Slowly but surely...

[Matthew]

Here are a few pictures of my 7.5 nano.  Things are going pretty well, although there's some hair algae on one of the rocks that's got me worried.  However, the coralline is already starting to grow and some pieces of Halimeda (which I love) are budding from the rocks.  Hopefully they'll mop up any nutrients that would allow the hair algae to get a foothold.

 

I did find an aiptasia on the polyp rock, but a screwdriver took care the little bugger--I rooted him out and tore out some of the rock surrounding his foothold to make sure he wouldn't come back.

 

[NanoReefer53]

niiiiccceeee

 

did you get that tank from Chris ?

[Christopher Marks]

Looks great Matthew, you're off to a good start!

 

NanoReefer53, that is my Creative model nano reef aquarium, with a 2x32w ABS fan cooled hood instead of a canopy.

[mmarquis]

Great start!  Look fantastic!

[Matthew]

NanoReefer53:  Yup, it's one of Chris'.  A d*mn fine tank, I must say.

 

And by the way, I noticed a really cool hitchhiker on some of my rocks--a small, encrusting SPS!  Somehow it survived the cycling in a little 10 gallon for a month with almost no water changes and appears to be growing--the advancing edge of the coral is white and appears to be growing outwards.

 

Looks like a porites, but I'm not sure.  I'll post pictures.

[Matthew]

So here's the picture of that little sps hitchhiker--it looks a little rough in this picture because I'd just done a water change.  The portion higher up died during cycling, but there are two smaller colonies lower down.

 

 

Here's a top view of the tank.  I have live sand and a piece of rock in the back:

 

And here's another strange thing I'm having trouble identifying.  It's a type of algae, both of which are wildly flourescent, even without the actinic.  The one on the right is brilliant orange, while the one on the left is a dusty flourescent purple, though it doesn't show up too well in these photos.  This last piece of rock is a Fla. maricultured specimen picked up from my lfs.  Other than the hair algae that's trying to get a foothold, there are some terrific critters poking up from the rock, including Halimeda and mermaid's brush and several coralline algaes.

 

 

Once this sucker's stabilized a little, I'm going to start putting some more challenging species in here.

[StuGotz]

Hey Mathew great pics...You should take some of the bottom of the hood, we all know chris didn't take any to post on his store!  

 

Chris, that tank looks great.  Good job my man!

[Matthew]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone.  I kid you not, Chris knows how to build a tank.  I'm not a shill for the guy, but this thing is awesome.  You can tell that a serious nano reefer engineered this thing.

 

Stu--I don't have one of his hoods, though I wish I had bought one--I have a Custom Sealife on top of it.

 

So can anyone ID that coral?

[TooFar2Sea]

My eyes are not as sharp as they used to be, so I must ask. What have you used as the substrate for the tank? It looks like dead coral, but I am not sure.  If it is, this is a new concept for me. Did you hear of this elsewhere or is it an experiment? Is it a variation on the "pod pile" theme?

[Matthew]

It's a Berlin method tank--I hate deep sand beds.  I just threw some old coral rubble in the bottom to provide more rock for pods to hide on.  It looks rough now, but after a few months it'll get coralline algae on it.

 

Here's an update--the first picture is with a flash, the second without.  There's some really nice coralline going on the rocks:

 

 

 

(Edited by Matthew at 9:33 pm on Feb. 12, 2002)