Completely new to reefing, need advice on coral placement and stocking plan.

[BangingBaking]

Hi, pretty new to the reefing with years of fresh water back ground(had to part with it when i moved from my home country) .

In this thread, i would love to get advice from fellow reefers on 1.coral placement, 2.fish stockings , 3.bio diversity and 4.equipment to be improved as well as capacity of the tank.

Tank Spec

Tank:17.7″ (45cm) glass Cube with over flow (roughly 20g in display and 10g in sump)

Protein Skimmer: second hand Tunze9004 skimmer

Media: Marine pure block L , Filter Pads(plan to replace weekly)

Flow: Random flow return with IM spin stream nozzle, Jebao SOW-4(is my wavepump placement okay?)

Lighting: AI Prime

Auto top off: with base and overflow sensor

Chiller: hailea chiller with external temp probe

Maintenance: Weekly 5Gal water change


Tank has been running for 10days 100% with dry rocks and live sand, a little seeding with Ammonia dosing, bottled bacs and second hand protein skimmer(lots of coralline algae on the surface with some used sponge stuffed). Waited for the ammonia to be 0 with some nitrates, did a 50% WC before adding livestock, introduced ammonia badge(though im reading lots of negative feedback about this).

Added 1x royal gramma and 1x leather coral today, fish looks pretty happy eating pellets the moment i feed, coral expands fully and no sign of stress(unless I'm missing out on something)

Questions

1.coral placement
Attached is the plan i have rn in my head for my future coral placement, as my rockworks are scaped rather low, i want to introduce a garden for corals that needs isolation from other species(like hammer,frogspawn) using a magnetic rock frag that gives the floating looks.
Besides that, I'm overwhelmed with the amount of corals available in this hobby and need an opinion if my plan will work out with the current wave pump placement i have and lights. Also, keen to hear suggestions on corals that would work out well with this sort of set up.

Stuff like this

2.fish stockings
Having a fresh water back ground, it's surprisingly shocking to know that marine fish needs much larger spacing and being a nano tank, there's not much option for me. My final plan for fish is to have a pair of clownish and some sort of goby, 4 small fishes in total and no more, with a fire shrimp. Will my tank be able to handle this bio load together with corals?
Currently there are no clean up crews and I don't believe getting 1CUC per gallon as suggested by my LFS(no disrespect but it just doesn't make sense to me that I need 20 Critters in a tank of this size with no algae at all for now). So need advice on this as well


3.Adding bio diversity
Been reading sterile starts using 100% dry rock is prone to Dinos and what i noticed on lots of Dinos related threads are all of them started with 100% dry set up, while build threads starting with live rock getting close to non of this(other issues like bad hitch hikers though) and i don't want seeing them in my tank. Learned that increasing bio diversity would prevent this thus I'm finding a solution to add them in my tank. Does dosing live pods, rotifers and phyto plankton works?


4.equipment to be improved
What can it be improved to keeping a successful mix reef? I'm reading lots of articles and thread here and planning to install a 1head dosing pump with all for reef in the future when my tank gets more stocked. Till then, will try to keep up my nutrient with weekly WC

Thanks in advanced for all advice!

 

[Jason_MrFrags]

Your 5g weekly water change should keep up with any nutrients and replacing depleted alk/cal/mag.
Only thing is not sure about the spread of your light and being able to keep corals on a magnet rack. If they are getting enough light then no issues.

 

[BangingBaking]

thanks for the insight! I'll definitely keep up with the weekly 5g water changes to start out. As for the lighting, I tried to scape the main rockwork slanted towards the front as to not make shades after installing the magnetic racks, hopefully this will workout.

Your 5g weekly water change should keep up with any nutrients and replacing depleted alk/cal/mag.
Only thing is not sure about the spread of your light and being able to keep corals on a magnet rack. If they are getting enough light then no issues.

Also added a mushroom and small hammer coral into the tank. Shroom looks pretty bleached or its the color morph?

 

[1epauletteshark]

The mushroom looks A-okay to me! Nice setup

 

[twentyleagues]

I didn't see mention of an ato. How are you handling evaporation? May want to automate that. I've been out of the salt hobby for a while and just coming back. So take what I think or say with a grain of salt. Biodiversity has always been one of the major differential factors in keeping salt water. I'd say yes to the pods. I was always on the creepy critter band wagon back in the day. They usually provide much needed maintenance in a reef. I like you plan to go dry rock so I am worried about my biodiversity also. I will be adding pods and rotifers once cycled. I may go to my trusted lfs and root around for a few amphipods and maybe some of the little brittle stars that come in on lr also. I don't want to add lr for a few reasons and I know by adding frags I will probably add some of the stuff I'd like to keep out like apstasia. I'm going to try to be careful though. I've delt with bad things in the past. I've never been one of the bristleworm haters but I've been known to remove larger ones.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

thanks for the insight! I'll definitely keep up with the weekly 5g water changes to start out. As for the lighting, I tried to scape the main rockwork slanted towards the front as to not make shades after installing the magnetic racks, hopefully this will workout.

Also added a mushroom and small hammer coral into the tank. Shroom looks pretty bleached or its the color morph?

Mushroom looks fine to me!!! I like the color on it

 

[Budman93]

That stocking list is fine. My suggestions for gobies would be a yellow clown goby (Full of personality) or a shrimp goby and pistol shrimp combo. Both would work very well in a nano.

For a CUC you are right you can definitely go lighter. I'd maybe get like 3-5 trochus snails (best you can get algae destroyers), 3-5 nassarius (dead organics/carnivores) and then a bunch of dwarf ceriths to get the nooks and crannys. hermit Crabs can be cool but will kill snails if they feel like it for their shells so I usually stay away. 1 tiger conch or other small conch might be cool to stir the sandbed.

 

[Wasabiroot]

You have already put more thought into this than the vast majority of new hobbyists. Props!

I'd recommend a few good books. In particular, The 101 Best Nano-Reef Species by Scott Michael would be a good choice for your tank.

In a mixed reef, it's important to focus on stability more than keeping one coral happy in particular. As corals have a wide range of desired parameters, you can often create more work for yourself trying to cater to every single specimen in your tank.

I'm wondering about needing a chiller on a 20g. Smaller water volumes already change temp more readily than larger volumes, and provided your dwelling doesn't get crazy hot in the summer, it might not be necessary. I don't know much about the unit you mentioned though, so *shrug*.

If you're concerned about dry rock, adding a piece of live rock from the store can help seed the tank. Putting some in the sump will bring tons of life with it.

I agree re:ato. They are an added expense but a huge quality of life improvement. Salinity is one of the secret killers IMHO.

Make sure to test your nutrients. With a 25% wc weekly, light stocking, ceramic biomedia and a skimmer, it could be easy to overstrip the water this early on (ignoring potential leaching of phosphates from the rock).

Have a few snails to stir up the sand bed. In regards to cleanup crew, less is more at first. It's better to add as needed as snails in particular can starve themselves out fairly quickly.

Nice job on the plumbing!

 

[BangingBaking]

thx for all the feedbacks.
I'm using an ATO and for the chiller, it's a requirement in where i reside as temp here stays 28c～35c degree all year long and right now my tank is maintained at 25-26c.
guess i'm just going to slowly add nassarius snails(seeing some diatoms on sand as well as left over food) , trochus and cerith snail once green algae starts growing.

The 101 Best Nano-Reef Species by Scott Michael

looks perfect for my size of tanks, will have a look

 

[BangingBaking]

I didn't see mention of an ato. How are you handling evaporation? May want to automate that. I've been out of the salt hobby for a while and just coming back. So take what I think or say with a grain of salt. Biodiversity has always been one of the major differential factors in keeping salt water. I'd say yes to the pods. I was always on the creepy critter band wagon back in the day. They usually provide much needed maintenance in a reef. I like you plan to go dry rock so I am worried about my biodiversity also. I will be adding pods and rotifers once cycled. I may go to my trusted lfs and root around for a few amphipods and maybe some of the little brittle stars that come in on lr also. I don't want to add lr for a few reasons and I know by adding frags I will probably add some of the stuff I'd like to keep out like apstasia. I'm going to try to be careful though. I've delt with bad things in the past. I've never been one of the bristleworm haters but I've been known to remove larger ones.

yea i'm pretty nervous with dinos and aiptasias after reading too many horror stories around here and trying to prepare my self for the worst. I know i'll never gonna be able to avoid aiptasia so long as i plan to buy corals without QT but dino seems avoidable with daily husbandry and "not too clean" water. Gonna pick up some cope pods this weekend

 

[j.falk]

http://nano-reef.com - Check out the 20 gallon cubes over there and see how packed with livestock some of those are. You can fit a surprising amount in a small space if you learn how to place the corals correctly.

 

[BangingBaking]

http://nano-reef.com - Check out the 20 gallon cubes over there and see how packed with livestock some of those are. You can fit a surprising amount in a small space if you learn how to place the corals correctly.

Wow some of these tanks make me really ambitious , it's amazing how some people stock small tanks with crazy amount of corals and maintaining pristine condition Wonder how some of them avoid coral warfare stocking SPS and aggressive LPS so closely.

 

[BangingBaking]

Some update
Yuma mushroom died, unsure what caused it but after coming back from work, it detached from the rock(Maybe didn't like the flow or light but it was opening up fine when i left home) and got shredded by the power head. Did a large WC and all other live stock seems unaffected.

Added corals from good Friday sales, though I understand hammers aren't ideal for a new tank, couldn't resist the price offered for the bundle.

PXL

youtube.com

Also,picked up 4 trochus snails, 4 nassarius snails and a halloween urchin as a CUC, tank was covered with brown slimey algae and green film algae but 3days after adding them, tank became spotless with algae and now im concerned that CUC might starve. Is it a good idea to drop a small piece of nori in my tank to feed them?


this is how sterile my tank now, sandbed, backwall and rocks were covered in thick brown mat and green film and only took 3days for CUC to consume them........ they sure are hungry

 

[BangingBaking]

update on tank, it hit the 4th month mark today.

Tank is doing great, besides my Bernardpora closing up and Blastomussa semi-melting. Others have grown, and some Euphyllias have developed new heads.
There have been ups and downs over the past months, starting with minor dinos, Bryopsis, and bubble algae issues. However, after dosing a bunch of phytoplankton and copepods, performing weekly water changes, and daily scraping, they finally stopped coming back, at least for now.
Sand was covered with LCA but now they're almost clean without me touching.

Any idea what might be wrong with my Blastomussa and Bernardpora? The Blastomussa has had issues ever since it was in LFS. One head was dead and covered with a bit of algae. As for the Bernardpora, they used to be fully open until one day they started closing and haven't opened for three weeks. However, the Gonio on the same spot is growing and doing fantastic.

Params are as below
Temp 79f
Salinity 1.026
MG 1400
Alk 7.6
Cal 440
Nitrate 5-10
Phosphate 0.07

 

[BangingBaking]

9 months in, finally feel like my weekly routine is paying off!

gotta so something about my duncans stinging my stylo

 

[santeeeyyy]

How did you get your goni's to open up?

 

[BangingBaking]

How did you get your goni's to open up?

out of 2 that were closed, 1 died shortly after my post(the green one is new addition and doing good for the past 3months) and another just opened up without changing anything.