First time reefer Red Sea Max Nano

[Tim'sReef]

This is my first time in the reefing hobby. During this pandemic I had a lot of extra time and since I was working from home I took the plunge and bought a Red Sea Max Nano to spruce up the home office.

I tried to read as much I could find and watched a lot of video's of other tanks.

It was really exciting when the tank got delivered.

Then came the aquascape, this was my first time doing this and I think it worked out fine, aside from it almost collapsing when putting it in the tank (this is why the dry scape looks a bit different as the when water was put in). Next time I will apply more epoxy or even build it in the tank.

Then came the part of filling it up with water. Man this took a while, don't know how you guys with larger tanks do that as I don't have that much buckets

Then came the cycling. I had some questions but thanks to help from this forum is worked out and then came the time to add some life to it. So I have something too look at. I picked up 2 small clownsfish at my LFS and acclimated them yesterday.

They are a nice pair, one slightly larger than the other and has been showing its dominance to him with little headbutt now and then. They seem to be sticking together most of the time and have made on corner their home and exploring the rest of the tank now and then.

Next I will be adding some CUC when there is some algae film popping up, some snails and maybe a cleaner or peppermint shrimp. I will be adding corals when I see my alk, phosphate, nitrate and other parameters for corals are stable for some time. If you have any tips on what coral for the clownfish to host, give them to me. I'm a little hesitant about adding a anemone cause I don't want it wandering all over my tank.

That it for now, I will update when I have some more to share.

Thanks for all the help on this forum and its great to be a part of this nice community, maybe one day I will be an expert like you guys.

 

[Tim'sReef]

Also my cat has been loving it as much as I do, maybe even more .

 

[DiefsReef]

Welcome to the addiction Looks great!

 

[mylertitchell]

Welcome to the greatest, best, most soul destroying hobby there is!

 

[Tim'sReef]

So it has been over a year since I updated my build thread. It has been so much fun, and I'm going to document what I still know down below.

So I just got my first clownfish, but those sadly came down with parasites, I quickly set up a hospital tank, so I could treat them the required medications. To not look at an empty tank / and cheer myself up some, I bought a couple of coral frags.

For the first 3 corals, I have bought:

Green galaxea
Devils hand leather
Small type of green hammer?

The devil's hand had another arm that was completely white, I wanted to cut it off but saw 1 little polyp so decided to wait and see what would become of it.

So my 2 clowns were now in the hospital tank going through their treatment. They were not eating anymore, and I was very worried about them. These were the first fish I got ever, and wanted to give them a good home, and now I was failing.

Here they are in their little tank. I used some biomedia from my nano in the hope that it would help. I used bacteria every day and did water changes to keep the water pristine. Not only that, but I treated for the internal parasites and hoping that they would eat again, so I could dose the food with the med's.

The green hammer coral meanwhile died, and I wanted some more corals to try them out. I was still in the beginning, so every coral was interesting to me, and I wanted them all!

I bought a milka stylophora, a frag of GSP, and a candy cane.

My other corals were growing slowly, and I was happy that went well, aside from the hammer dying.

The fish on the other hand were not going well, the small clown died in the treatment tank and I was feeling as a failure that I could not save him. Maybe I should have waited a while longer for the tank to mature, all sorts of questions went through my mind. The bigger clown was eating and looking better every day. I still had hope for him.

And after a while, eating well in the treatment tank. I put him back in the display.

I got 2 new frags. A green frogspawn, and pulsing xenia. I also added a peppermint shrimp, since they were the ones that eat aiptasia, I had none in my tank but if an animal has extra purpose that was fine by me. Until!

That little ****** had munched all of the candy cane. I was feeding the candy cane, and it must have torn it out.
The frogspawn died and had a massive polyp bailout. I removed it and went looking for other corals than euphyllia since they were dying so quick in my tanks, and they were becoming expensive where I live.

Hmm maybe this will make a comeback. Very fun to see how hardy this coral was. It got torn to shreds, and now it was reforming itself.

I found it hard for placing corals in my scape. The xenia I wanted to isolate, so it would not overtake the whole tank. Same for the GSP, I mounted this right to the back wall, and the xenia pushed in holes secured with rubber bands on a separate rock.

The rest of the scape was hard for me to get the flow around. Some places where I now knew it needed to be slow it was fast, and vice versa. There were some dead spots in some areas, since this was my first scape I had no experience and scaped to visual aesthetic not ideal coral placement spots.

I grew tired of the peppermint shrimp as it kept picking on corals and was done with it. It needed to go.

At my LFS I traded it in for a blood shrimp. I was way prettier, and I love him. Since I had no aiptasia I didn't mind all blood shrimp do is sit and be pretty.

I got 2 more corals as well, a purple hystrix and a red monti, the monti had some dead spots on it but I hoped I could make it better. As you might have spotted. If there is a very small busted up coral for the cheap, I'm likely to take it home.

I made a small frag rack to temporarily house them since I was finding placement on my scape hard to do and would not commit them to a spot since I didn't know if they would be happy there.

The xenia had attached itself to the rock and was growing noticeably. The cleanup crew got a nice extra snack as a snail had fallen down, and I didn't notice it in time.

I mounted the histrix front and center and cut up the red monti to see if the STN would stop.

I got a nice big plate of green monti and mounted it to the scape. I also moved the GSP further down, since I noticed it was growing only up and not down and wanted a lower part covered too.

This is the last shot before I went off for my first vacation while having a reef tank.

The neighbor was keeping an eye on the tank and did the feeding. It was only one week, so I did a water change before we went and all was fine. Until the call came... The neighbor was calling, the clown was gone. Vanished into thin air. Never found anything back from him.

Now I didn't know what was the cause of his death, I went 6 weeks fallow before I would get a new pair of clowns.

After a while I got some zoa's and a Duncan. I noticed that my SPS corals were not looking as I bought them. Less colorful and not as fluffy polyps. I tried to keep parameters as stable as I could by doing water changes and dosing manually.

You might see the background changed. Above picture is taken a couple of days after a transfer to another room. I had a kid on the way, the house was reorganized, and the tank had to move. I got 2 friends helping me out with moving it. I drained the most of it, and then we slide it onto a large board. This was carried to the new room and while 2 stood with the tank, the other got the stand and placed it back down. After filling it up, I was glad I only had a Nano to move a bigger tank would be way harder.

 

[Tim'sReef]

So from here the days become more documented. It is day 244 for this reef tank, and I was ready to add a new pair of clowns. Also, my picture taking skills were improving as I started using a DSLR from time to time, I'm no expert at all but it's nicer than the pictures my phone takes.

The new clownfishes came in, and I trimmed the green monti cause the duncan needed more space. The scape was still troubling me with the placement of corals. There were a lot of vertical walls where placement was tough.

Sadly, the candy cane and galaxea both started to STN. I tried dipping them by, it didn't help, and I lost both pieces by day 271. The sps corals were still not looking well. Sometimes they were happy, sometimes I noticed growth, and other times they look here not happy and not well.

At day 275 my first ICP test results came in and I was low on a couple of things. Guess the water changes were not enough to replenish this. I dosed the trace elements missing, and changed the lighting schedule.

Day 289 added an another leather coral. Things seemed to be improving with the sps, this hystrix looks way better than it did.

I hade some trouble with cyano, but it was not bothering the corals, so I didn't want to use something chemical. I started dosing extra bacteria and phytoplankton.

The red monti was not going well, but I was ok with it since it was a busted up piece anyway. The xenia and GSP had really spread, and the once dead white part of the devils finger leather was now alive. The scape was still a struggle, the devils hand sometimes got stuck under the rock while it deflated and when the lights come on it gets stuck.

Day 293. I made a bunch of frags from the xenia to trade in at the LFS. I added a pom pom crab and a small yellow coris wrasse. The tanks was always low on phosphate and nitrate also could use a little bump up. I hoped this wrasse would increase the bioload and I was a nice splash of yellow in the reef. It dove in the sand and I didn't see him for almost a week.

 

[ABQ_CHRIS]

I have enjoyed following your journey so far. I hope things are going well.

 

[Tim'sReef]

I have enjoyed following your journey so far. I hope things are going well

Thanks! More updates coming soon, sometimes life gets in the way of things. Switched jobs, building my own business on the side and got a kid so spare time is hard to come by

Nice to see some are enjoying my struggles and learning process.

 

[ABQ_CHRIS]

Thanks! More updates coming soon, sometimes life gets in the way of things. Switched jobs, building my own business on the side and got a kid so spare time is hard to come by

Nice to see some are enjoying my struggles and learning process.

Yep. Life happens. Hopefully I'll learn something useful along the way and I be able to return the favor.