(Hopefully) low maintenance (mostly) Caribbean nano

[corosato]

Decided for Xmas I wanted a Caribbean themed nano for my living room. Plan is to do soft corals other than the few lps that came on the rock.

I hope to have Caribbean corals and fish mostly but I am putting at least one non Caribbean leather coral in the tank just cause.

Tank is a Red Sea Max Nano Peninsula G2 26g and I am going all stock equipment for now (Reef LED 50, skimmer) other than a Red Sea ATO system.

Ordered 10 lbs of gulf live rock and a few pieces of caribsea life rock. I need to add a mini arch


For the aqua scape since the plan is softies I am keeping everything low, need space for them to grow upwards.

Rock came with a few blushing star corals and a really good sized gorg that immediately shedded to its stick so sadly unless the teeny bit that survived on it starts showing signs of anything good I will have to pull that off the rock. Turkey wing clam and a Couple of light bulb nems (of course) a few brittle stars and a small limpet. At least that is all I have seen.

First fish going in is a royal gramma. From there I am going to look at small Caribbean fish and decide to to stick this out.

Will get some macro algae and photosynthetic gorgs once things stabilize a bit.

Blushing star corals and the mostly dead
Gorg. Got some sponges and tunicates as well.

 

[Peace River]

This sounds like a good plan - Caribbean corals should also allow you to run the tank a little warmer. Congratulations and good luck with the new adventure!!!

 

[corosato]

Fish order got delayed (at source not in shipping) but I have added some hermits a turbo snail and 2 gorgonians and 2 mushrooms. One of the gorgs is a test of NPS feeding, I already feed my corals in my 80g so I think just upping my game with it over in this tank should work out.

 

[corosato]

Will be pulling the dead gorg stick out soon I just am sad about it lol

 

[corosato]

That moment of “90% sure you have a really good hitchhiker” but know your luck means it might be the other 10%. Have a purple crab with white banding in it’s legs. It’s very shy but has been poking it’s body out and pretty sure it has the porcelain crab fans. It’s small so hard to get a really good look at the claws cause it’s skittish but I will try to get a pic.

 

[corosato]

Also found an urchin today, Gulf Live Rock continues to be a great source for freebies

 

[corosato]

Confirmed hitchhiker list so far:

Feather duster
Pencil urchin
Purple crab that is 50/50 going to grow big and murder something
Many worms
Feather dusters
“Light bulb” apstasids (sigh)
Several serpent starfish
A whelk(rip)
Good sized clam
Cup corals
Several lps corals I am debating if will recover
One nice coral I cannot figure out, it looks like a green and brown favite

3 or 4 types of macro algae growing from basically nothing.


Not bad for 10lbs of Gulf Live Rock shipped UPS

 

[corosato]

RFA added. Let’s see where it settles