Nano Journal

[Fish Fingers]

Hello all.

After meddling with marine tanks for half a year or so I've decided to set up another tank. This tank is a 70L octagonal tank. I got it, a heater, light and an eheim 2008 filter for $8 at a church fete! I'm planning to start it off as a FOWLR then upgrade to a more reefy like thing when I have more money and once I'm done stocking my three foot with corals.

26/11/05
Bought 4 kilos of LR and 15kgs of crushed marble. After many hours of washing the marble I got about as clean as I was gonna get it. I let the filter clean out the rest of the gunk. I've set the rock to make a kind of arc or a U shape. Tank smells like &*%$ due to the uncured LR, hopefully it wont stink for too long. I'm using NSW as I live fairly close to the beach (40 mins or so away) so its the best option as I also dont have enough money to continually buy synthetic. This is working fine for my 3ft so I'm not expecting any problems.

Spec so far are:

Tank:
70L Octagon

Turnover:
About 11x turnover from a little powerhead(500l/h) and the eheim filter (300l/h). I want to aim for about 15x turnover so I'll probably be getting a new powerhead soon.

Filteration:
Atm I've got 4 kilos(@ $10 per kilo) of uncured LR and about 1-2 kilos of Base rock. I'm not going to use mechanical filteration as from past experiences its only caused problems and been too much trouble.

Lighting:
Just a single 2ft 18w fluro. Planning to upgrade to T5's when I'm ready to add corals.

Substrate:
15kg of crushed marble. About a 7cm deep sand bed.

Heating:
Single 100w heater (came with tank)

Planned stocklist:
Firefish
Coral goby of some kind
Not sure what else can go in a tank of this size, maybe a yellow wrasse or royal gramma? If someone could tell me if these fish would be ok I'd greatly appreciate it!

Am getting 2 more kilos of LR tommorrow and maybe some more depending on how much money I have. I am planning to have about 10kg of rock in the tank once I'm done. This should be ample for a tank this size. I'll be doing weekly 10% w/c's and am going to run the tank skimmerless. With xmas soon this tank should be up and running by the new year so fingers crossed.

Some Piccies:

Tank once I'd just put the sand in.

Where it's positioned in my room.

Tank after a few hours. It's pretty clear now.

Thanks,
Fish Fingers.

 

[steelhealr]

Just curious..why crushed marble? SH

 

[Fish Fingers]

27/11/05
Bought 4 more kilos of LR today. Coz I’ve got to much I cant make my little U shape anymore but oh well . The guy at the LFS was very helpful, he searched their whole liverock tank and found me the best pieces . I won't be adding anymore LR, now all I need to do is wait for the tank to cycle. The tank is still smelling bad but I’ve sort of gotten used to is, I just hope it will cycle fast so the stench will go away!

Some quick stats are:
Ammonia: 1ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm

Looks like I'm on my way then, hopefully I'll spot some cool critters in the LR .

More Piccies:

Tank with the extra LR.

Hitchhiker that luckily fell out of my LR before I put it in the tank. If anyone could ID it that would be great (doesnt look very reef safe to me though).

Just curious..why crushed marble? SH

Mainly because its a cheap substitute for coral sand. As long as it buffers the PH it should do fine .

 

[Fish Fingers]

Hello all again!

I've come back from a holiday at the beach to find my tank has cycled nicely and algae is starting to appear.

Paras are:
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 20ppm
PH: 8.3
S.G: 1.027

Ill be doing a waterchange soon and adding some nerite snails I got when I was at the beach. I've everyone to only give me money for xmas so that I can spend it all on fishies . One present I know I'm already getting however is an aquaclear 50 (formally aquaclear 200) and I'll be getting rid of the eheim 2008. This means I'll have about 18x turnover and also in the future can turn the HOB filter into a mini fuge which will be good! I might lower the salinity before I put the fish in as it doesnt need to be so high as I'm only gonna be keeping fish atm. Otherwise theres not really any other news. The LR I got is pretty boring actually, the only hitchhikers I got was 1 little snail, some pesky aiptasia and a couple of zoos that havent opened up. Oh well that doesnt matter though.

Until next time...

Fish Fingers

 

[Mr Miagi]

Nice looking tank. Its a good looking set-up. You should do a tank journal on RTAW, . If you havnt already!

 

[Fish Fingers]

Thanks Miagi!

I might do a journal on RTAW....if I can be bothered . Maybe once I get some money to stock it so it doesn't look boring .

 

[Fish Fingers]

The nano tank is being put on hold as I've had an outbreak of ich in my main tank. I'm gonna keep it on standby incase i need to use it for quarentining.

 

[Fish Fingers]

21/12/05

Got some red handed shrimp (palaemon serenus) from some rock pools at the beach. Apparently they are quite useful as part of the clean up crew. I'm not sure if they will kill each other, I thought they would have, but I've heard of people keeping a lot in the same tank so we will see how it goes. I've got about 8 in there I think, though I've only seen two sinece i put them in.

I'll post some piccies of them later.

 

[Fish Fingers]

Got my first fish today. It's a Nemateleotris decora (or Purple firefish if you want to get technical ). They are such cute fish I just couldn't resist getting one. He's hiding atm so there will be no pics for today but I'll try to get some over the next couple of days, and I'll get some pics of my shrimps, snails and new filter as well!

In about a week I'll be adding a Assessor flavissimus (yellow assessor) and maybe either something small like a Gobiodon prolixus (coral goby) or a some type of blenny. I'd like an Ecsenius Midas (midas blenny) but they are pretty expensive (around $55 although my firefish was $70) so maybe I'll get something cheaper.

Hope you al have a good christmas and get lots of fishy goodies .

P.S Don't mind all the scientific names, I'm trying to memorise them all so I'll sound more knowledgeable when I'm talking to people about my tanks B)

 

[steelhealr]

Wow..purple firefish is $19 here. I would add the yellow assesor last. Although small, they can be territorial. SH

 

[Fish Fingers]

Yeah thats what I thought SH! Even with the currency conversion its still very pricy. But it is the only one I've seen for a while, I haven't seen it in any Aus online stores or in any LFS's where I live so I snatched it up!

Thanks for the heads up on the assessor!

 

[Fish Fingers]

Got some pictures of my stock:

Firefish pic 1

Firefish pic 2

Firefish pic 3

Snails and what looks to be a chiton. I've circled him because he doesnt look like anything in the photo. He can change colour though as he was brown the other day and now he's pink!

One of my many shrimp. These guys are so cool to watch when I feed them! They all come out (i have around 8 i think) and launch themselves of the rock towards peices of food, eat the food mid air, then land on the glass and do the same thing again. It's like something from the matrix lol.

I'm planning to go get a coral goby in the next few days or so. But the way I go I'll probably end up getting something different. I do have a question though (if anyone is willing to reply), do you think a six line wrasse would be ok in a tank with something as shy and docile as my firefish?

 

[Mr Miagi]

Great looking Fire Fish. But they do jump. Has the tank got a lid?

What sp. of shrimp is that? If your not sure, what name did you buy them under?

 

[Fish Fingers]

Great looking Fire Fish. But they do jump. Has the tank got a lid?

What sp. of shrimp is that? If your not sure, what name did you buy them under?

Thanks miagi! ATM I've got a temporary peice of plexiglass covering the tank but I'm going to cut it to size soon when I go over a mates place. I didn't actually buy the shrimp but caught them in rockpools! I believe they are Palaemon serenus or red-handed shrimp although I've not 100% sure.

 

[Fish Fingers]

Got me a coral goby today! He's very small, less than an inch long. Instead of sitting on the rocks he prefers to sit on the side glass . I think it might be because he'd been doing that in the LFS as they had nothing for him to sit on. Tommorrow I'm planning on getting some macro algae for my H.O.B fuge. What I'm going to do is open a gap in my blinds so that sunlight will shine onto the fuge and keeping it all healthy and stuff .

More piccies: