Introduction
I've been wanting to start a small nano that is more manageable given I am pretty dang busy with school, so I think this will be a great excuse to do that. Basically I just want to keep it simple and to the point. No fancy equipment, just fundamental biology, chemistry, and physics. As far as what I am going to keep in it, I have no idea yet, and would be open to creative suggestions.

Tank
-All Glass 10g (20x10x12)

Lighting
-20" 1x40w Current USA Satellite PC w/ legs

Filtration & Circulation
-12 lb Premium Aquatics Nano Rock (Marshall Island, Kaelini, Tonga)
-1 lb Premium Aquatics Rock Pool Crud
-20 lb Caribsea Arag-Alive Bahamas Oolite
-Marineland Penguin 200B Power Filter (200gph)
-Whisper 30 Power Filter w/ Rowa Carbon (145gph) (used occasionally when debris in water column)
-Maxijet 600 Powerhead (160gph)

Temperature Control
-50w All Glass (Hydor) Heater

Water
-Tap water treated w/ AP Stress Coat
-Reef Crystals

Livestock

Fish
-None. I don't know if I will add any or not. Not for a while at least.

Coral
-5 Varieties of Mushrooms (neon red, fuzzy green, purple w/ neon green dots)
-4 Varieties of Green Star Polyp (mega green [from SIX], medium green, and fuzzy green)
-Pink Star Polyp [from Six]
-Pink Encrusting Gorgonian [from Six]
-Neon Green Tip Galaxia [from Six]
-Wammin' Watermelon Zoas [from Six]
-Super Orange w/ Dark Center Zoas [from Six]
-Super Orange w/ light centers Zoas [from Six]
-Lime Green Zoas
-Purple People Eater Palythoa [from mvite]
-Lunar Eclipse Palythoa [from mvite]
-Green Stardust People Eater Palythoa [from mvite]
-Mint Palythoa [from mvite]
-Blue Zoanthus [from mvite]
-Anthelia
-Pulsing Xenia
-Blue Ricordias
-4 varieties of Blastomussa (mint green, purple/green, green?, neon red)
-2 heads Frogspawn w/ live barnacle
-Flower Leather
-Pink Hairy Finger Leather
-White/Pink Bubble Coral

Inverts
-2 Astrea Snails (Tiger Stripe, Regular)
-More to be added as needed

Special Thanks To
-Six
-mvite

I very highly recommend buying corals from these two extremely honest and fair nano-reefers!

Official Contest Photos

Entry Photo



October



November



December



January



February



March

umm..sounds cooll.. cept i dont get the lighting...

Keeping it simple. You can actually do pretty amazing things w/ a 15w coralife 50/50 bulb on a 10g tank. You'll see.

Don't know as far as stocking. Open to suggestions, but looking to do something simple and creative.

If I remember correctly u need to post your entry photo in your first post. You may want to check with chris.

Welcome to the stock group lgreen! I'd really like to hear more on your filtration.

good plans, mind if i use your format to clean up my thread a little??

best of luck?

go for it.

good luck to you too.

Temperature Control
-50w All Glass (Hydor) Heater


If you haven't bought it yet don't ! I hate mine. I basically need to set it at 72 F to have water at 80 F. That just doesn't sound right to me so I'm not using it.

Cheers.

I am excited to set up another nano tank. I want to keep this one more perminantly so I decided I will try and do a really nice job on it. With that I decided to place an impulsive order with Premium Aquatics to get 12 lbs of their awsome marshall island, kaelini, and tonga nano rock, 4 lbs of their live rock rubble, and 1 lb of the rock pool crud. I have bought their rock before and it is unbelievable, but never bought the rubble or crud. I'm sure it will be great though. Usually it seems like the rock rubble comes bigger than you expect. I bet someone could aquascape a whole nano with it if they wanted.

Buying the tank tommorow and then I will get the pic up. I have a big neuropsych test on wed, so I probably shouldn't start setting it up tell wed afternoon/evening, but we'll see if I can stand to wait that long. I don't even know where I'm going to put the tank yet.

entry photo added

Nice choice of refreshment!

I also chose to go with the Penguin Bio-Wheel 200! I kinda get tired of all the algae and gunk that grows in the upper "U" portion of the aquaclear filters from the light being able to go into the clear tube. And that Biowheel for bio filtration can't be beat. Plus it will fuel my macroalgae! I'm gonna keep some Purigen on hand for pre-photo clean-up and flossing to put in the extra filtration basket.

I think you'll really like that Marshall Island rock. On my first tank before I sold it, I had lots of that stuff and wow did it come with a lot of animals. I actually still have one small piece and a large piece in my current 10G tank. I'm interested to see what that "crud" is. Please post pics when you get it.

Thanks!

I agree. I had a aqua clear on my last nano and I thought it was kind of noisey compared to the marineland pengiun.

I've bought Premium Aquatics marshall island rock before and marshall island from other sellers and Premium Aquatics is 40x better. I can't wait to see it.

I'm interested too to see the crud. I'll post pics for sure.

can't wait to see this one dude, but seriously, tapwater? lol

Yep. The tap water here is pretty good. Good enough that GARF and many others have been using it in their systems for like 30 years.

I do have a 90gpd Spectrapure RO/DI unit, but it is a pain in the but to use since I don't have it permanently installed. Don't have a good place to install it. I haven't changed the membranes on it in like 2 years and really can't afford new ones at the second, so I don't even know that using it would do me any good.

Does this tank make my desk look fat?



I didn't remember a 10g tank being so big. I don't think I like the idea of having so much water right next to my laptop and moniter (and printer below).

Crap! Got to figure out where to put it. This may require some major shifting of things in my room. Premium Aquatics order gets here friday and I have lab from 8-5 tommorow. This should be nice and stressful.

i really dont like having my tank that close to my laptop. i move it whenever I am working on the tank but its still risky.

I decided to move it to my dressor. Not worth the risk. Just have to pull my dressor out of the closet and move something else in to the closet instead.

Moved to dresser. Washed and ready for water.

mine is also next to my laptop.. and my printer.... and my cell phone (if its charging).. and my iPod (if its charging)
I know how you feel!

Finally got them pictures This should be interesting.

hey lgreen just letting you know i'll be checking your progress and hopefully pick up a few pointers along the way. and i just wanna say thanks for helping me out with my nano.

no prob

dude, you just outed yourself surfing pron!





and you didn't even share! bastard!

I'm having the same "problem" here. I was planning to put the nano-tank next to my monitor at the office, but that didn't work very well at all.. A 10G is much larger than I imagined.. So I've temporary installed it at a table in the other end of the room..

I'm wondering, would it be possible to move it later, if I take out - let's say 50% of the water?

I don't see why not.

Rock, crud, and rubble is here. Pics as soon as I find some batteries for the camera.

Once again, PA did not dissapoint me!

o..o..oo....

hustle it up

be sure to take some pics of the so called "crud"

...I'm thinkin about gettin some of that for microfauna purposes

We want pictures!

lol

I didn't have any batteries for the camera and couldn't find my sony battery charger. I went to target to get batteries and ended up buying a energizer battery charger and 4 rechargable batteries. I thought they would come charged, but they didn't. So I had to wait seven hours for the dumb things to charge. Now it is morning. I had to get all the stuff in the tank so it didn't die, so I don't have detailed pics of each thing like I wanted too.

The crud was basically dark silt w/ some sand and some small pieces of live rock. I could see some micro orgs in it. Looked like there was a spagetti worm or two. The silt went into solution pretty badly though and didn't settle at first. I added the sand, and then it started to settle so now I have a 1-2mm layer of silt across the top of my sand. Overall I wanted it for the biodivirsity, and it may have worked for that, but otherwise I'd say don't buy it for the display tank. It would be great for mud style refugium though.

I'll post some pics in a bit, I'm still trying to wake up.

You can kind of see what the silt looks like in this pic. It is the thin darker layer. Basically you get a bag of that w/ some small rock rubble. Personally I'd probably pass buying it again for the display tank, but buy it if I was setting up a refugium. The crud is pretty silty so I don't know if it would even stay in a aquaclear style fuge.



I just threw the rock in. I couldn't see to aquascape because it was so cloudy, but this is where it is now. I'll aquascape it a bit better when I fully wake up. I don't have my light yet either, so this pic doest reflect how awesomely colorful the rock is! It is still a bit cloudy and I haven't wiped of that nice layer of frothy sand from the glass.

Ok, I think I got it aquascaped how I like for now. It is cloudy as hell though, so I won't even bother posting a pic until it clears up. I don't know if it is the arag-alive or the Premium aquatics silty crud that is making it so cloudy.

I think I'm going to end up trying to find a way to suck this silty stuff out. It doesn't look to pleasent.

Still freaking cloudy, but you can kind of make out the aquascaping. It looks better in person and I'm sure will look better once it clears up and I get the light on it.



Is it just me or does it seem like every tank I aquascape looks kind of the same. lol. I must really suck at aquascaping.

looks pretty good. i dont think aquascaping is something you can learn. either you are good at it or you arent. i think this is a pretty good scape though.

Thanks.

I guess the nice thing is that you can always change it.

Another shot w/ a 15w Std. Fluorescent Coralife 50/50 bulb. Looks a little better.



Actually I'm pretty happy with how this is turning out so far.

What are you going to be keeping for livestock!?!?! Are you going to upgrade the light?




texx

I'm not sure what I am going to keep really. I'm sort of inspired impulsivley, so I'll most likely just see something cool and decide to get it.

For sure I probably will be adding a variety of mushrooms, zoos, a small flower leather, and some caulerpa prolifera. I'll have to see what other neat stuff I can find at work tommorow. I won't be doing any sps though due to the light restrictions for the stock comp, but don't be suprized to see some lps.

Yes, against my will I will be upgrading to the vastly inferior power compact light. CM said no to doing just 15w or 30w of Standard Fluorescent light (I guess I understand, but then again I don't). Hopefully my boss ordered my 40w Satallite and it will be there tommorow. If not, I'll either be with out light for a week, or have to use the 15w std. fluor hood for the first week if there are no objections to that.

looks good, theres not much room to scape in a 10. did you end up using tap water?

yep

Once the water clears ur bulbs should look brighter

Update! (lol, most of you who know me are probably shocked to see me updating so much!)

Things have cleared up pretty good and I found a few goodies at work today. Added a small rock w/ 4-6 sm. neon red mushrooms. Also added 2 purple w/ blue stripe pimpled mushrooms and a fuzzy neon green mushroom. I also added two tiny starts of caulerpa profilera. Hopefully I can keep them small and in control, otherwise I'm ripping them out and tossing them.



I also bought some background for the tank, but haven't put it on yet. Still have to test it out and see if blue or black looks better. Also my lights were not ordered, so I left a big note begging for the boss to order them and hopefully they will be there when I work next sunday.

Lights went out, so I just had to time to snap this one other shot. I'll try to get pics of the other mushrooms since they are kind of neat as far as color and pattern. The one larger red guy is out (although has poo'ed itself), but the other smaller ones seem to be closed up a bit still. I'm sure they will inflate a bit in the morning.



Note: If you look in my gallery and click on the FTS pic above you can see a much larger non-shrunk version with more detail.

sweet mushrooms! go idaho!!!!

GL, Logan.

thnxjmt

yeah

Update.

Interesting macro algae begining to pop up on this rock. I'm praying it's not bryopsis, but it looks a little thicker so I think I'm safe. I got bryopsis really bad last time I bough nano-rock from premium aquatics, so really hoping it doesn't pop up this time.



Green fuzzy mushroom:



Green w/ red dots mushroom (trying to escape under the rock?? lol):



Same neon red mushrooms looking a little happier:



Looks like the big guy might still have some silt around his mouth. I'll have to get out the turkey baster.

I'm kind of just starting things out simple with mushrooms to get things going and established. Next step will be zoos. Then leathers, lps, etc. I'll see what we got in at the lfs tommorow and hopefully will be receiving some cool stuff from some fellow nano-reefers next week.

Crap, I still need to put the background on!

It's all about the 'shrooms man.

lol. They're easy, but a good coral to get stuff moving, fill in blanks, and add some color. More difficult items will come w/ time.

FTS 6 (Trying out the blue background)