Darth.Daddy12
Active Member
Recently setup a 10g nano. Spent the money to get clean live rock from a lfs display tank as well as 17ish lbs of live oolight Carib sea (2” ish bed) as I’m not always patient and the tank was kinda spur of the moment build) I’ve been keeping freshwater tanks of all sorts mostly large predator tanks and newer to the salt side of things but been reading and researching for years. All that said..
Tank is a 10g nano running aq70 w intank basket using poly fill, little bit of crushed coral and little over golf ball size piece of cheto. Has a cheap acke grow light attached right to side of the fuge section and cheto is growing fine. Filter is placed on the side to utilize its higher for tank flow better throught the tank wo blowing the finer grain sand aroind or needing a wavemaker.
Tank for last week and as I type this is running 4-5ppm nitrate,
80.2* and temp only fluctuates about one degree night to day.
Best I can read 0.1 maybe at worst 0.2 phos (using ati kit and it’s really just not that detailed in scale although it’s a tad lighter then the lowest 0.25 reading while still having some color.
Ph runs steady at 8.2
Do daily 6-8oz tips offs with rodi water
Tank runs great which is why after only 1 week with already 4 fish, two snails and a shrimp feeding 1 full cube each day I decided to jump into first corals cause nutrients were stable even with the excessive feedings.
Brought home some zeoas and after dipping they closed up. Placed them in the tank about halfway up the rock and 1/3 to the side as to not blast them with either flow or lighting. Within 10min all heads opened and were bending towards the light against the flow and looking great! They looked like that all day till about 1-2 hours ago.
A few are now starting to brown, others are flattening out looking like they will be browning. I don’t have the most powerful light.. it’s a fluval sea nano that’s been running 100% max 12h a day with one hour sun up and one hour sunset with 2h 5% moonlight then sleep. At that time grow light comes on and runs 8 hours. Then off.
I tend to think since these came from a similar size tank but were on the sand with even crankier lighting that I’m blasting them with light however the ones that are really brown are slightly shaded as they were on the edge of the rubble rock they are attached to and didn’t really care if they lived or didn’t as they didn’t look good to start. However a few of the bigger healthier heads have now started to show same signs. (I know they are reaching for light they were like that when I got them yesterday. My issue isn’t the reaching it’s the browning) I normally run the filter on low which is enough to make rifts in the bed wo blowing sand around and they are in the far side as flow bounces off the glass and starts to circle back in gyre type flow.. it’s not a dead spot but also not getting direct flow.
So did I jump the gun and blast them with too much light? This is an ok softie light so didn’t think it would be possible tbh.. or is there something else I’m not seeing.
One last thing.. idk cal or alk or even salinity Hanna checkers don’t arrive till tomorrow for these but even as highly stocked and over feed as the tank is it’s running stable and first fill and 10% WC was done with same premix store bought water. (Which is why PH is 8.2 not the 8.0 Id prefer for little wiggle room)
I attached a photo last night about 10min after adding to tank as well as one tonight showing some closing and browning. Lighting isn’t the best on the one tonight cause I did already pull back reds to 24% whites to 6% and blues and purples to 80% so it’s a little dark.
Any help is appreciated and although I’m blindly jumping into this tank I do so with 20 years of fishkeeping and understanding how to care for fish.. the coral thing is all new to me though.. I also didn’t quarantine anything in this tank as everything is new so in itself it is a quarantine tank more or less..
Tank is a 10g nano running aq70 w intank basket using poly fill, little bit of crushed coral and little over golf ball size piece of cheto. Has a cheap acke grow light attached right to side of the fuge section and cheto is growing fine. Filter is placed on the side to utilize its higher for tank flow better throught the tank wo blowing the finer grain sand aroind or needing a wavemaker.
Tank for last week and as I type this is running 4-5ppm nitrate,
80.2* and temp only fluctuates about one degree night to day.
Best I can read 0.1 maybe at worst 0.2 phos (using ati kit and it’s really just not that detailed in scale although it’s a tad lighter then the lowest 0.25 reading while still having some color.
Ph runs steady at 8.2
Do daily 6-8oz tips offs with rodi water
Tank runs great which is why after only 1 week with already 4 fish, two snails and a shrimp feeding 1 full cube each day I decided to jump into first corals cause nutrients were stable even with the excessive feedings.
Brought home some zeoas and after dipping they closed up. Placed them in the tank about halfway up the rock and 1/3 to the side as to not blast them with either flow or lighting. Within 10min all heads opened and were bending towards the light against the flow and looking great! They looked like that all day till about 1-2 hours ago.
A few are now starting to brown, others are flattening out looking like they will be browning. I don’t have the most powerful light.. it’s a fluval sea nano that’s been running 100% max 12h a day with one hour sun up and one hour sunset with 2h 5% moonlight then sleep. At that time grow light comes on and runs 8 hours. Then off.
I tend to think since these came from a similar size tank but were on the sand with even crankier lighting that I’m blasting them with light however the ones that are really brown are slightly shaded as they were on the edge of the rubble rock they are attached to and didn’t really care if they lived or didn’t as they didn’t look good to start. However a few of the bigger healthier heads have now started to show same signs. (I know they are reaching for light they were like that when I got them yesterday. My issue isn’t the reaching it’s the browning) I normally run the filter on low which is enough to make rifts in the bed wo blowing sand around and they are in the far side as flow bounces off the glass and starts to circle back in gyre type flow.. it’s not a dead spot but also not getting direct flow.
So did I jump the gun and blast them with too much light? This is an ok softie light so didn’t think it would be possible tbh.. or is there something else I’m not seeing.
One last thing.. idk cal or alk or even salinity Hanna checkers don’t arrive till tomorrow for these but even as highly stocked and over feed as the tank is it’s running stable and first fill and 10% WC was done with same premix store bought water. (Which is why PH is 8.2 not the 8.0 Id prefer for little wiggle room)
I attached a photo last night about 10min after adding to tank as well as one tonight showing some closing and browning. Lighting isn’t the best on the one tonight cause I did already pull back reds to 24% whites to 6% and blues and purples to 80% so it’s a little dark.
Any help is appreciated and although I’m blindly jumping into this tank I do so with 20 years of fishkeeping and understanding how to care for fish.. the coral thing is all new to me though.. I also didn’t quarantine anything in this tank as everything is new so in itself it is a quarantine tank more or less..
