Simple Nano

xellos88 · Jun 5, 2016

So, my reefer friend has somewhat recovered from his tank accident and setup a nano and now the extra LS are back in his tank. My LS still look pale/bleached from the mag drop during my vacation, but hopefully they'll get their color back with the new lights which I'm very pleased with. The briareum/GSP was very much affected by the mag drop....it still opens up but the polyps have no green in them and are much smaller.

Loving the minimal setup compared to my previous 2 x par38s.

xellos88 · Jun 11, 2016

So far, everyone's loving the prime. Though, I think the GSP is on it's way out.

I think it's just too bleached by whatever happened during my 2 week vacation. I'm going to be swapping the big yellow hammer coral with a smaller cristata and put it on the right rock to get the triangle in the scape back.

Clowns saying "Hello".

GSP still hanging in there, but I think it's on its way...

Bleached zoas recovering.

These zoas are happy though.

This yuma really loves the prime.

Candy cane is starting to get a little bit of purple back, but still looks bleached.

xellos88 · Jun 26, 2016

More changes to the tank, and dealing with a diatom bloom right now. I put the hermit crab back into the sea because it started eating my new cristata. Also started using my old skimmer to help with the diatom bloom.

After a thorough glass scraping and sand vacuum session.

Happy cristata/grape coral

new green pipe organ polyps

xellos88 · Jul 2, 2016

I may have bleached my orange zoas with the new lights. They continued being closed when the light intensity is at it's peak, but open up towards the end of the light cycle when it's not as intense. I've set it to acclimate for 2 months now starting at 50% intensity with the 18k color temp.

Progress / downward spiral pics since January this year:

Chrisfish · Jul 2, 2016

Hi! I'm sorry that your having some problems with your nano tank but I must tell you that I love the simplicity of your aquascaping it's very clean looking and your clown looks awesome in it. I apologize if you stated this but how many gallons is it? Thanks

xellos88 · Jul 2, 2016

Thanks @Chrisfish! I'm glad you noticed my effort with the scape. Hopefully I will be content that it's in its final form and just let things grow in. My problems are really self-inflicted. Things usually get better when I keep my hands off the tank.

Chrisfish · Jul 2, 2016

xellos88 said:
Thanks @Chrisfish! I'm glad you noticed my effort with the scape. Hopefully I will be content that it's in its final form and just let things grow in. My problems are really self-inflicted. Things usually get better when I keep my hands off the tank.

I am the same way , especially if I go to my lfs and they have just gotten in some awesome live rock that "I just have to have" it defeats the purpose . And I have to figure a trap out so that whenever I go to put my hands in my tank something pinches or shocks me so I don't do
It.

xellos88 · Jul 2, 2016

Chrisfish said:
Hi! I'm sorry that your having some problems with your nano tank but I must tell you that I love the simplicity of your aquascaping it's very clean looking and your clown looks awesome in it. I apologize if you stated this but how many gallons is it? Thanks

Oh, and it's 12 Gallons.

xellos88 · Jul 17, 2016

I recently adopted a similar damselfish from a fellow reefer and I like his color and personality. But, I completely forgot how they loved to dig! So, I was in a losing battle with brown cyano (or diatoms) for the past few weeks. My tank has a secret mistake, the sandbed is too shallow to be a DSB but deep enough to have some anoxic spots and is quite difficult to vacuum. I only vacuum the top layer out and I know there's a ton of poop just underneath from the "dust" I see after disturbing it. It would have been cool to do a thorough vacuum with the vacuum output to a filter sock on the sump, but I have no sump.

So, this weekend I went with the next best option. Completely rinse out my sandbed. >:] This was how I kept reef tanks when I was a teen, before the internet (mostly just fowlr though) but it's my first time to completely rinse out substrate with an established setup. Plus, I Novus'ed my acrylic tank in the process.

on-purpose blurry before-shot of the mess.

Started using my old resun sk-05 skimmer to help. It's ugly, but it works and unfortunately it's grown on me so I think I'll keep it. This is a week's worth of skimmate.

Placed the rocks and LS in a bucket.

After scooping out most of the sand.

Tank cleaned and Novus'ed

I will post after-shots once the leather opens up.

So far everything is going well. I rinsed the sand with tap water and I'm pretty sure half of its mass was detritus. Then, I added half of the rinsed sand back and put the rocks and LS and most of the old water back and added seachem prime to neutralize any chlorine from the tap. I also kept the sponge and didn't rinse out the bio media (denitrate) in my HOB filter to keep the bacteria.

xellos88 · Jul 24, 2016

1 week after the sand rinse. I got a diatom bloom on the sand, but no too horrible. Also, the leather is finally starting to open up.

xellos88 · Aug 6, 2016

Diatoms are still in full bloom so no FTS for now. But I did get a few new zoa frags and some macro.

xellos88 · Aug 6, 2016

Also

Chrisfish · Aug 6, 2016

Nice!

xellos88 · Aug 25, 2016

Updates:

The damselfish jumped. :| Sad, because it was the reason I rinsed my sandbed.
I started using a mini remote DSB instead of my cheap skimmer. The skimmer worked, but I got tired of the microbubbles and constant cleaning of the collection cup.
(very taboo) I adopted a small (around 3") and very bleached S.Gigantea anemone from a friend.

xellos88 · Aug 28, 2016

xellos88 · Oct 1, 2016

After much fiddling with the lights and the tank hating me for it, I've finally settled on a 19K easy setup setting at 70% intensity. S. Gigantea is recovering steadily and has a greenish tint that I can't quite capture. But its tentacles are still stubby. I'm hoping it's a green Gig but could be tan. My clownfish got a bacterial infection possibly from a bad batch of frozen food I made.

They haven't been feeding for 3 weeks and the male is only starting to respond to my continuous offers of pellet food but it's groggy and misses them and can't quite get any even with no flow. The female has popeye in one eye and refuses to eat but is still very territorial and bites whenever I put my hand in the tank to clean.

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