Greetings N-R! My tank is 4 months old so I guess it's safe to start a tank thread of my own Let me start by recapping my introduction to nano reefing over the last 4 months.

Like many noobs on this site I've had FW tanks all my life and always wanted to try SW but thought it would be too difficult to maintain. This past summer a buddy at work made me an offer I couldn't refuse. He was taking down his well established 100+G tank at home and offered to give me ~30lbs of LR from his tank. He warned it would be expensive (little did I know then how right he would be) but he said he would show me how to get started. Needless to say, I took the plunge and bought a tank for the office.

He suggested getting a 3G all-in-one by CPR Systems to start but I chose the 24G aquapod after reading up on this site. My hope was a larger nano would be more stable...plus it would give me more room for coral I love my little cube but didn't realize how much customization would be required to make the system work for my setup at work. You see the AC gets turned off at night and over the weekend so keeping temps stable would be a challenge.

I'm not a real DIY guy so I kept the mods to a minimum but did add a fan, dremeled open the fan vents, and upgraded the stock pump to a MJ1200 as many on this site suggested. Unfortunately, the tank still ran hot. In the end I downgraded to a MJ900 (much lower wattage) and a minijet 606 with a hydor, and opted for an ICA 2.0 chiller from Nanocustoms. They hadn't officially launched this product at the time but Chris at Nanocustoms was awesome and he sold me a pre-production prototype to help me beat the summer heat in Nor Cal. The ICA worked so well that I decided to upgrade the lighting from the stock 64W of PC to 80W.

Here's an FTS of my tank back in May


As you can see the LR had a ton of mushrooms on it and I added some pretty easy to keep corals:
Yellow Fiji Leather
Neon GSP
Devil's Hand
Candy Cane
Assorted Zoos and Palys

I also stocked it with the following fish/inverts:
Black and White Clown from ORA
Red Firefish
Lawnmower Blenny
6 Line Wrasse (went MIA after a month)
Skunk Cleaner Shrimp

After a month and a half the tank was doing pretty well and everything was settling in nicely.

Here is what it looked like in June. The only addition was a rock with some bleached out rics that I picked up at a local LFS. I put it at the top, behind the CC.


I was psyched! Using C-Pure (treated sea water) to do 5G water changes each week was much easier than I had expected and the tank's params were rock solid. Little did I know then that the next two months were going to be battle against the hottest summer that the SF Bay Area had seen in decades.

It's getting late so I'll post the rest of the story and pics of what I call the Great Overheat of July 2006 tomorrow.

This post has been edited by junkitu: Feb 14 2008, 05:04 AM

Very nice, I like mushrooms

Thanks ChinChek. I like them too but they're getting out of control.

To finish up my tank's story...after 2.5 months things were looking really good but temps were running in the low 80's, even with the ICA chiller, so I decided to upgrade the power supply and fan on the ICA. The weatherman was forecasting 100 degree temps for the last couple weeks of July and I was getting nervous. Here's an FTS before I tried to make the ICA changes. This was probably the height of my tanks life to date.



Unfortunately, I screwed up in the installation of the upgrades and damaged the ICA unit without knowing it. The results were disasterous. My temps hit 90 over the weekend when the AC was off in the office and I didn't have the ICA there to bring the temps down. I thought the whole tank had crashed but fortunately I only lost the Devil's Hand, my cleaner shrimp, and a very cool Hector's goby.



I've spent the last month and a half getting the tank back in shape. I got the ICA upgrades in place and performed lot of water changes and now my temps and tank params are under control. I even decided to run carbon in the back chamber and the softies in my tank have never looked happier. In fact, the mushrooms are so happy that they're taking over!

Here are the latest pics of my tank.





I'm pretty happy with the progress that my tank has made since the overheat. I guess the most important lesson that I've learned in this process was something that Chris from Nanocustoms reminded me of while he was going the extra mile to help me get my tank temps stabilized:

If it ain't broke don't mess with it...

Global Warming!

Nice tank BTW.

cho kirei no leather desho~~!
ganbarimasu!!

Looks like your tank really recovered. The tank looks really good btw. Nice Job

All those shrooms mixed in with the other corals looks so awesome. I like it.

This is my fav tank - good work!

Dude i love how your tank looks! I looks so natural in growth and not so "candy shelved." Shrooms are lookin gewd too!


Keep us informed and more pics!

Thank you all for your support. I'm glad there are folks out there that enjoy my tank too.



Uh EZ, I have no idea what this is. No hablo nihonjin. But thanks for the reply...I think.


The latest on my tank is that the shrooms are growing so well that they're trying to take out other corals. My neon GSPs were on their own rectangular piece of rock surrounded by the mushrooms. The shrooms have now moved onto the rock and are trying to crowd it out by blocking the light. I really like my GSP so I've been reading up on this site to try and find a way to remove the mushrooms. It doesn't seem like there's a sure fire approach so this is what I've decided to do:

1) Place the rock in a bucket with a powerhead pointed directly at the shrooms to try to loosen or detach them.
2) Pull the shrooms off if I can otherwise scrape them off with a utility knife.
3) Cover any remains with epoxy to prevent further growth.

I'm really not thrilled about messing with the coral this way but I figure I'd rather try this than let the GSP just wither and die. I'll keep you all posted.

Well the drastic approach to saving my GSP seemed to work...for now. The GSPs are beginning to open up again and the mushrooms have been removed from the rock. I was able to remove the smaller ones without visible residue but the larger ones I had to scrape off which left some tissue on the rock. I covered these remains with epoxy. I know other mushrooms in my aquascape will probably attach again but at least I've bought the GSP some time to spread and get greater coverage on their rock. Let's see how they look in a week.

this tank is AWESOME!!!!! i love it..it looks REALLY nice..

Amazing recovery!!! very nice tank

Thanks!

Seriously this is my fav tank by far.
Your aquascaping and corals are just awesome.
Not crazy about your fish choices, but that is really personal

I actually use the pic in the Gallery as the background on my Apple BlackBook!

This post has been edited by mullman: Sep 2 2006, 03:39 PM

Thanks mullman. This is my first SW tank so I'm open to suggestions. What are your thoughts on the fish?

This post has been edited by junkitu: Sep 2 2006, 03:45 PM

i said very nice leather you got there, and keep up the good work

Ah. Thanks EZ. The yellow leather was my first addition and I think it's awesome.

very nice junkitu