I passed along to another member of my local reef club, WAMAS). The DC nano pump is awesome. I like their stuff so much that I've purchased more of their products after trying them out. They are extremely cost competitive and very well made. I currently have 13 sw nano tanks (and 2 fw as well). Tom reached out to me when the new Coralland 8g IOAOI was being released and asked if I'd be interested in setting it up and giving them some feedback. How could I resist?

Here's a quick shot of my mess of a classroom. I teach high school math in an alternative education program in Stafford County, VA. I'm also licensed to teach Earth Science and I've collaborated with our Biology teacher to start an impromptu reef club. The new Coralland tanks are sitting opposite one another on the red desk. Currently I have 6 tanks in my classroom, all <30G. I also have various other projects going. Phyto and copepods as well as a PNS bacteria culture and 3 freshwater shrimp breeding stations.

The tank arrived and was unbelievably well packed. There were 3 shipping boxes, all that fit very tight, rigid foam corners and a foam enclosure. I think I could have dropped it off of a 3 story building and nothing would have happened. The glass is crystal clear, the corners are mitered at 45 degrees which is very slick. The tank arrived with a 2.75" filter sock and a return nozzle. I went ahead and ordered another IOAOI nano pump (it really is a sweet little DC pump). The tank is setup up as a mushroom tank. Here's where I have two nits with the tank. The rear chamber is divided into 4 sections, and the middle divider is just that...right smack in the middle, which means mounting a light is tricky as most of them have mounts that are best geared to be centered on the glass frame. I had two Kessil A80 Tuna Blues (and an extra Spectral X Controller) laying around so I used the opportunity to mount both of them. My other gripe is that the filter sock holder is siliconed into place so there's no option to use the first chamber for anything other than a filter sock. Not a huge nit as I could probably cut it out if I decided to move off of the sock and go with a media basket or the like, just something to consider. I went with a 50w Hygger heater and an optical ATO hooked up to a 1g mason jar. There's also a cheap little ph/temp/salinity monitor hooked up. Here's the rub. I'm on a budget as these are classroom tanks and I mostly use stuff that's been donated or I have laying around. To include live rock. I've probably been gifted about 50lbs of lr from various breakdowns. And that's awesome. There's also often a reason for a breakdown that involves some not so good. The rock (and sand) that I used for this build has a bit of algae. There's some bubble algae, some nasty bryopsis, and some really, really cool scroll algae, Padina pavonica. These tanks are maintained as fairly low nutrient systems. Currently each one houses an Azure damselfish (Chrysiptera parasema). I received 3 of them from a recent local tank breakdown. I wouldn't buy one, but they were free and I had to put them somewhere so one was assigned to each tank. That's it for fish. I feed them a few pellets a few times per day. They don't go hungry, but not are they overfed. I'm hoping that the algae issue will rectify itself with time and without too much intervention on my part. I do pick out some daily with tweezers, but that's about the extent of it so far. As far as corals go, I picked up a fairly large mushroom recently. If anyone is able to identify it, that'd be awesome. It was about 8" in the display tank I purchased if from, about 7" when it settled into my 20G cube, and so far about 5.5" across in this tank. I'm hoping it'll settle in and expand some more. I can't imagine I'm blasting it with par from two meager A80's. I also added an elephant ear mushroom (Amplexidiscus fenestrafer), a Frankenstein bounce, a few Yuma's, some GSP that my students have been fragging and gluing to the back wall, and a few different zoanthinds.

Well, that was fun I thought. But the desk looks unbalanced. So I decided I should add another Coralland IOAOI tank on the other side. For this one I wanted to do a clam tank. I had a Dalua Pixel Reefer that I'd won in a raffle and is quite white. I was having a hard time figuring out what to do with such a white spectrum, but I thought a little clam tank would be perfect for it. I had a maxima that I'd picked up some time last spring and had survived some silly mishaps, to include an alk overdose that saw the pH spike to about 9.6. Ouchies! I've recently picked up a nice, small derasa that I'm hoping will be fine in the nano for a year or two before it needs to be upgraded. There's also what is supposed to be a Fiji yellow leather (we'll see... still not convinced) that I thought would benefit from a nice white spectrum, as well as a Koji wada that I just received yesterday. I'm hoping to add another clam or two. For a little bit of blue, I had a Pawfly 15w led that was previously being used on another 3g mushroom tank (since switched over to Hygger kit). Another IOAOI nano pump, cheap 50 watt heater hooked up to a Willhi temp controller, optical ATO supplying kalkwasser from a 1g mason jar. That's about it I think. Circulation is light on both tanks which might be contributing to my algae issues. I know the rocks and sand I reused are leaching phosphates, but I'm also not helping as my circulation isn't high enough to keep detritus in suspension which means it's all settling. The white spectrum from the Pixel is also a contributing factor. Baby steps.

Pre-derasa. Look at that yummy algae!

Oh, that algae looks awful! I'm going to have to pick up a few small power heads to keep stuff in suspension.

 

[Tahoe61]

That's awesome!!!!!! You're my kind of instructor.
Thank you IOAOl.
You have done a beautiful job with those tanks.
:)

 

[officialreefbros]

Wow that looks like an awesome class!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

These are some impressive classroom tanks!

 

[gastone]

Thanks for the kind words. These are my small tanks in the room. There's still one more that I haven't addressed. That's a 3 gallon shroom tank that was originally on my desk until Tom offered me to test out the Coralland kit (do check out IOAOI's stuff...I promise you'll be impressed). I do most of that maintenance on these tanks myself so far as the margins are much tighter on these little tanks. My students are able to frag out of them if something catches their eye, but I don't let them fuss with these 2 (3 including the other shrooms tank).

I've got two separate build threads for my classroom stuff. The original is linked here above, which shows the kids cutting up nems and what have you. We are going to do some genetic studies next year using fw neocardinia shrimp. I'm currently building up a breeding population, one with yellow culls, one with red and one with blue. Each student that is interested will be set up with a little Rubbermaid tote to tend to, with the shrimp varieties of their choosing to cross and study traits. Fw shrimp are easy. Sponge filter, air pump, substrate, fw lighting ( so much cheaper than reef lighting) and some plants. We can hook up 8 of them on a small table, and that's before adding shelves and going vertical.

I've been given a fair amount of autonomy with my current admin (and previous as well). But our principal has one more year and you never know what the next boss will say.

 

[jdaeffler]

How do you manage your tanks in the summer time? How often do you go and check on them?

 

[gastone]

How do you manage your tanks in the summer time? How often do you go and check on them?

I do, I do. Currently have 6 tanks in my classroom and a little 2g pico in our science teacher's room. I probably go in about 5 times per week. I'm only 15 minutes from the school. It's a lot to take care of however. I am contemplating downsizing from the 6 tanks as my idea to set up separate biotopes hasn't taken hold. I have a few rough themed ones, and I'm currently using one of these IOAOI tanks as my coral qt tank. This way as I purchase/procure corals, I can allow them to sit in a small tank for a spell before being moved into a permanent location. I've had a number of snafus over the last 18 months with the school tanks, which is part of the issue of having school tanks. The most recent, which was very tragic, the breaker was tripped Easter Sunday and when I came in the next morning the water temp was in the upper 60's. The corals did fine, but I lost some beautiful fish: pair of extreme snowflake clowns, pair of black storms (beautiful fish and the female would eat out of your hand), a flame angel, two mandarins... and more. Heartbreaking. Took me three days to troubleshoot.

 

[jdaeffler]

Yeah, that was my biggest concern. I am a teacher in NC and have a freshwater cichlid tank in my classroom and was looking to potentially starting a reef tank to teach Symbiosis, photosynthesis, asexual reproduction and even some zoology lessons with it but th amount of time during summer and during breaks is tough to manage.

 

[gastone]

Yeah, that was my biggest concern. I am a teacher in NC and have a freshwater cichlid tank in my classroom and was looking to potentially starting a reef tank to teach Symbiosis, photosynthesis, asexual reproduction and even some zoology lessons with it but th amount of time during summer and during breaks is tough to manage.

I'm lucky that I teach in alt ed and as a smaller program, we maintain a fair amount of autonomy. I've been under the alt ed umbrella for 24 years and not once have I ever shut down a classroom for the summer. My current boss (retiring this year) has given me 24-7 access to the building so I can come in whenever I want. I can bring home the 3 nano tanks quite easily and without much fuss (other than from my wife), but the three bigger tanks in my classroom would be a pita.

As I consolidate tanks and move forward, I am going to move most of my nicer corals into a 90 cube that I'm starting up at home. I'll retain the school tanks for softie and bta propagation (done by the students) and forgo having nice LPS on display like I currently do.