CindyL
Community Member
I needed a challenge. Our other tank, Mike's entry into this contest, is a budget buster. Very little expense spared on it. This one? The opposite. I'm calling it my Reduce, Reuse & Recycle Nano.
I just bought an Aquamedic Wave 9 gallon nano as a 'project' tank from a fellow member of my local reef club for $35. It had a few scratches, some after-market silicone on the back, and not the greatest light fixture. It was modified with a maxijet 400 return pump because the original gave out a long time ago. Not a beauty queen of a tank, by any stretch. It had been around the block a few times, passed from owner to owner. It might have soon wound up sitting forlornly in a dumpster somewhere in Denver. I wanted to see if maybe I could refurbish it into a gem of a nano that wouldn't suffer that sad fate for many years.
On the way home from picking up the tank, some clueless Petco employees who didn't know a black saddleback clown from a snowflake clown sent us home with an $80 fish for $13, and it inspired us. We decided to see how inexpensively I could both refurbish this nano and set up a mixed reef. I'm not going to track the expenditures as if I went out and bought everything new or new-to-me. Like anyone that's been in the hobby for a while, I have a lot of random reef gear sitting around. I wanted to see how little I could spend out of pocket to accomplish this "reduce, reuse & recycle" mission. Reduce = set up a smaller tank than I had ever had before, and keep it healthy and happy. Reuse = digging equipment out of storage to refurbish and upgrade the tank, to avoid buying things for it. Recycle = minimizing tank cycle time as much as possible, as well as growing out corals quickly so that I can frag them and either sell them or DBTC them so that fewer corals are harvested from the wild.
We immediately upgraded the return pump to a maxijet 900, added a nozzle thingie to the return tube, and cleaned it up. Then we looked 'under the hood' at the lights. One very tough decision with any tank build is lighting. There are a lot of options out there, most of them expensive. We opted to upgrade the existing CFLs to LEDs, but decided to do a DIY build to reduce expenses. Yes, Michael is helping me. A lot! I want to learn more about lighting and LEDs with this build. We gathered the following LED equipment: 19 3w led bulbs (10 royal blues, 7 whites, and 2 reds), a heatsink, 2 drivers from RapidLed, and a couple of small fans. Some of this was sitting in a box in my storage unit, some was ordered online.
Next up is getting the tank cycling, while we wait on some of the lighting parts to show up. I still have the old sand from tearing down my 125 (in a large pile in my side yard), and have decided to re-use that after a LOT of rinsing. I will also raid the sump on our main system for a couple of pieces of live rock for the display as well as rubble and macroalgae. I plan to put chaeto in the fuge compartment with the rubble, and put some halimeda in the display. "Steal" the clownfish is currently in QT, until I can get the nano up and running. I need to find her a mate and a nem, get some tank janitors, and decide what corals I'm going to put in it from our tanks.
Out of Pocket Expenses:
Tank: $35
Lighting: $56
"Steal" the snowflake clownfish: $13
Pair of blue line pipefish: $30
Harlequin shrimp: $25
Tailspot Blenny: $20
Coral & Nem Tally Sheet:
green star polyp frag: $10 (dbtc)
Ricordia Florida: $20 (from my tank = fmt)
Halimeda: $10 (fmt)
Candy cane (12 head - fmt): $60
Orange mushrooms (5 shroom colony - fmt): $50?
Alveopora frag (fmt): $30
Pinwheel zoa frag (fmt): $20
Japanese deepwater zoa frag (fmt): $20
Rose Bubbletip anemone: $30
Contest Total: $250
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I just bought an Aquamedic Wave 9 gallon nano as a 'project' tank from a fellow member of my local reef club for $35. It had a few scratches, some after-market silicone on the back, and not the greatest light fixture. It was modified with a maxijet 400 return pump because the original gave out a long time ago. Not a beauty queen of a tank, by any stretch. It had been around the block a few times, passed from owner to owner. It might have soon wound up sitting forlornly in a dumpster somewhere in Denver. I wanted to see if maybe I could refurbish it into a gem of a nano that wouldn't suffer that sad fate for many years.
On the way home from picking up the tank, some clueless Petco employees who didn't know a black saddleback clown from a snowflake clown sent us home with an $80 fish for $13, and it inspired us. We decided to see how inexpensively I could both refurbish this nano and set up a mixed reef. I'm not going to track the expenditures as if I went out and bought everything new or new-to-me. Like anyone that's been in the hobby for a while, I have a lot of random reef gear sitting around. I wanted to see how little I could spend out of pocket to accomplish this "reduce, reuse & recycle" mission. Reduce = set up a smaller tank than I had ever had before, and keep it healthy and happy. Reuse = digging equipment out of storage to refurbish and upgrade the tank, to avoid buying things for it. Recycle = minimizing tank cycle time as much as possible, as well as growing out corals quickly so that I can frag them and either sell them or DBTC them so that fewer corals are harvested from the wild.
We immediately upgraded the return pump to a maxijet 900, added a nozzle thingie to the return tube, and cleaned it up. Then we looked 'under the hood' at the lights. One very tough decision with any tank build is lighting. There are a lot of options out there, most of them expensive. We opted to upgrade the existing CFLs to LEDs, but decided to do a DIY build to reduce expenses. Yes, Michael is helping me. A lot! I want to learn more about lighting and LEDs with this build. We gathered the following LED equipment: 19 3w led bulbs (10 royal blues, 7 whites, and 2 reds), a heatsink, 2 drivers from RapidLed, and a couple of small fans. Some of this was sitting in a box in my storage unit, some was ordered online.
Next up is getting the tank cycling, while we wait on some of the lighting parts to show up. I still have the old sand from tearing down my 125 (in a large pile in my side yard), and have decided to re-use that after a LOT of rinsing. I will also raid the sump on our main system for a couple of pieces of live rock for the display as well as rubble and macroalgae. I plan to put chaeto in the fuge compartment with the rubble, and put some halimeda in the display. "Steal" the clownfish is currently in QT, until I can get the nano up and running. I need to find her a mate and a nem, get some tank janitors, and decide what corals I'm going to put in it from our tanks.
Out of Pocket Expenses:
Tank: $35
Lighting: $56
"Steal" the snowflake clownfish: $13
Pair of blue line pipefish: $30
Harlequin shrimp: $25
Tailspot Blenny: $20
Coral & Nem Tally Sheet:
green star polyp frag: $10 (dbtc)
Ricordia Florida: $20 (from my tank = fmt)
Halimeda: $10 (fmt)
Candy cane (12 head - fmt): $60
Orange mushrooms (5 shroom colony - fmt): $50?
Alveopora frag (fmt): $30
Pinwheel zoa frag (fmt): $20
Japanese deepwater zoa frag (fmt): $20
Rose Bubbletip anemone: $30
Contest Total: $250
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