James Harvey
New Member
Hello all!
Long time lurker. I have a 25g IM Lagoon that was set up in 01/2019 as my first reef and thought I'd share it. Since then, it has gone through a couple uglies and a move:
Uglies
- Large carpet anemone inherited from craigslist reefer ingested a snail and died (after eating 2 of my other fish) nuking my tank overnight. The tank smelled rancid the following afternoon while cleaning it. I ended up getting dinos and then prolific hair and bubble algae in the following weeks.
- I went through another phase of dinos last ~1mo 3 months ago which I think was precipitated by low nutrients followed by me rehoming 2 livestock. I did not ever black out or use UV. I did manual removal daily, started using vibrant weekly for 6 weeks and added an air stone. I resumed routine care and it eventually cleared. I definitely considered breaking the tank at that time.
Move
- Moved 1 hour away. Read a bunch of R2R threads and decided to do it in one go. Actually used a cooler to house my large rocks and then the rest in 5gallon buckets. Ended up replaced 1/4 of the sand bed and doing a 50-75% water change by diluting all the buckets before the move with 25-50% fresh salt water (warmed). I did not have equipment for bubbler or heater in the car and figured the short 1 hour trip wouldn't require it. Altogether took 8.5 hrs from turning off power to finally going to sleep fairly assured it would be ok. No casualties and things even seemed to wake up a little. Only thing is I lost ALL of my coralline algae off the back of the tank
Now, things are going pretty smoothly. Here's the current setup:
Current setup
Lights: Reef Breeders 24" Photon V2, Set at ramp up/down with 8 hrs max 43%
Salt: Red Sea Coral Pro
Returns: Eheim Compact 600L x 2
Skimmer: None
ATO: tunze osmolator
Pumps: MP 10 at 20% reef crest and koralia 264gph
Heater: aquatop titanium 100w (SO HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)
Filter: Filter floss x2, no carbon or GFO, I use intank media basket on one side so I can add resin/carbon if necessary
Fuge: I cut away the back of the 4th chamber and installed IM Auqa chaetomax fuge light (Highly Recommend). I throw a softball+ away a week
Water Change: 4-5gallons every 2 weeks
Controller: none (titanium heater comes with temp controller)
Dosing Pump: Vertex Libra - bought off local reefer who said it was 6 or 7 years old. Works like a charm
Dosing: BRS 2-Part ~7cc daily
Feed: Reef nutrition every other day, Reef Nutrition Oyster or Als Foods Coral mix every other day with ~3/4 cube of mysis shrimp daily
Current Stock
2 Black Ice Clowns
Yellow Coris (sleeping under sand in video below)
5x Red BTA, started with 1
Blue Maxima (bought the day before daughter was born so they could grow up together...omg 8 months old already!)
Porcelain Crab
Scattered CUC
Parameters
Temp: 79.5-80.2
Sal: 1.026
pH: 8.0-8.3
Alk: 8.3-8.6
Ca/Mg I don't check. Last time was ~420 and 1300
Nitrates ~1ppm
Phosphates: not checking
Future
- get the wife onboard. Current status: tolerated
- increase nitrates and start testing phosphates
- try to grow some easy sticks in bare rock mid-tank (most things haven't done well there)
- get rid of bubble algae
- Shrimp Goby pair (flaming prawn goby maybe?)
- GSP along back wall
- order livestock online or participate in a R2R sale
- become more active in my online and local reefing community
- Upgrade...when I have a bigger home, I'm thinking a 70gallon but LFS is recommending 180g...I like to go slow and get mostly used albeit higher end equipment so we'll see. Will definitely do a build thread when that time arrives.
Biggest Lessons
- carpet anemones giveth and carpet anemones taketh away
- if you feed RBTA daily, they will split like crazy
- small tank small changes
Long time lurker. I have a 25g IM Lagoon that was set up in 01/2019 as my first reef and thought I'd share it. Since then, it has gone through a couple uglies and a move:
Uglies
- Large carpet anemone inherited from craigslist reefer ingested a snail and died (after eating 2 of my other fish) nuking my tank overnight. The tank smelled rancid the following afternoon while cleaning it. I ended up getting dinos and then prolific hair and bubble algae in the following weeks.
- I went through another phase of dinos last ~1mo 3 months ago which I think was precipitated by low nutrients followed by me rehoming 2 livestock. I did not ever black out or use UV. I did manual removal daily, started using vibrant weekly for 6 weeks and added an air stone. I resumed routine care and it eventually cleared. I definitely considered breaking the tank at that time.
Move
- Moved 1 hour away. Read a bunch of R2R threads and decided to do it in one go. Actually used a cooler to house my large rocks and then the rest in 5gallon buckets. Ended up replaced 1/4 of the sand bed and doing a 50-75% water change by diluting all the buckets before the move with 25-50% fresh salt water (warmed). I did not have equipment for bubbler or heater in the car and figured the short 1 hour trip wouldn't require it. Altogether took 8.5 hrs from turning off power to finally going to sleep fairly assured it would be ok. No casualties and things even seemed to wake up a little. Only thing is I lost ALL of my coralline algae off the back of the tank
Now, things are going pretty smoothly. Here's the current setup:
Current setup
Lights: Reef Breeders 24" Photon V2, Set at ramp up/down with 8 hrs max 43%
Salt: Red Sea Coral Pro
Returns: Eheim Compact 600L x 2
Skimmer: None
ATO: tunze osmolator
Pumps: MP 10 at 20% reef crest and koralia 264gph
Heater: aquatop titanium 100w (SO HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)
Filter: Filter floss x2, no carbon or GFO, I use intank media basket on one side so I can add resin/carbon if necessary
Fuge: I cut away the back of the 4th chamber and installed IM Auqa chaetomax fuge light (Highly Recommend). I throw a softball+ away a week
Water Change: 4-5gallons every 2 weeks
Controller: none (titanium heater comes with temp controller)
Dosing Pump: Vertex Libra - bought off local reefer who said it was 6 or 7 years old. Works like a charm
Dosing: BRS 2-Part ~7cc daily
Feed: Reef nutrition every other day, Reef Nutrition Oyster or Als Foods Coral mix every other day with ~3/4 cube of mysis shrimp daily
Current Stock
2 Black Ice Clowns
Yellow Coris (sleeping under sand in video below)
5x Red BTA, started with 1
Blue Maxima (bought the day before daughter was born so they could grow up together...omg 8 months old already!)
Porcelain Crab
Scattered CUC
Parameters
Temp: 79.5-80.2
Sal: 1.026
pH: 8.0-8.3
Alk: 8.3-8.6
Ca/Mg I don't check. Last time was ~420 and 1300
Nitrates ~1ppm
Phosphates: not checking
Future
- get the wife onboard. Current status: tolerated
- increase nitrates and start testing phosphates
- try to grow some easy sticks in bare rock mid-tank (most things haven't done well there)
- get rid of bubble algae
- Shrimp Goby pair (flaming prawn goby maybe?)
- GSP along back wall
- order livestock online or participate in a R2R sale
- become more active in my online and local reefing community
- Upgrade...when I have a bigger home, I'm thinking a 70gallon but LFS is recommending 180g...I like to go slow and get mostly used albeit higher end equipment so we'll see. Will definitely do a build thread when that time arrives.
Biggest Lessons
- carpet anemones giveth and carpet anemones taketh away
- if you feed RBTA daily, they will split like crazy
- small tank small changes
