The 10 gallon makeshift nano

Andrewalex11 · Jun 26, 2017

Whatsup nano-reefers! I hope everyone who was able to make it to reef-a-palooza New Jersey made it home safe with some new aquatic friends! I know I did!

Some went all out, and purchased hundreds of dollars worth of corals for me I spent $70 and came home with what I consider a really good haul for me !

Also learned a lot from some really great people and met our fearless leader @revhtree and his R2R team.

Also if y'all want to know where these corals came from I have no idea I waited until about 5:00 and ran around the place for all the good end of the day bargains!

I do apologize for Joque (my Shrimp) he's overly friendly with everyone and everything so when I take pictures he tends to get in the way!

Also I'll probably upload a repeat later the 3 hour ride home from Long Island really stressed out the Blastos and frogspawn so they are not really open right now.

Photo-credits to my iPhone for poor quality photos as usual!

Andrewalex11 · Jun 28, 2017

So a few things chemically and routinely have changed in my home aquaria here.

1.) My Alk was low the following days after dropping a 5 frag coral haul (mostly LPS). So me being the prepared reefer that I am kept 2 Part Calcium and Alk in my equiptment unopened . Also I test my Alk almost everyday...yes...yes I do. It's really simple using the Red Sea test kit (my favorite) I actually prefer it over Hannah due to the fact that at the same time I can get a pH reading in 10 seconds flat with the same kit. Aside from that I decided to crawl into dosing with adding just 1ml of Alk a day (My Calcium reads 440+ everyday so I don't need to supplement that).

2.) New feeding schedule and so far everything loves it! I got my hands on some Rod's food, and managed to cultivate a decent amount of Pods. My clownfish definitely likes the new food better than just plain mysis although I will switch things up and still feed him his regular mysis, pellets, and flakes. I went from a once a day feed to an every other day feed, this helped a lot when the inverts and my clown eat they really clean up good because they are hungry and this also has seemed to have helped with some algae and water clarity for sure. On the off days of feeding the inverts I'm beginning to get serious with target feeding my corals. I noticed a difference overall with everything with this new feeding schedule.

3.) My lighting has finally been adjusted to the sweet spot. I run 12 full hours of blues at max intensity (which isn't that crazy powerful for my lighting system). And only 5 hours of whites/up at 10% intensity with the blues still on full blast. Everything has really colored up nicely under whites and blues.

Some more iPhone photos!

The first one is actually one I picked up in the recent haul but wasn't looking too hot after the ride home the frag had broke in half, one half died and the other has really opened up nicely and has proven me wrong in many ways so far!

will0wtr33 · Dec 6, 2017

Really happy I found this thread. Starting a 10 gallon nano myself, just got the rock in and I'm getting ready to start cycling.
I've got a 10g rectangular tank
Aquaclear 50 with sponge, chemipure blue and floss
Jager 50w heater
Hydor 240gph powerhead
And sb reef lights 16 inch LED
About 9 or 10 lbs of live cured pukani
Adding a 2 inch sand bed with live sand tomorrow

My first saltwater set up. Really excited.

Andrewalex11 · Dec 6, 2017

Nice! I'm really glad you found my documentation useful!

count krunk · Dec 7, 2017

If your heater is still set to 81, I would turn that down to 78 ASAP. Vast majority of reef dwellers prefer the mid to high 70s with some wanting low to mid 70s. Many people buy expensive and costly chillers to bring their tanks down from 81 to 78 haha.

Other than that, tank is looking great!

SebastianM · Jan 8, 2020

Happy I found this thread, as I am currently building a 10 gallon nano myself. This has to be one of the most helpful and well documented postings I could find when it comes to a 10 gallon setup.