Danno's Nanos And Pico Journal

[Danno]

Well my tank has been on a rollercoster with the dKH and calcium changing. Today I finally got it under control and my corals decised to thank me for coming out finally! Horrah they aren't going to die! Now I can think of adding even more corals now I was looking around DF&S today looking for items to improve my tank with. That place is like a kid in a candy shop for me. I came across a few interesting products on the market.

C-Balance Since I have test kits for the minerals included in the concoction it might be a good idea. Just seeing if anyone has used this item with success.

Powerhead Magnet I just thought this was just plain cool. I like gadgets

I've finally noticed the TINY TINY amount of coral-line algae on my astrea snails this morning along with some more growth on the rocks that the coral came on. I'm guessing that this is the first step of creating a mother colony.

I've also notices my rocks getting greener. I don't think it is nusence algae. It is really hard, nothing that you could ever scratch off. I'm guessing it is a calcium based coating. I also noticed green deposites on my glass starting at the bottom going upwards. I didn't like the way it looked so I scratched it off with an algae brush. Then I smacked my head thinking that it might be the start of some coral line algae? I want that crap to grow so badly. I like the look of it a LOT.


The tank when I moved it from school to home: (before)

Here is the shot of the tank. The lights were off so the corals aren't out. Yay progess

Also i've been curing a half pound piece of ocean rock in my tank so it will be live rock. In the first shot I showed you in this post you can see the rock on the right side half buried. Here is the progess on the rock so far

I even spotted some surpulid worms on the back side of the rock.

 

[SLC Flyfishing]

I was just reading this and noticed that you have started out with the exact two coral species that I started out with!

Mind have been doing excellently, a few zooanthid polyps have begun sprouting up elsewhere in the tank, and the GSP colony has nearly quadrupled in size!

Do you have lunar LED night lights? Mine are blue and they really give these corals a neat glow at night.

SLC

 

[SkiFletch]

Lookin good there Danno. Beware overheating in the summer months with that glass canopy on there

 

[Danno]

SLC: Mine are doing the same thing . I fragged my GSP today. MY FIRST FRAG . I was able to split the GSP in a very large hunk and 4 smaller pieces that I hope will be able to become sister colonies. I love this coral, one of my favorites.

SkiFletch: I actually ran into that already . I came home from work the one day and my tank was at 83 degrees. Luckily nothing looked like it was hurting from it but I downed my heater 25 watts by switching in and out the heater. I bought an air conditioner for my room last year so that will come in handy with the overheating. Man I need that thing installed. It's getting into the humid season .

I bought a bunch of stuff this weekend for the tank:

• 5 pounds of fully cured florida live rock.
• 1 pound piece of live rock with 2 cool looking mushroom corals on it.
• Firefish.
• Chemi-pure, Purigen, PhosGuard, Part one and two for calcium dosing.
• Small feather duster for free .

I re-aquascaped my tank and I think it looks better. The fully cured live rock is amazing in the lines of quality. I think eventually i'm going to trade in and out the new kind of live rock for my old kind. The stuff I got from my last trip is insane. Jaque my peppermint shrimp is missing though. I looked over every piece of live rock too. It's almost like it poofed and was never to be seen again. I think he is gone for good . I haven't seen him in 3 days.

Here are the new pictures of my tank. The GSP aren't out because they were just fragged a couple minutes ago.

One of the new rocks:

The other new rock:

Zoos:

Mushroom:

Firefish:

Oh no he found me!!!

Tank:

Sorry about the water clarity. I just dosed for calcium and it makes the tank cloudy.

If anyone has some suggestions on what I should do next please say so!

 

[BigC]

If anyone has some suggestions on what I should do next please say so!

I would be looking perhaps at a nice centre piece coral between those two central outcrops, species such as a Toadstool Leather (Sarcophyton sp.)
or
Finger Coral (Sinularia sp.) would look stunning.
Regards
BigC
Only my opinion.

 

[mcdanielnc89]

man....... this s a great thing. IMHO i t should be #1.2. pinned. HAHAHAHA. it's fantastic..

 

[Danno]

Well I have officially declaired Jaque a victim of

BigC that sounds like a good idea. I hope this weekend my LFS will have some in.

 

[mcdanielnc89]

You should do a sump. could possibly give ya more room. and let ya have more fish . heheeh. IMO.

 

[atmmachine816]

Looks good, it would be pretty cool if you could put another tall piece in front of the filter output place Hope to see some more corals.

 

[Danno]

Corals will hopefully be added every Saturday. The tank is looking much better now that everything is blooming from the harse weekend of moving everything around and fragging. ATM, that sounds like a good idea, i'll grab another piece of live rock again this weekend to cover everything up.

mcdanielnc89, I can't go with a sump. Their is no place to put it.

I am going to tank better pictures of my tank later on; but, for now here is a picture of my firefish:

 

[mcdanielnc89]

Very coool. Too bad you don't have a place for a sump. I hear they're very handy..

I'm getting ready to order me a saltwater fish book to learn as much as I can about it so I can start me up a SW tank.

 

[atmmachine816]

Ya just point the nozle to flow about the same way but try to cover it up a bit. Nice fish

 

[Danno]

My refractometer arived! Only took four days to go from Honk Kong to the middle of nowhere Rensselaerville. Impressive I must say

Here it is:

It is all calibrated now. Tank is reading at 1.025. I guess I wasn't doing a bad job reading the hydrometer after all!

I am going to do a tank overview soon with before and after summaries. Should be done tomarrow or today if I find some time.

 

[atmmachine816]

Cool looks exactly like my marinedepot one.

 

[Danno]

Alright, the summary of what the tank has gone through...

My nano reef has been running now for 72 days (as of this post) and had gone through many changes in that short period of time. My original plans where to create a salt water tank for my first time. The idea grew. On April 1st I set up a 10 gallon salt water nano tank. When I set this up there was about a month and a half left of college remaining. The tanks origins started in my dorm room at college. After awhile I came upon a conclusion that I was going to expand my tank and create a nano reef and opted to not move the tank as it would put too much of a strain on it and to keep it at home. On April 9th my tank was cycled (pretty quick if you ask me). I added one blue Damsel. He was a pretty cool fish. On April 26th I sold him back to the pet store seeing that I wanted to start my real ideas. On May 2nd I added my clean up crew. I added them later then I thought because of insufficient funding. The order came from liveaquaria.com and included: Four Red-Tip Hermit Crabs, One Peppermint Shrimp, One Hawaiian Feather duster, Two Margarita Snails, Two Nassarius Snails, Two Cerith Snails. I have been building up my clean up crew ever since I got the initial shipment. I have a bunch more of each kind. On May 7th I hit my 15 pound live rock “qâ€￾. Throughout this process I have learned one hard lesson: Never purchase fish in a crappy store, they are of low quality and have parasites. You get what you pay for. On May 17th my ten gallon tank was broken down and my 20 gallon was st up. On the 19th of May my finals were completed (thank god they were a pain last semester) and I was able to make the trip from Cobleskill (where I go to college) to my house. It was about a 40 minute trip but I was lucky enough to have some Styrofoam containers to traveling. On May 20th I was able to get my first coral (yay). At that time I also upgraded my lighting because the previous light couldn't stretch across my tank. My first two corals were green and red Zooanthids and a 1x2 batch of Green Star Polyps. Over time I have added more and more corals and live rock. The live rock that I am getting now from another local fish dealer (not the one that I was doing business with at school) is much better then the stuff I had. Added some mushrooms and such and that is where I am at today! I did lose my Jaque my Peppermint shrimp though. He was really cool....Lots of changes, but through out all of this I devoted myself to do at least 2 hours of researching everyday on marine and reef environments. My favorite research fuel so far are books and this forum.

Tank overview:
Twenty Gallons
3.5 watts per gallon (50/50 bulbs)
21 pounds of live rock
20 pounds of live sand
Salinity- 1.025
Whisper 10 with PhosGuard
Fluval 204 with Carbon and Purigen

Corals:
4 Colonies of GSP
Green Zooanthids
Red Zooanthids
2 Maroon bumpy Mushrooms
1 Magenta Mushroom

Fish:
1 Firefish (aka Dartfish)
1 Peculera Clownfish
1 Reef Chromis

Invertebrates:

4 Red-Tipped Hermit Crabs
1 Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
1 Hawaiian Feather Duster
3 Margarita Snails
7 Nassarius Snails (babies on the sand bed)
3 Cerith Snails
3 Astreas Snails
1 Scarlet Hermit Crab
1 plain feather duster

Hitchhikers:

Amphipods
Feather dusters
Ball Sponges (very small)
Barnacles
Hair Worm
Halimeda
Chaetomorpha
Kelp
Unidentified Clam thing

Pictures:

Before & After

Tank Surrounding:

I am currently making a stand for my reef to raise it to eye level. I'll keep you all updated.

Fish:

That seems it for now. I will continue to update the journal. This actually helps keep me organized!