RRIII 7g Office Floating Ledge Reef

[Reginald Reefer III]

Hello!

This is going to be a thread to document the restart of my 7g office nano which was my first 'reef' a couple of years ago. In that time, I have added a 20g mixed reef in my office and a ~105g SPS reef in the family living room.

20g Office Tank (On the other side of my desk)

~105g Living Room Reef
Build thread is here: LINK

The reason I'm restarting the 7g nano is entirely impart to having an INSANE outbreak of aiptasia and not being able to control it. It spread like wildfire and I decided I wanted to start over and build something that caught my eye online - a floating ledge reef that looks suspended above the sandbed similar to this.

Equipment
TANK - 7g Tideline Cube (12"x12"x12")
LIGHTING - Kessil A80 TunaBlue
FILTER - Oase Biomaster Thermo 250 w/ Lily Tubes
FLOW - Jebao SLW-5
PROTEIN SKIMMER - Aqua Ready Bullet 1 HOB
HEATER - Integrated into the filter
ATO - FZone Laser ATO connected to 5g container
DOSING - Kamoer X1 Pro w/ All For Reef
TESTING - Hanna Alk/NO3/PO4, Salifert Cal/Mag
CONTROLS - None other than some smart plugs to easily turn things on/off.

Stocking List
Fish
1x Yasha Shrimp Goby
1x Green Banded Goby
1x Tailspot Blenny
3x Masked Goby

All of the fish remain very small and should do well with the layout.

Coral
Mainly LPS/Softies with a couple of easy SPS and RFA's thrown in. I will update this section as I purchase the corals.

Office Layout

Live Rock
20lbs from Gulf Live Rock with LR rubble in the canister filter

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

Building the Floating Ledge

I used 1/4" acrylic for this and created an 'L' shape by bending it with a heat gun. I also drilled 2 large holes in it to let flow up through the bottom of the rock structure as well as a passage for the fish/inverts into the rocks. I then used aquarium silicone and bonded the glass and the acrylic together and let it sit under compression for 2 days.

Tank in place with mock-up of filter inlet/outlet

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

Filter Location

The canister filter will be under and to the side of my desk inside of a tub to help with any water drips. Silicone tubing will be routed up through the desk and onto the lily pipes. All of the piping/electrical will be secured in place with straps. I plan on adding a valve on the pump outlet to help dial back some of the flow.

I'm still waiting for a couple of replacement filter gaskets and other odds/ends before it progresses any further.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

Going to be a fun build! I plan on finishing up the plumbing and electrical this weekend and putting in an order to GLR next week!

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

11/15/25 - Finished Plumbing + Electrical

Spent a couple of hours today finishing up the plumbing going from the tank to the Oase filter + all of the electrical. Wire management is tough with so little room and no good place to put the excess! I might need to also rearrange things more as there really isn't many spots to put things along the edges.

Tomorrow will be a 'wet' test run to see how well I can regulate the flow coming from the Oase 250.

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

SUCCESS!

Tank runs dead quiet and has the perfect amount of flow. The elbows + valves made dialing it in a breeze. I'm going to start getting the salinity stable at 1.026sg and adding live sand. I decided to use Caribsea Special Grade so that the sand grains are larger and not prone to blow around. Next week is a live rock purchase from @Gulf Live Rock to get the fun started!

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

11/19/25 - Live Rock Arrival!

Received 20lbs of @Gulf Live Rock today. All of the rocks are COVERED with life, from Macro Algae to numerous corals. TBD on how much of it survives the next couple of weeks, but what an amazing start this will be! I plan on letting it cook for a couple of days like this, observe, and wait for the critters to come out before working on the final aquascape. I have a feeling a bunch of this will join the 3 big pieces already in the canister filter.

If anybody is looking for Live Rock straight from the source, @Gulf Live Rock is amazing!

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

11/21/25
Good news - WOW tons of life on this rock. It has definitely been sitting in the ocean for awhile! Lots of sponges, tunicates, gorgonians, algaes, and small corals. It's really neat looking at everything with a flashlight and seeing everything alive. The Bullet1 Protein Skimmer is already pulling lots of gunk too. Really cool little skimmer that fits this size of tank perfectly.

Bad news - I have come to the conclusion that I will need to purchase some dry rock to create a base on the floating ledge in order to get some of these pieces to fit right. I don't want to break up the actual live rock, so this scape is just temporary to let the rock cook in place until I get some marco rock in. Biggest problem was trying to conceal the edge of the acrylic. Second problem was creating any kind of scape with only large chunks of rock. I placed 3 big pieces of rock that looked the most devoid of life in the canister filter, but I may end up taking a look at those again to see if they fit once I get the marco rock in place.

I think this is a barrel sponge of some kind. It's definitely alive as there is a hole in the end of it and it is soft to the touch. There are a couple of cup corals attached to it and lots of sponges around it. If anybody knows exactly what kind of sponge it is, that would be helpful!

Large Oyster on one of the rocks

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

11/23/25 - Scape Complete
Went to my LFS 2 days ago and rummaged through their giant bin of misc dry rock and came back with ~10 pounds. It's exactly the same dry rock as marco rock. I also purchased some marco mortar and went to town on creating the edge of the ledge in order to cover up the acrylic plate as much as possible. I used aquarium silicone to attach all of the ledge rocks to the acrylic plate and let that cure for 24 hours. The next day, I started placing the live rock with marco rocks mortar to the first layer of dry rock to try and create something that resembles a reef wall in a 7g tank. Not easy to do as I quickly found out! Roatan was my primary inspiration in what I was going for during my many dives on the walls there.

The final result has A LOT of negative space inside the rock structure, but still looks really similar to a wall. There are 2 large holes in the bottom with plenty of space for flow and access up and a good amount of space in the front to place any kind of coral in the sand.

Thoughts?

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

12/3/25 - First Additions

Tank had about a 3 day mini-cycle and after that everything pointed to good to go! I made a couple of purchases at my LFS for the tank during their black friday sale and so far so good. I also had some other acans that are in my 2 other tanks that I will slowly be adding. 1 REALLY neat addition that came with the live rock is what appears to be a Trachy of some type. I don't think it's a Rose Coral, but I could be mistaken!

Here is the current stock:

Coral
1x Yellow Feather Duster
1x Uranium Bounce Shroom
1x Sunkist Bounce Shroom
1x Maui Wowwie Shroom
1x Jawbreaker Shroom (Orange)
1x Candy Crush Shroom (DETACHED AND IS LOST IN ROCKWORK )
1x Rainbow Acan
1x Blue/Red Acan

Inverts
1x Strawberry Conch
5x Nassarius


I'll be soon purchasing the fish as well as more coral and inverts. Here are the fish I have decided to go with:

1x Tailspot Blenny
1x Green Banded Goby
1x Yasha Shrimp Goby

I plan on also adding more CUC/inverts as well as 5x Sexy Shrimp once I get the fish and more coral in the tank. Bottom of the tank plan is for a couple of RFA's in the sand bed.

Thanks for looking!

Lots of tranparent tentacles/worms all over the rock. Lots of feather dusters also.

 

[Bigseareef15]

Woah that's a crazy leather coral can you show a picture of just that

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

It's a Rhodactis Bounce Mushroom the size of a chihuahua lol :)

I may move it out of that tank soon as it's really big.

 

[Reginald Reefer III]

JULY 2026
It's been awhile since I have updated this tank! It's doing really well and is now home to 10 sexy shrimp, a dracula goby and a hitchhiker green mantis shrimp. I have also included a bunch of RFA's, rhodactis shrooms, a doughboy shroom that is making babies all over the place, and other sponges/neat hitchhiker corals like a cup coral and tons of feather dusters. The fish is never seen, the mantis sticks to the rock work and the sexy shrimp stick to the RFA's. It's very stable and I plan on adding more bounce shrooms as well as acans to fill it up.

 

[beardedman11]

Wow! Tank looks amazing. Love nano tanks and how they can look so full with a limited amount of coral. Following along.