My 10 gallon

[kwyjibo]

Uhm, this was a 10 gallon tank that I had lying around and my big bro and cousin gave me about 8 pounds of live rock they had been meaning to get rid of. They also happened to have a few pounds of live sand also. They also broke off some coral frags I cant ID, red sea pulsing xenia, turbo snails, caulerpa with various critters, and some button polyps.

 

Now the part where I paid for stuff comes in here:

I paid for the glass hood, the smartlite retrofit kit for one striplite, another 6400k actinic flourescent tube for another strip lite I had lying around, penguin 330, eheim ecco 2231, and floating thermometer.

 

As for livestock, I bought from The Reef Tank here in NoVA, colonies of yellow polyps, green star poylps, button polyps, anthelia, and an orange open brain coral. From the Marine Scene in Herndon, I got my 3 True Percula Clowns, and a red legged hermit crab.

From Dr. Mac at a WAMAS meeting, I picked up two brown base/green tentacle bubble tip anemones.

Both of these places kick ass if you live in the DC/VA/MD area, and so does Dr. Mac when he comes into WAMAS toting those bags and boxes of corals.

 

Thus far things have been smooth with 2 casualties in my tank. One was a turbo snail that just recently died, but fortunately I have seen a newbie snail crawling on the walls to take its place. The other was a mushroom nub my cousin had apparently given to me which I fished out and threw away because I thought it was dead. Whoops...

But everything else is still alive thus far.

Water is pristine, except for those pesky nitrates. I need that grape Caulerpa to work faster and absorb the nitrates faster. Or I could just feed the clowns and anemone a little less frequently....

 

Actually, someone mentioned that I should probably ditch the penguin 330 and slap on a remora protein skimmer. Dont know if thats my next step yet, but when I dig up 200 dollars, I'll definitely think about it.

 

That's my tank. I would post pics but i'm self concious after my cousin made fun of my aquascaping and the open view of my filters in the background.

Thanks for reading this super long post and its good to see that we have an active moderator here.

[Christopher Marks]

Aww...but I wanted to see it! I'm sure it looks very nice kwyjibo.  It sounds like your nano reef experience has been very good so far.  I regards to the Remora protien skimmer...don't bother with it, your nano reef doesn't need a skimmer.  Please post some photos! :biggrin:

[aquajones]

I'ld like to see your tank also. Sounds great!

[Scleropages]

where is the next wamas meeting, never heard of it but i would like to pickup some rare stuff., do u ever goto house of fungus?, err Tropicals?