Oh No... Not Another Nano Startup Thread!

[@ombomb]

As you may or may not be aware, I have been planning on setting up a nano (my first marine tank) since well before Christmas. It�s been a long process, but finally I have a tank set up and cycling! Obviously the usual suspects have been the inspiration for this project, Steelhealr, Parker313 and Bunjiweb and Mr Miagi, with lots of others offering good advice and inspiration along the way.

Prior to this tank, I have only ever kept freshwater fish, with my current tank being a planted 45G pictured here:

Having read through Steelhealr�s thread many times, I was dead set on the idea of a cube, but as it turns out they are something of a bugger to find in nano proportions, so I ended up getting a 24G custom made, by Andy at AC Aquatics (www.acaquatics.com) along with a 10G sump.

Plans for the tank / sump based on browsing through various nano sites and some advice from Andy / the DIY board:

The second problem with a tank this size is that hoods are nearly impossible to find. As such I have made my own and to be frank, it�s crap, so another is in the planning stages, just ignore the one in the following pics� I managed to buy one for the sump which I have subsequently butchered to allow for tubing / lighting

Full tank set up:

18� x 18� x 18� tank with weir
18� x 12� x 12� sump / fuge
Custom made 18� x 18� hood (not for long)
Butchered 18� x 12� hood
Eheim Compact Pump (1000 lph)
Power Sweep 228 Self-Rotating Powerhead (1020 lph = total of 2020 lph / 534.4 USG/h)
2 x 36W T5 tubes (daylight / actinic) / ballast / reflector for main tank
1 x 24W T5 tube / ballast / reflector for sump
1 x 100W Hagem heater (in sump)
1 x 50W heater (in sump + used for water changes)
1 x Red Sea Skimmer / air pump
Couple of meters of flexible tubing
Meter or so of rigid tubing + connectors (inc no return valve)
Digital thermometer

Think that�s everything�

Oh and 13KG of live rock + 2 bags of sand from the fish shop.

Very happy with the rock, especially as it was on offer and I finally got to see how they managed to get it out of the holding tank which contains a smallish shark. I had always thought that they would use some sort of elaborate grabbing tool to retrieve it, but no, they wait for the shark to swim past the piece of rock they are after, stick their arm in and try to make is quick!

Here�s the rock after adding it to the tank:

I have found a number of hitchhikers, a crab and a bristleworm, some polyps I�d hoped would recover (but are clearly long dead), feather dusters, an aiptasia (now boiled off) and the following mystery guests:

I have transferred the mystery blobs on a piece of rock into the sump and will keep and eye out for any developments.

And this is how the tank is looking this evening�

Main tank:

Tank / sump:

Fish corner:

Once the tank has cycled, I�ll be adding a cleanup crew (full line up to be confirmed but will definitely feature a Skunk Cleaner Shrimp) and the planned stocking is a selection from (changes frequently):

Ocellaris Clown
Six Line Wrasse
Flame Angel (Probably my personal favourite but limits other choices)
Firefish
A Goby of some sort (leaning towards Rainford�s Goby)
Royal Gramma

Potential hardware upgrades before adding fish / coral include: An additional 36W T5 tube for the main tank, another but smaller powerhead and a second 100W heater for some extra peace of mind.

That�s all for now, the thrilling period of testing, testing, testing the water now awaits me� roll on April when we can get some new life in the tank!

 

[Siamese Fighter05]

Looks like your off to a great start

You know what your doing so i look forward to your updates, could you please post a pic of the tank with the cupboard do shut so i can see how well the sump is concealed. I like the aqua-scaping
Your FW tank looks beautiful also

Dan

 

[@ombomb]

Here's the tank with the sump cupboard shut...

The only telltale sign that it there is that the knots in the wood in the middle of the door are glowing red (can't see it in the pic), but something on the back of the door should deal with that.

 

[CutieWitBooty]

looking good. As for your stocking list i would really narrow your choices to 3 differnt fish. I don't know if you were really thinking about adding all thoes fish or not, but just to let you know lol Also make sure the crab hitchiker is reefsafe and not a crab thats going to eat your fish and corals lol When your ready to get your cleanup crew be sure to get the snails and hermits first then down the road a little farther get the cleaner shrimp, they are more sensitive than other inverts.

 

[mshollenberger]

The freshwater tank looks great. I'm suprised with how nice the rest looks you did not put some kind of background on it to shield the viewer from looking at wires. Maybe its just me?

Good luck with the SW

 

[@ombomb]

Well the idea originally was that it would be heavily planted enough to block out any of the wiring, but I stripped it down a while ago and it'd be a real pain to add a backing to a full tank. The plan is to plant the tank up again to cover the back without it over growing to the point it did before.

As for the stocking, those are just the fish that are on the current short list, not the final planned stock for the tank. It'll probably change at least twice before the time comes to add the fish to the tank and then again when I get to the point of actually going and buying a fish depending on what the shop have in stock.

 

[steelhealr]

Good work. It's clear that you are off to a good start and it shows....there is absolutely no fast way to setup a nano tank. The longer one spends reading books, posts, forums, etc, the better prepared you are to deal with the curve balls a nano will throw at you.

Thumbs up. SH

 

[@ombomb]

Current tank stats:

Temp: 80F
SG: 1.022
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5ppm
pH: 8.2

Currently have a tank full off diatoms, so I think I'll add the first stages of the clean up crew this weekend, once I have brought the SG up to 1.024 which is proving much harder than I first thought! I had a big ammonia spike around thursday, but have been amased by how quickly this has dropped, which I am taking as a sign of good quality live rock.

The "egg things" are still flapping around in the sump and I am no further to identifying them. I thought I ad lost all my feather dusters to the ammonia spike, but at least one of them has been out again over the weekend and I have now spotted two distinct types. Also spotted in the sump is a small hole in the rock, about a cm above the sand, with a pile of debris underneath it as though something has been cleaning it out. No signs yet of what it could be, but I'm checking up on it regularly.

Planned clean up crew:

4 X Nassarius Snail
4 X Cerith Snail
2 X Astrea Snail
2 X Nerite Snail
1 X Turbo Snail
1 X Scarlet Hermit
1 X Blue Legged Hermit
1 X Mithrax Crad
1 X Skunk Cleaner (Not to be added just yet)

Still to be done:

Start the protein skimmer
Add additional balast / 18" T5 compact to the main tank for taking me to 4.5 WPG and allowing me to control the actinic and daylight tubes independantly.

Tank temp has been very stable so adding the 2nd (well 3rd really) heater has been put on hold for now.

Also... had a bit of a run in with the girlfriend about what's going in Coral wise. She's got it into her head that I should not have ANYTHING in the tank which could cause me any harm whatsoever. In the end I agreed whole heartedly with her and reassured her that nothing I had in mind could be even slightly unpleasent... let's just hope she doesn't decide to do any reading up about Zoathids as they are the first coral on my list

 

[steelhealr]

Very good. You can toss in a couple more astreas if you want. Resist the urge to put corals in as yet. Otherwise, this tank is moving along well and SAFELY. Good work. SH

 

[@ombomb]

More hitch hikers have been spotted on the rock:

More feather dusters
Couple of snails, too small to ID
Several tiny pineapple sponges
Another sponge yet to be IDed
Some sort of worm "thing" living in a hole in the rock in the sump. It's clearly been cleaning out the hole as there is a pile of debris and when I turned the sump light on earlier, I caught it retreating back into the hole. Will try and get a photo but it's an awkward one

and also...

2 small Aiptasias...

One which has now hidden and one smack between two feather dusters. Too small to syringe (apporx 5mm from rock to tip of tentacle) and the tank's not ready for a peppermint shrimp at this stage. May need to see if I can find anywhere in the UK that sells Joe's Juice, although I was wondering whether a coating of lemon juice would work if I removed the rock from the water and carefully treated the aiptasia's spot only.

 

[steelhealr]

If you try it, use concentrated lemon juice. SH

 

[@ombomb]

Managed to find some Joe's Juice on sale and have put an order in, better to be safe than sorry!

 

[Mr Miagi]

Managed to find some Joe's Juice on sale and have put an order in, better to be safe than sorry!

Mate, top looking Cube!

As the rumour goes, watch for re-occuring aips. even after treatment with JJ. You may find you dont kill them first shot.

 

[lljdma06]

@ombomb, did you ever find out what those funky egg cases were? Have they hatched yet? I'm just really curious.

Tank looks great.

 

[@ombomb]

No news on the "egg things" so far and they haven't changed at all, no one has been able to ID them and I don't have anything swimming around in the tank that could have come from them. They only thing I have spotted in relation to them is a bristleworm having a good nose around them in the sump.

If I don't see anything new on them before the weekend, I'm going to remove one for a closer inspection.

My Joe's Juice was delivered to work this morning, when I get home the aiptasia are getting zapped!