Sandcruiser's 10g AIO

[sandcruiser]

Now that the tank has been running for almost two years, I decided to finally start a thread on it.

 

that doesn't mean I'm posting all sorts of good pictures or anything (yet) but if I get the thread started, I'm hoping that it'll lure me back to update it.

 

I haven't invested much time into the hobby of late, a divorce and a change of career have been more demanding. I also travel 1-3 weeks out of any given month, which makes my aquarium habits irregular at best, and can lead to projects taking longer than I want them to take.

 

the tank sat mostly neglected for nearly a year, with infrequent water changes and even tapwater topoffs. Algae ruled the day. A couple of months ago I decided to revive it vs. empty it, so it's a bit of a mess but improving.

 

Here are the specs:

 

----Tank----

AGA 10g. Your typical standard 10g tank.

I added a plexi wall to the end to create an overflow area w/ 3 chambers. It measures about 3" by about 10".

the first chamber has the heater (I think it's an ebojager 50w) and some LR rubble in it and is about 4x3".

Water flows from the display area through some teeth into chamber 1, then down and into chamber two which is about 2.5x3", where it flow up through more LR rubble and a temp probe, then overflows into the final chamber which is about 4"x3" and contains the return pump, some polyfilter, and sometimes some GAC.

 

I also keep a 15w always-on heater pad made by (pennplax?) in the display. While I'm out of town in cooler months my house gets cold, 60 or less, so I plug in the aux heater. I've never seen the tank get colder than 73 degrees, it is usually at about 75.

 

I have a super-duper fancy ATO system. I fill a wine bottle with topoff water*, then invert the bottle into the chamber of my AIO where the pump lives. (we'll call it the sump). When the water level drops enough, the bottle dumps water into the sump. Easy. Functional. not pretty, but not unbearably ugly either.

 

*topoff water currently consists of whole food RODI water to which I add about 1/8tsp of Kalk+2 (brightwell, I think) per gallon.

 

I change 1-2 gallons of water every week or when I get back from travel. it probably works out to just under 5gal of water changes per month.

 

----Fish----

1 ORA Ocelleris Clown (Amphiprian ocellaris). added 1 December 2012 (today!)

yellow-tail blue damsel (died a while back, probably due to not getting fed for a few months, or 'natural' causes. Hard to tell, I wasn't really paying attention. )

 

----motile inverts----

3 Sexy Shrimp (Thor amboinensis) [i think 1 male and 2 females]

1 red leg hermit (I thought it was dead, but it turns out it had found the 'fuge and was chillin there for 3 months or so)

several tiny snails

maybe a tropical abalone (tiny!)

1 overly large trochus that might be headed for a trade

a variety of mini brittle stars

more than a few bristle worms

quite a several astrea stars

blue legged hermit no longer alive

various snails I figure that since I once had at least 20-30 little snails, and I now have less than 5, that they mostly died off in response to insufficient food. the intense hair algae growth surely beat out the microalgae that the snails prefer to eat.

 

 

----sessile inverts----

several tiny feather dusters

many spaghetti worms

1 frogspawn, green with pink tips

1 sarcophyton leather with neon green tips that only seems to come out once/week but clings to life (about 3 years now)

1 favia? pretty blue/purple thing.

some cursed aptasia

several shrooms that used to be quite red/blue, but now are kinda small and not particularly colorful. I'm hoping that they rebound.

1 ricordia

a duncan

a torch

some green star polyp that isn't faring well, I suspect lack of direct light and insufficient flow are to blame.

 

 

 

---macro algae---

some red spiky stuff that seems to get overrun by hair algae on a regular basis

some calciferous algae (halimaeda?) that also seems to get overrun by hair algae

some maiden's hair that I've been trying like crazy to remove, but that defies my best efforts

some bryopsis or hair or something that is a pest

red bubble algae (also an ongoing battle)

 

 

----other---

LR,

LS,

base rock that is probably live by now, after a year or so.

 

 

----lighting----

gu10 3x1w LED lights from eBay. with the optics removed, sitting on eggcrate directly over plexi directly over the waterline.

4 x blue

2 x cool white

1 x warm white

It's too blue for my taste. Eventually I'd like to solder 1 warm white onto each blue lamp, and then 1 blue onto each cool white, and have an "even" 1:1 ratio of bluebluewarm:coolcoolblue since that project requires an awful lot of effort, I'm much more likely to just go 1:1 blue:coolwhite and run a total of 8 lamps.

if I get a real wild hair, I may install a red 'stunner' series of LEDs or possibly a single 6700K fluorescent lamp to get a little bit more red into the tank. As it stands now things look a little listerine to my eye. Of course, first, I will probably have to get around to building the hood instead of just having the lamps sitting on the eggcrate, which looks like junk.

 

 

----filtration----

I've got 1 minijet 606 that returns water from the AIO chamber to the main tank. No idea how much flow it makes. It says 159gph. Could be true.

 

I've also got a little cheapo pump that turns on about every 2-3 hours (dodgy lamp timer) for about 30 minutes. It probably moves around 50gph. or so.

 

things are a little mellow in the tank. I've just bought an eheim canister filter. When it gets here, it'll add around 100gph to the flow. My notion is to convert the canister into a chaeto chamber with a light. We'll have to see if I get to it.

[sandcruiser]

some updates:

 

just got a refractometer. my salinity was a tad low, 1.023 but that's close enough for me to not be worried.

glad to see that my hydrometer was accurate enough.

 

also just spent a little quality time nuking aptasia

I used a suspension of Kalk+2 in RODI water, applied into the aptasia via a little acrylic-solvent bottle (small plastic bottle with metal tube, sorta like a syringe, but not as precise).

 

the aptasia grabbed at the Ca suspension and then seemed to realize that they had made a horrible mistake: first burping little caustic clouds, then shriveling up into a little ball.

 

I'm hoping that they can't recover.

 

 

I also did a small h2o change, need to go buy more saltwater and do another change today as the extra Ca+ in the tank is liable to push the pH up.

 

I'm not a big tester of water.... I'd rather invest in saltwater and do a 10% change than invest in test kits that tell me 'do a water change'. Lazy? Smart? you be the judge.

 

pics coming soon....

[jlbzixxer]

pics and more pics lol

as far as doing a wc when your test kits tell you ,your nitrate or phophate

if of the charts if a bit lazy and not very smart IMO lol

by just doing a weekly/biweekly wc you would just save your self

a headache down the road.

its only 10g tank a wc cant take that long

[sandcruiser]

Jlbzixxer, i agree

we're saying the same thing, basically. I do a 1-2 gallon wc about every week (when travel permits)

so i don't really test the tank, because I'm going to change the water anyway.

 

 

pics and more pics lol

as far as doing a wc when your test kits tell you ,your nitrate or phophate

if of the charts if a bit lazy and not very smart IMO lol

by just doing a weekly/biweekly wc you would just save your self

a headache down the road.

its only 10g tank a wc cant take that long

[sandcruiser]

sad update: the tank-raised false percula clown showed some spots a week after I brought it home, then they went away

a month later (last week) it was coated with ick/oodinium

 

didn't last through the night

 

so I'm fishless again, and planning to wait until March to add more fish, to give the disease time to cycle itself out

 

the shrimp are happy-looking, they seem to get out and about more often without a fish in the tank. so I suppose that there is some upside, but I'd rather have the fish healthy.

[sandcruiser]

between travel and life, I haven't updated much

the tank is doing ok. not great.

 

the change to gu10 lighting and the addition of the eheim canister seem to have really upset my frogspawn. it's 10% as full as it used to be.

 

the shrimp also cause havoc when I'm gone for 2 or 3 weeks... they get hungry, I guess. it looks like they eat coral when they are hungry.

 

also my large(ish) trochus snail died. I think it fell tip-first into the sand and couldn't right itself. i was thousands of miles away, but still feel some guilt about allowing it to die. the nutrients released seem to have really helped my nuisance algae grow

 

I spent 23 days on the road in Feb (with a very brief break midmonth) the tank didn't like that. in addition to not getting water changes, it got pretty saline when I was gone for 2 weeks, and I did have a friend stop by to dump some RODI in, but I'm sure he added about 1/2 a gallon, which makes a large impact in a 10g tank. and those shrimp.... they get hungry

 

so, between the light change, the flow change, the lack of water change, and the salinity jumping around: things are looking not-so-great. I've been cleaning up, and the favia is improving. the shrimp are getting fed, but still walk all over the frogspawn every day, which continues to look worse and worse

 

it's frustrating to see the tank decline and not really know why

 

lesson learned? making multiple changes, quickly, makes it tough to know what is causing results. without knowing the cause, it's a challenge to fix or take advantage of changes

 

grrrr

 

i've adjusted my light down to just 5 gu10 bulbs, in the hopes that too-bright light is part of the problem

I've moved the frogspawn down lower, and may move it further

 

my duncan and candy cane are both very happy, so I don't think that the problem is water quality (now)

 

i've got loads and loads of pods of at least 3 or 4 species (size/shape differs)

I have loads of some sort of gastropod hitchiker. they don't seem to bother anything, and clean the glass well

 

I've still got hair/bryopsis problems, despite an eheim full of chaeto

it is likely related to me using pellets to feed the shrimp (to keep them from eating coral)

 

my shrooms are mostly shriveled and gone

 

but in general, the tank appears to be improving. I'll probably change 2 or 3 gallons tomorrow and pull out as much hair algae as possible

[sandcruiser]

oops. rescaping the tank I either smooshed, siphoned, or ? one of my sexy shrimp. or she is hiding in the fuge in the back.

but the tank looks nicer. at least.

 

I moved it all around in an attempt to save my frogspawn.

 

short version: adding 21w of GU10 lights directly over the tank is probably more light than the frogspawn wanted to handle.

more info:

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/293554-too-much-light/

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/267432-gu10-led-build-thread-chinese-ebay-lights/page-74

 

so, now the frogspawn is fragged out into 3 chunks of 2 heads, 2 heads, 3.5heads (1/2 because I'm pretty sure that one will not make it). it looked much prettier as 1 large chunk with 11 heads.

 

I placed 1 chunk under a cave, very little light. 1 in the back corner on the sand and another in the front corner, on the sand.

some combo of lighting and flow should let 1 portion grow better than the rest, time will tell.

 

the rest of my denizens look happy and healthy. I did pick off a ton of green hair (maybe bryopsis awfully invasive) and scraped the glass down well. the tank looks as good as it has in the last couple of weeks. now I'll just watch and wait to see how everyone does.

 

except that poor sexy shrimp. I hope she turns up.

[sandcruiser]

some pictures

 

 

 

[sandcruiser2]

hey all

the tank is chugging along, despite my absurd neglect

 

I was gone for 9 weeks over new years.... it got some topoff, sometimes, with various types of water

ugly

 

and I've moved

so I'm done

 

Anyone want the tank/what's left in it?

some coral, some rock/sand

 

pumps, lights, heater. there's value there.

 

if you can pick it up.... immediately.... i'll give it away. text me 650.554.0263