Nano Virgin

[scubs]

Scubs,

I love your tank. I just started mine as well and will be following your thread. LOVE the lr. Im a little jealous i couldnt find anything that great looking. Good luck with the tank!

 

Thanks Agent! I made the formation out of 4 rocks. Believe me, it was not easy doing it in cloudy water. And I kept re-arranging and dripping water all over the carpet, and re-arranging and re-arranging till I was satisfied. But I managed to make quite a few swim-throughs at the end.

Good luck with your tank as well!

[scubs]

I fed the Nassarius today a tiny piece of uncooked shrimp. It was awesome seeing him come out and pinpoint the piece. I finally got some pictures of him.

[scubs]

I haven’t posted for a while about my progress. I’ve been adding 20ppm Calcium everyday while monitoring the KH and the PH. So far so good, I’ve managed to bring the calcium from 280 to 340 and the Alkalinity has stayed between 7-8KH and the PH around 8.2 and 8.4 at 8pm. Another 4-5 days of calcium dosing and I will be in the desired level 420.

 

It’s 24 day and the Nitrates have been zero for quite some time and also the Phosphates are undetectable.

 

There was new addition to the Clean Up Crew:

 

1 Fancy Nassarius

 

3 Ceriths

 

3 Margaritas

 

1 Tri-color Tonga Hermit

 

After some researching I found out that the Margarita snails were more of a temperate water inhabitants and they are found from Baja to Alaska. They live around a month in a tropical aquarium. So they got acclimated in the bay next door and let them live in more temperate water than my 80F Nano-Reef.

 

So the total of the CUC for now is:

 

2 Fancy Nassarius

 

5 Ceriths

 

2 Trochus (my favorite)

 

1 Scarlet Hermit

 

1 Tri-Color Tonga Hermit

 

1 Emerald Crab

 

I wanted to add peppermint shrimp, but the LFS were out of them. I still want to get hold of some Nerites to create more bio-diversity in the CUC.

 

Equipment wise, one of my balast for the Actinic lights just stopped working. I’ve emailed Oceanic on saturday and I haven’t recieved any emails from them yet. I will give them few more days.

 

As it turnes out, the ballast failure happens to many BioCube owners. Sooooo I went and ordered the nano-tuners ballast upgrade, because I don’t want to deal with ballasts quiting on me.

 

Also the Coralife Power Center timer turned out to be junk. One of the dials would get stuck and thats unacceptable. So now the lights run on digital timers from a hardware store.

 

I am glad that I played it slow (its day 24) and I haven’t added any fish or corals yet. I want the tank the be as stable as it can get. Also I had time to learn more about properly maintaining the tank, whether is changing water, correcting values, acclimating critters and being able to react fast in case something goes out of whack.

[jds]

Congrats on the tank and glad to see there are some bay area folks. I wont feel so alone

 

I opt'd for the bio 29 and picking it up tomorrow to start the process. I got hooked the same as you and after reading all sorts of blogs/forums landed here and made an account. I will definately be following your tank and hope to get the water, sand, temp set tomorrow and ready for some rock.

 

-jds

[scubs]

Congrats on the tank and glad to see there are some bay area folks. I wont feel so alone

 

I opt'd for the bio 29 and picking it up tomorrow to start the process. I got hooked the same as you and after reading all sorts of blogs/forums landed here and made an account. I will definately be following your tank and hope to get the water, sand, temp set tomorrow and ready for some rock.

 

-jds

 

Good luck jds! There are some nano clubs in bay area. I haven't joined any yet, but there is one that meets in San Jose and they do some coral exchange and stuff. Where in bay area are you and which shops to you go to?

 

I wanted a bigger aquarium, but had no place for the 29. But would not complain about the 14G.

[jds]

Yeah I saw the other bay area person post that San Jose meet. I'm at least 2mo from that anyhow, so no need to tempt myself daily! Reading NR is bad enough. Like that 16ft custom tank valued at over 4500 in Colorado? I would love that but my house isnt ready for that!

 

Im in Redwood Shores behind Oracle, you? I've checked out quite a few places around Mountain View, Palo Alto, etc and ended up at Ultimate Aquarium in San Mateo. Joe is really nice and has been helping me out in my planning and also offered to stop by if I had issues/questions. By far the best place I visited. Anyhow I will be there tomorrow to pick up the tank and get started.

 

http://www.theultimateaquariuminc.com/Ultimate/Home.html

http://www.yelp.com/biz/ultimate-aquarium-san-mateo

 

-jds

[PSYS]

Tank looks great and the pics are awesome!! I can't wait to see it progress!

[Agent G]

Looks amazing! Did the cuc take care of your HA problem? I am counting on mine to take care of some slime algae. Any stocking plans? I am thinking of a yellow watchman and a red hawkfish for mine.

[scubs]

Yeah I saw the other bay area person post that San Jose meet. I'm at least 2mo from that anyhow, so no need to tempt myself daily! Reading NR is bad enough. Like that 16ft custom tank valued at over 4500 in Colorado? I would love that but my house isnt ready for that!

 

Im in Redwood Shores behind Oracle, you? I've checked out quite a few places around Mountain View, Palo Alto, etc and ended up at Ultimate Aquarium in San Mateo. Joe is really nice and has been helping me out in my planning and also offered to stop by if I had issues/questions. By far the best place I visited. Anyhow I will be there tomorrow to pick up the tank and get started.

 

http://www.theultimateaquariuminc.com/Ultimate/Home.html

http://www.yelp.com/biz/ultimate-aquarium-san-mateo

 

-jds

 

I live in Emeryville, very close to Pixar. I've been driving down to Dublin to Aquarium Concepts. The place is big, like a super market for aquarists and you can find almost anything.

 

Tank looks great and the pics are awesome!! I can't wait to see it progress!

 

Thanks man!

 

Looks amazing! Did the cuc take care of your HA problem? I am counting on mine to take care of some slime algae. Any stocking plans? I am thinking of a yellow watchman and a red hawkfish for mine.

 

The very long hair algae I had to pluck it out manually, I still have some though. As for the rest the best performers are the Trochus. The Emerald Crab seems to be a good worker. He is like a Ninja, you don't see him much, but you can tell where he has been cuz he leaves clean rock patches. The Ceriths are ok, I was expecting more of them. The Nassarius, not very active, they are underground and come out if I drop something like a piece of shrimp. I did that twice. The Scarlet Hermit was doing great in the beginning, but now he is very lazy. The Tri-Color Hermit is a little machine, he is all over the place.

I am still looking to get some Nerites.

 

Livestock wise, I plan to get Yellow Clown Goby, Fire DartFish. And MAYBE a false percula clown, that will depend if it's ok to have a clown by themself and not pair, because i want only 3 fish for the size of my tank.

[scubs]

I’ve been really bad about posting regularly. And because of it I can talk quite a bit about the progress since my last post.

 

Here is an animated gif of the aquarium now and two weeks ago:

 

Tank Update

 

I never got reply back from Oceanic about the failed ballast (very disappointed) , so I said, “screw it” and ordered ballast upgrade from Nanotuners. It required some re-wiring because I already had upgraded the lights to Nanotuners 3.24 50% more light, and the previous upgrade was designed for the stock ballast.

 

It was not all that difficult, except I had to contact Nanotuners about instructions for installation, because they don’t have one in case you already have installed the previous light upgrade. BUT, they were really nice and replied me right away with text instructions.

 

Nanotuners - thumbs up;

 

Oceanic - thumbs down;

 

It’s one month and one week since I started the tank and the tank has been doing great so far.

 

Water chemistry

 

I had to bring the calcium level from 280-420. I did that by adding 20ppm Calcium Sera Marin daily and also testing PH and KH as well.

 

Well I brought the calcium level to the desired level, but the alkalinity dropped slightly to between 6-7KH. So I just added slightly less than 1/4 of a tea spoon Pure baking soda Arm&Hammer. I diluted it in some distilled water and added it to the aquarium. That raised the alkalinity +1KH.

 

The rest of the test are great. No traces of Ammonia, Phosphates, or Nitrates.

 

Live Stock

 

Last week Peppermint shrimp was added to finish off the Aipstasia. Well, the Aipstasia is still alive, but very hesitant to come out. I suppose “Patty” has been nipping at it. He/She was really shy at first and hiding behind the rocks, but now he/she is all over the place.

 

This week, after month and one week since i started the tank; there were 3 new addition to the tank.

 

Yellow Clown Goby, Branching Hammer Coral and Xenia. The goby is adorable, like the peppermint shrimp, he was shy and hiding at first, now he perches on the top rock and hunts tiny stuff that swim by. It’s fun watching him when I put mysis shrimp in the tank.

 

The rest of the crew are doing fine, the two hermits are funny when fighting over an empty shell that is a lot smaller than what they own. I made sure there are plenty empty shells around so no shell snatching happens.