Shallow 21 Gal Reef Tank Build From A Beginner

[mh0ward]

Well the tank is maturing a little more each day! One of the inhabitants finally made a snack of the Cerith eggs and I ended up adding a cleaner shrimp.

I'm really glad I did too, because he set up his station right up front and has been fun to watch. The only other inhabitants I plan to add outside of any corals are the Pom Pom crab, a Tiger Conch, and maybe a few dwarf blue leg hermit crabs. Definitely no more fish though, everyone in there is getting along really well and seem happy and I dont want to risk that changing or getting crowded.

The female clown had me a little worried a couple times over the past week as she would sometimes lay really still on the sand bed next to the heater. And yesterday, she had developed a discolored spot on her side, right around where the tip of the heater might touch her where she would lay. They really love that heater for some reason and sleep near it every night, so I thought maybe she was getting a bit of heat exhaustion and the spot was maybe a slight burn. So I ended up pulling the heater a bit further out of the water and placed a piece of dry rock under it last night to hopefully discourage them from sleeping right under or against it.

This seems to have worked, or at least helped, because she is acting normal today and the spot on her side is nearly gone. The YWG and pistol shrimp have also gotten more comfortable in there and have started to show themselves more, even coming out of their cave right up front.

And finally, whatever that algae is certainly isn't nuisance algae because it is growing super slow.... but it is still growing

 

[Patx]

Looking good.
Anyway those white rock ain't gona stay withe for ever

 

[soarer209]

Following for inspo! Wanna make a nano shallow

 

[mh0ward]

Nighttime shot!

 

[mh0ward]

In keeping with the clean/minimalist look, I 3D printed a cage to hold a backup battery for the wave maker that hangs under the desk and should get around 24hrs of continuous runtime.

And to my surprise, when I stopped by the LFS today just to look around, I found out that the Pom Pom crab that I'd ordered had come in!

Given that they can be pretty reclusive, we were also surprised to have already been able to see it in the tank several times this afternoon.

 

[mh0ward]

Well, this afternoon I had to make the decision to remove the Pom Pom Crab after watching it stalk/prey upon my cleaner shrimp. Although most sources I saw say that the Pom Pom Crab is very peaceful, I had seen some people mention that theirs had gotten aggressive, which seemed uncommon. However, I felt that if I had left it in there, the cleaner shrimp would have probably been gone by morning. I've also seen others with the "uncommon" aggressive Pom Poms mention that they've seen theirs kill their Clownfish, among other things. In order to get it out, I had to remove the rock it was hiding in, which basically took up half the tank.

I was surprised at just how much greener the rock looked outside of the water vs in. After the crab left its hiding spot in the rock so that I could remove it, I cleared out the sand so that I could place the rock back on the glass, then moved the sand to fill back in. This made a very cloudy mess that I'm sure will probably clear up by morning. But in the meantime, hopefully it didn't stress the fish out too much. I uploaded a short video of the encounter to YouTube since it was too large to upload here.



It's not shown in the video, but I watched the crab sneak its way from the back of the tank to the front, trying to hide in the rocks along the way, in order to try and sneak up on the shrimp.

 

[LaloJ]

Are you running this tank only with your Vortech mp10? It looks pretty clean and minimalist with small fish, I like it.

 

[mh0ward]

Are you running this tank only with your Vortech mp10? It looks pretty clean and minimalist with small fish, I like it.

So far yes, and I'm hoping to keep it that way. I really like the clean/minimalist look and so far it seems to be working well. I would consider the tank mostly stocked, outside of corals/zoas, with the exception of maybe a few more snails to keep up with algae and other cleanup. That said, I know that the fish and inverts will grow a bit and that there's a chance that over time I may need to make some adjustments. I have looked into possibly getting a compact skimmer (something like a Tunze 9004) to run for short periods around water change times if the need arises. But its definitely not something I would want hanging in the tank all the time. I've also looked at possibly adding some attractive macro algae if the nitrates/phosphates ever start to become a problem. We'll see though, and I'll keep the thread updated with any progress or issues!

 

[mh0ward]

A little update, after pulling the pom pom crab, I picked up a few nassarius snails.

Tiger conch should be in sometime this coming week to help with the sand bed. I also 3D printed a small cage for the MP10 so that, if the need ever arises, I can use it to filter larger particles just while blasting rock with the baster or general cleaning.

I haven’t tried it out yet, and haven’t really needed to, but if that turns out not to restrict flow too much, I may also look at printing a cage for a thin layer of finer filter to trap smaller particles over brief periods while cleaning. So far none of that has been an issue, but mostly prepping for growth, more feeding, etc. while trying to keep the clean/minimalist look.

And finally, for the first time, I spotted something red growing on a spot in the rock work. It is still pretty small, so it’s hard for me to tell yet if it might be Cyanobacteria or algae, but I’ll definitely be watching it closely over the next few days.

The red growth is just to the right of the snail, basically center of the pic.

 

[mh0ward]

After some more reading and looking the rock work over more, I think I may have (or had) some coralline that was getting too much light. The reason I think this is because there is white 'frosting' looking stuff on the rock work in places that I originally thought was probably sand particles that got blown around and landed there. However, there is more of that stuff now, and does not blow off with the baster. I also spotted a small purple spot this morning for the first time, probably because I started looking a lot closer .

For now, I've turned down the intensity of the red, green, and cool white channels more, as well as dropped the overall intensity to see if it helps. If the lights were set at a level that would bleach coral, then I have a ridiculous amount of 'overhead'! Current lighting settings (2 AI Prime HDs):

 

[mh0ward]

Question for everyone - I’ve had these Trochus snails for 5-6 weeks now, and at the time when I got them, I didn’t know what this purple fuzz on their shells was. Now after having them, I think it may be purple turf algae or similar?

So far I don’t see it growing anywhere in the tank, so I was wondering what you all would do with it? Try to scrape it all off their shells? Leave it? Also I’m pretty sure they both have some purple coralline on them as well, should I scrape that inside the tank to get the spores to spread? Thanks!

 

[Patx]

y ou can try, scratch, brush...
and probably dip "JUST THE SHELL!" in peroxyde 3% for 5-10 sec.... brush... dip... brush...

Or live with the algae later on the rock... (it's not that bad)
Part of the ecosystem here...

 

[mh0ward]

Well there’s been a lot going on in the tank since the last post. A few weeks ago, I got a conch to help clean up the sand.

I also ended up getting some cyano on the sand, which I’ve read is almost inevitable in a new tank at some point. It hadn’t gotten bad yet, but it did prompt me to go ahead and get a little Aquaclear 20 HOB that I’ll run maybe once a month during one of the cleanings/water change days to help clear out any ditritus built up. I also went ahead and got a jar of copepods and phytoplankton from Algae barn to seed the tank and help clean up as well.

Some of what I had originally thought might be a red coralline growing in the rocks turned out to be some cyano, which blew off the rocks with a baster. However, there were a few, pretty small purplish fuchsia colored spots that are definitely coralline. After seeing those few spots (all the same color) and not spreading really at all, I decided to go ahead and get the pink fusion and purple helix coralline in a bottle. That was about a week ago, and my rock work already has red and deep purple chickenpox.

Last night, I also saw a few fluorescent neon pink spots on one of my Trochus snails. Speaking of Trochus snails….

Babies! I never even saw eggs for these things. So far I’ve counted probably 20, but the more I look the more I find. I’m guessing there’s going to end up being at least 100!

 

[Patx]

Take a look at

collonista - Google Search

 

[mh0ward]

Another quick update….

Unfortunately I lost my blenny a couple of weeks ago. He got really skinny rather quickly and eventually died a short while later. Because of how quickly it happened, I suspected parasites, and the next day found nematodes in my clownfish’s stool. I have a couple other threads specific to this, but basically I was able to siphon the white stringy poo (a few different times) before it even had a chance to hit the sand, and there were indeed worms in the stool under microscope each time.

After seeing this, I moved the clownfish to a separate tank with new saltwater (Sunday) so that they could be treated. Treatment won’t be here till Friday, but to my surprise, so far they have not had any worms in their stool in the QT/HT. I’m guessing that with nematodes in the original tank (apparently extremely common), maybe they were “drinking” them, and they ended up passing through their digestive systems similar to food, rather than parasite? The worms
were still alive though, so I’m not sure. Either way, I’m going to watch them for a few more days before deciding to treat for nematodes, and if they still don’t show worms by the end of the week, I’ll likely move them back to the main tank.

So that has been the downside over the past couple of weeks, so now for the positives. First, the coralline has spread quite a bit. Nowhere near full coverage or anything, but definitely spreading well with some dark purple and some lighter red coralline.

And probably more interesting (to me anyway)… the baby trochus snails are growing and are EVERYWHERE!