Stephers
Well-Known Member
Hey all! This 7g cube tank has been up for over 4 years now, but had a big transformation earlier this year.
It's always been geared towards having a mantis shrimp, but it started as a macroalgae tank. And that was fun and different after only doing corals for 15 years.
One year ago to the day, Hurricane Helene hit us hard here in South Carolina and nobody expected it'd be this bad (I'm 2.5 hours inland.) Unfortunately, I lost power for 4 days. My generator stop working, my power inverter came broken out of the box (I wish I was kidding), I couldn't find enough batteries to keep the air pumps going. It was terrible. I ended up getting a new power inverter, but I could only run so much and my big display tank took priority. This unfortunately led to the death of my beloved mantis shrimp who I had had for 2.5 years at that point.
Tank sat untouched for 4 months because I was depressed about it, and then I decided I wanted to get it ready for another mantis and pivot again. I wanted to do an NPS tank, a fun new challenge. I started out with the sun corals and balanophyllia in February this year and then went into the harder gorgonians down the road. It's pretty full now haha but I still keep an eye out for my wish list items and oddball things. A month ago, I was lucky enough to find a Smithii mantis and made a 5-hour round trip to pick the little guy up. He's doing great!
The biggest challenge is of course feeding and the nutrients that come with that.
I try to only feed live foods and that really helps. I broadcast 10mL of homegrown live phyto daily. It's a blend of 5 species.
I feed live BBS twice daily and target feed that to all the gorgonians.
The LPS are fed frozen mysis or brine every other day.
I also grow a lot of Apocylcops pods and will pour them in maybe once weekly. For whatever reason, this gets the most feeding response from everything in the tank. EVERYTHING opens completely whenever I pour the pods in.
I carbon dose vinegar to help with the nitrates and I dose Phos RX as needed for phosphate. I also do a 1.5g water change every week. I'm typically hovering around 20ppm nitrate and 0.25ppm phosphate.
The gorgonians and the soft corals (Chili and "Puppy paw") readily take up the BBS and you can see it in their polyps due to the orange color of the BBS. I saw many beautiful NPS tanks in the Chinese community that are mass dosing with BBS and having great success. I'm hatching about 1/2 Tablespoon of eggs at a time and refrigerating most of them upon hatching. This gives me about 3 days of food before I have to hatch more. Only hatching twice-ish a week is saving me a lot of time.
Here's the two finger gorgonian polyps full of BBS. Since their polyps are white, it's easier to see.
The light is a kessil 160 turned all the way down to right before it turns off. The PAR meter reads 10 at the top. This is great for the corals in there, especially the gorgonians. There has been zero algae of any kind. I only get a light coating of white on the glass, which I attribute to maybe the carbon dosing. I do have exactly one turbo snail in there and he's obviously eating something. I wanted one big snail who could maybe not be bothered by the mantis, and the mantis has so far shown him no interest. Fingers crossed!
I'm lucky that I work from home, and this tank is right next to my desk where I work. It brings me great joy. Here's some more miscellaneous pictures. Thanks for checking it out!
It's always been geared towards having a mantis shrimp, but it started as a macroalgae tank. And that was fun and different after only doing corals for 15 years.
One year ago to the day, Hurricane Helene hit us hard here in South Carolina and nobody expected it'd be this bad (I'm 2.5 hours inland.) Unfortunately, I lost power for 4 days. My generator stop working, my power inverter came broken out of the box (I wish I was kidding), I couldn't find enough batteries to keep the air pumps going. It was terrible. I ended up getting a new power inverter, but I could only run so much and my big display tank took priority. This unfortunately led to the death of my beloved mantis shrimp who I had had for 2.5 years at that point.
Tank sat untouched for 4 months because I was depressed about it, and then I decided I wanted to get it ready for another mantis and pivot again. I wanted to do an NPS tank, a fun new challenge. I started out with the sun corals and balanophyllia in February this year and then went into the harder gorgonians down the road. It's pretty full now haha but I still keep an eye out for my wish list items and oddball things. A month ago, I was lucky enough to find a Smithii mantis and made a 5-hour round trip to pick the little guy up. He's doing great!
The biggest challenge is of course feeding and the nutrients that come with that.
I try to only feed live foods and that really helps. I broadcast 10mL of homegrown live phyto daily. It's a blend of 5 species.
I feed live BBS twice daily and target feed that to all the gorgonians.
The LPS are fed frozen mysis or brine every other day.
I also grow a lot of Apocylcops pods and will pour them in maybe once weekly. For whatever reason, this gets the most feeding response from everything in the tank. EVERYTHING opens completely whenever I pour the pods in.
I carbon dose vinegar to help with the nitrates and I dose Phos RX as needed for phosphate. I also do a 1.5g water change every week. I'm typically hovering around 20ppm nitrate and 0.25ppm phosphate.
The gorgonians and the soft corals (Chili and "Puppy paw") readily take up the BBS and you can see it in their polyps due to the orange color of the BBS. I saw many beautiful NPS tanks in the Chinese community that are mass dosing with BBS and having great success. I'm hatching about 1/2 Tablespoon of eggs at a time and refrigerating most of them upon hatching. This gives me about 3 days of food before I have to hatch more. Only hatching twice-ish a week is saving me a lot of time.
Here's the two finger gorgonian polyps full of BBS. Since their polyps are white, it's easier to see.
The light is a kessil 160 turned all the way down to right before it turns off. The PAR meter reads 10 at the top. This is great for the corals in there, especially the gorgonians. There has been zero algae of any kind. I only get a light coating of white on the glass, which I attribute to maybe the carbon dosing. I do have exactly one turbo snail in there and he's obviously eating something. I wanted one big snail who could maybe not be bothered by the mantis, and the mantis has so far shown him no interest. Fingers crossed!
I'm lucky that I work from home, and this tank is right next to my desk where I work. It brings me great joy. Here's some more miscellaneous pictures. Thanks for checking it out!
Seems to be working. I could really see the small number of polyps out tonight catch and ingest the shrimp. You can see that in the closeup pic.
