David & Holly's Nanowave nine

[superdavesds]

Hey all! Just wanted to start a tank thread to track some progress. I Originally set up a little 6 gallon tank and decided to go ahead and upgrade to a nanowave 9 before we got to far. This is the original setup.

 

That tank ran for a month just like that and then was tranfered to the Nanowave 9. It has some new sand and almost all of the original CC in it. I know dont flame me for that. It all came in a kit.

 

Then we added a little more rock to get the amount up to par, and a little green star.

 

We just didnt like the look near as well as the first go around so after a while we decided to flip a rock over and move the green stars.

 

Thats pretty much the way is sits now on the table.

 

Equiptment:

Stock pumps

Koralia 1, soon to be switched for a nano

stock lighting, with extra vents

stock skimmer

live sand and rubble in the fuge

100 watt submersible heater

5 lbs black sand

5 lbs live, cc cmon dont flame me, I didnt know

10 lbs live rock

several blue hermits

2 scarlets

2 naz snails

2 stomatella snails

varios hitchiker snails

green star polyp

 

Edited: forgot to add a bunch of shells the gf picked up off the beach while in florida.

[lajz9]

Lookin good. Have a NW9 set up myself until the new tank cycles. Mine tends to run 79-81 degrees, what about yours?

[superdavesds]

Lookin good. Have a NW9 set up myself until the new tank cycles. Mine tends to run 79-81 degrees, what about yours?

 

About the same. I cut some more vents in and have yet to see more than 80 since then. I like the little thing. Honestly, we think we liked the first one pretty well. It may be back up soon. It was pretty cool.

[superdavesds]

[jeremai]

to the NW9 club!

[cmoreland]

Hello! Did you just make the original vents longer or did you add more somewhere else?

 

Oh, and what is wrong with CC (crushed coral)?

[cmoreland]

bump?

[superdavesds]

Actually I didn't open up the exterior vents at all. I put in some holes in the back of the reflector, over top of the ballast. This was done in a weak attemp to install fans. The fans I put in were way to agressive. After removing the fans the air flow was good enough to keep it cooled off. I have not taken the time or need to get the right fans for the job. Temp swings from 78 to 80 on an 8 hour light cycle with an ambient temp of 72.

 

Edit: As summer gets warmer I dont like running the air too much, Will then do some costom grates on the top.

[superdavesds]

Just wanted to give an update on our progress and Post a few pics. Tank is over four months old now and starting to look like a reef.

 

Here is a pick of our lone crab. The rest were removed because they kept eating stuff.

 

Eagle eyes

 

Blue Steels.

 

Pink Zoas

 

Feather duster

 

Watermellon mushroom

 

Green Richordia

 

Green button

 

Cool looking brown thing

 

Daisy polyps

 

 

Odd ball Buttons

 

Oddball Zoa

 

Pom Pom crab

 

Green Mussel

 

Green star Polyps

[superdavesds]

Couple new guys

 

 

 

[superdavesds]

 

 

 

 

[superdavesds]

Hello all, since it has been over a year since I last updated my Tank thread, I thought I would catalog some of the changes including the lighting mods, and livestock changes. Amazing how much can change over a year!

First, I think the next thing done was the mods to the hood. This consisted of several things with several goals. I wanted to reduce the heat in hood therefore remote ballast seemed like a good idea. If I was going to remove it from the hood I wanted to put a small incandescent bulb in that creates a very cool sunrise and sunset effect. This is something that Holly and I got used to having on our original 5 gallon. It dims it so the creepy crawlies to come out but leaves quite a bit of light to be able to see. Very realistic sunrise effect though.

Third goal was to gain independent control for both daylight and actinic bulbs as well the sunrise bulb and moonlights. To do this, I needed new ballast and some switches, wire, and a box to mount it.

Final goal was since I was going to be building a control box I wanted to be able to plug my pumps into it so I have an easy switch to shut off my pumps while doing maintenance and feeding.

Here is a pic of the bulb to go in the hood for the sunrise/sunset effect.

Here is a pic of this nice little aluminum box I got my hands on to mount the controls in

And here is how full it got to get the wiring so I could control by timer, or manually flip things on and off.

And this is what it looked like all done. Two switches for the PCs, two for pumps, and I got the switches in the hood for the sunrise/sunset, and the moonlights. All with independent power supplies.

This is a nifty little controller that sits nicely behind the tank. And here are more pics to show the effect of the sunrise. So what do you think?

So what do you think? Thoughts or suggestions!

[superdavesds]

I have removed all the fish and now only have inverts. It has been long enough since I posted that I will pretty much just add a list of pics and let them do the speaking. I will try and get them all in order as of time that changes were made and livestock was added and removed. I will say that I have had a few strange things happen such as what everyone local said I had a strange red hair algae that turned out to be a type of cyano, and I got myself a nice gorilla crab that tore up a few corals and some strange little star fish that really liked zoas for dinner. Overall I have only lost a few corals, but have had to remove a few such as my old torch. He was just all blown up huge and stinging stuff. Even killed a couple zoa colonies.

That’s about it for this generation. That’s what the tank looked like exactly one year ago.

[superdavesds]

I think next I will talk about a few problems I have had. Here is the only pic I thought to take of the Gorilla crab. This thing was a real menace! Crazy what they can eat and the destruction they can do. He completely ate all my green stars and a nice colt coral. Not to mention me taking the tank two thirds of the way apart to get him out.

Here is a couple pics of some star fish that just about took over my tank. At first I thought they were ok but soon enough I was having problems with zoas just disappearing. I believe I removes a couple dozen of these guys.

 

I also had a bout with some hair algae, I think I posted on here somewhere about it to figure out how to clean it up. Everyone called it red hair. I could literally pick up the rocks by it. It was attached very well. I got the same answers as always so first I got a green emerald crab that looked like he was eating it but my two big patches were becoming a dozen little ones. Next step was I put in a sea hare that looked like he was eating it but turned out he was just stripping it to get to the algae under it. All of a sudden the entire tank was covered in it. I lost a scolimia, daisy polyps, frag of zoas, almost all the gloves, orange fungia was badly damaged and still has not recovered, I had recession on duncans, acans, and zoas that eventually recovered.

It turned out to be a type of cyano that was taken care of with a freshwater marycen treatments. It took a few rounds of it but eventually went away. This was around January this year.

[superdavesds]

And now time for some recent pics and some shots of what the tank looks like now. I replaced the bulbs at about the one year mark with the nano-tuners 10000k and purple looking supposed to be 460nm.

I don’t even know what this is, Got it at the LFS for ten bucks. No one has ever told me exactly what it is. It opens its mouth very wide from time to time and almost turns inside out with crazy little feeder tentacles.

I got this thing so tiny for seven bucks. Was supposed to be a little hammer coral. Turned out to be a frogspawn. If you look closely you can see where it is branching. Lol

It looked like^^ that a few months ago and like looks like this now.

[superdavesds]

I just found another hunk of zoas that have been missing since I moved the tank. I think they are the yellow with brown fringe. I will get some pics as soon as they open so I can see what they are. I think my crab dragged them from out behind a rock lol.