Monica's Nano Build: 21g ADA-Inspired NPS Tank

[monicalooze]

A LOOOOONG overdue update...and a little eye candy.






Please excuse my dirty lily pipes - I'm also a little behind on maintenance.

The summer has certainly gotten away from me. Haven't gotten to finishing my auto feeder yet, but I'm really happy with how my tank is progressing...she's turned more maximalist aesthetically than I originally intended, more colorful, and I never originally planned a predominantly filter feeding NPS tank, but here we are.

And say hello to betty the blenny and hildegard von fishbeck, the ocellaris. They're literally BFFs moved from my other tank. Seems like they like the new, bigger set up.

When fall rolls around, I'll get back to regularly posting and finally building my feeder. I'm sure I'll need help

xoxo

--m

 

[MartinM]

Are you feeding foods from Reef Nutrition? I’ve had fantastic luck with those, growing spondylus oysters (and several other varieties), mussels, a variety of tunicates and sponges, and other NPS inverts. I feed a mixture of their SD Phyto, roti-feast, and oyster-feast twice a day (enough to cloud the tank as soon as the lights go out). It’s great photosynthetic coral, too (which derive more energy from food than from light, although you wouldn’t know that with all the ‘best lighting’ posts here…)

 

[monicalooze]

Are you feeding foods from Reef Nutrition? I’ve had fantastic luck with those, growing spondylus oysters (and several other varieties), mussels, a variety of tunicates and sponges, and other NPS inverts. I feed a mixture of their SD Phyto, roti-feast, and oyster-feast twice a day (enough to cloud the tank as soon as the lights go out). It’s great photosynthetic coral, too (which derive more energy from food than from light, although you wouldn’t know that with all the ‘best lighting’ posts here…)

I feed algae barn phyto or reef nutrition live phyto if I run out of the algae barn stuff, plus oyster feast + rotifeast, reef frenzy nano, spirulina brine shrimp, and I'm having really good luck with PNS Yellow Sno and PNS Probio.

I cloud the tank once a day. Alternate yellow sno and Probio per instructions.
Have you had luck with scallops? I have oysters, tunicates, fan worms, and obviously a ton of sponges, but I'd like to try flame scallops and maybe a sea apple.

 

[rhizotron]

Well done! I really like the style of this tank. Nice husbandry too everything looks very happy in there.

 

[gobybryant]

The PLAN for the refrigerated auto-feeder...

I already got help here, but this is what I started with (spoiler alert...it won't work!):

Since I know nothing about plumbing, I had to read everything on the internet I could find, and luckily, I stumbled upon this thread on Bay Area Reefers..

DIY Fresh Food Auto-Feeder

Background I learned of DIY fresh food feeders first through Scott Sweet’s fresh food auto-feeder design. Where the Scott Sweet Feeder uses 1/2” rigid plumbing and similarly scaled components for a continuously flowing system, I went minimalist in construction and with low water flow. I...

www.bareefers.org

The Improved Design

I believe the following (improved) design will work because it uses the same design, except, instead of flushing the lines by creating a closed loop with a sump, tank water, and an extra circulation pump on a timer, I would connect the RODI line directly to a manifold inside the fridge, then use the four channel doser to inject food into the manifold, and finally flush the line right after the food is injected using the RODI line on a separate dosing pump.

I have to add over a liter(~1200ml) of RODI into my tank over 12 dosing intervals per day, so there is plenty of fresh water running through the system to flush the lines.

The fridge and doser came in the mail...and, classically, the doser doesn't fit horizontally because there is a ~3mm wide frame of plastic about 2" inside the fridge. The measurements online did not account for this, otherwise the doser would have fit like a glove. I will either figure out how to design it with a vertical orientation OR file off the plastic inside the fridge. It won't make a difference with sealing the door or anything else (I don't even know what the purpose is), and since I'm going to have to drill three holes in it anyway, filing down some plastic doesn't seem like a problem at all...lol.

Please also meet my new friend Ol' Blue Eyes/Frankie/Chairman of the Board.

Love this thread. Glad you've had success with NPS using a canister filter- I was hoping to do the same.

I had an idea to clean your food lines directly after use- maybe make the final doser port for RO? You can keep the ATO separate then.