WRH Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Hi, what store did you pickup the nanomag? sounds like you highly recomend it and looks like my tank needs it. Here is my tank's video: Link to comment
andrewkw Posted January 21, 2011 Author Share Posted January 21, 2011 Hi, what store did you pickup the nanomag? sounds like you highly recomend it and looks like my tank needs it. Here is my tank's video: I got it at big als. Honestly it just makes things so much easier. Get one and you will see! The last time I felt like this was the first time I got an auto top off unit. Link to comment
WRH Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 I got it at big als. Honestly it just makes things so much easier. Get one and you will see! The last time I felt like this was the first time I got an auto top off unit. Right on! I was hoping you got one there. I'll pick one up asap. Auto top off is on the to do list. Your tank is looking great. how old is it today? Link to comment
WRH Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Is this the one?? This one looks round... http://www.bigalsonline.ca/Fish_Maintenanc...html?tc=default Link to comment
andrewkw Posted January 21, 2011 Author Share Posted January 21, 2011 Right on! I was hoping you got one there. I'll pick one up asap. Auto top off is on the to do list. Your tank is looking great. how old is it today? I can't wait for the auto top off to come for this tank, then everything will be on auto top off and everything can be left for several days without needing attention. In a few days the tank will be 7 months old. And that is the magnet its a circle on the outside but a square on the inside. Link to comment
andrewkw Posted January 27, 2011 Author Share Posted January 27, 2011 Finally also in the mail I got new Elos test kits. I have been using Salifert for years, but decided to make the switch. I've never tested anything in this tank other then nitrates once or twice and the results surprised me. NO3 = >1ppm CA = 450 KH = 7.5 MG = 950! Today was the first time I've retested. I'm not sure if I've done 1 or 2 water changes since, I"m pretty sure 2 but I've decided from now on the tank will get weekly testing and weekly water changes or doses. I don't need dosing pumps, but I should find little containers I can keep on my desk for alk cal and mag. Today's results : NO3 = less then 1ppm still CA = 500 - coralife salt what do you expect dKH = 6.5! - I added 1.4 ML of alk and that should have brought it up to 7.5 I didn't retest but will try and get that done by tonight as I'll raise it another 1 tomorrow MG = 1100! - must be the mangroves added 37 ml of magnesium solution to increase to 1200 also have not retested yet but will try to tonight, going to raise to 1350ish I got my JBL ATO today. I can certainly see why the tunze one is more then twice the price. While this unit is functional, the quality is no comparison. The float switch just barely fits. I have to go with one, and no backup, but given I'll have to move the float switch to clean the powerhead which I do at least monthly it's hopefully not much of an issue. I'll likely use a 1 gallon container just to be safe. If I wasn't worried I'd put a 5 gallon bucket or something on the floor and forget about it forever... I was unable to mount the switch due to lack of room but it can only fall down not up. It should be fine. I ordered an aqualifter pump today. Originally I thought I'd use this on my 112 gallon and move the tunze here, but I decided I don't want to. The way it's designed to work is weird, they suggest you run one float switch in your top off water, wtf? I don't think anyone will care if their pump runs dry vs a backup switch. Another thing that surprised me is that there is no sound when the water is too high. If you are wondering if the tunze is worth it, I can tell you it certainly is, but for the tank I'm using and what I have invested in it, this will suffice. Here's a pic of the float switch in the back chamber and the 2 mangroves + powerhead, as you can see there really isn't room for anything else there. Finally I'm thinking about getting a fish. Flaming prawn goby would be nice but they are somewhat hard to find locally and he may end up either hiding all the time or anemone food. I'm thinking about going a bit outside the box but I"m not sure yet. If I didn't have the shrimp I think I'd go for a royal gramma which no one considers a pico fish, but for all the years I kept one in my 112 it never left the area of one rock, right up to the point where I tore it down for a restart, I picked up the rock and the fish stayed in it. I'm thinking maybe the smallest chromis i can find, or maybe a small damsel. Yes the tank is small, but the water quality is great, there is enough room at the back for even a 2" + fish to hide, and I only feed my fish high quality frozen foods, so if you ask me a small fish would be better off in here then in a neglected 10 gallon. Still just a thought, I'm not sure if I will go through with it. Maybe I'll find the flaming prawn or something else that really catches my eye as far as goby. Link to comment
jgoldsney Posted January 27, 2011 Share Posted January 27, 2011 Does the magnet take care of the hard diatoms? I have a nimble nanno magnet and it works great on the softer stuff that crops up but takes forever to work through the small green diatoms. Link to comment
jgoldsney Posted January 27, 2011 Share Posted January 27, 2011 Sorry double post..... Link to comment
Sunstar Posted January 27, 2011 Share Posted January 27, 2011 Sweet pics man....what is that acan eating? I was thinking of ordering a JBJ ato for my pico too, but I can't justify spending that much when the tank costs less. Instead I DIY'd it using a battery powered air pump and just spliced in a float switch I bought off ebay. Not hijack this thread, could you PM me the information about this? Air Pump ATO? Link to comment
snakemau Posted January 28, 2011 Share Posted January 28, 2011 Hey Andrewkw, Maybe you posted this already but what do you use to feed your corals and the rest of your invertebrates? and then you only dosing with alk, mag and cal? no iodine u others for anything else? I'm getting my tank tomorrow and will start the set up process right away! Thanks Link to comment
andrewkw Posted January 28, 2011 Author Share Posted January 28, 2011 Hey Andrewkw,Maybe you posted this already but what do you use to feed your corals and the rest of your invertebrates? and then you only dosing with alk, mag and cal? no iodine u others for anything else? I'm getting my tank tomorrow and will start the set up process right away! Thanks Cyclopeeze for everything except the anemone gets a bit of shrimp once in a while and about a weekly feeding of frozen brine. I don't like to use brine, but pe mysis are about the size of the sexy shrimp so they won't eat the left overs The duncans and acans will get a semi target feeding, if some catch great but I don't go out of my way to make sure they eat. I try not to feed the fungai as it has no room to grow. I only just started dosing as water changes especially when not done religiously are no longer keeping up. I do not dose calcium because I use coralife salt it always mixes at 500+ and it's rare for my pico to drop below 500 I just dose alk and mag. Link to comment
Sunstar Posted January 28, 2011 Share Posted January 28, 2011 it is a marvous little tank. I plan to borrow the idea of growing corals up the back glass. I read through your thread and I simply get Jazzed when I see such little tanks develop into beauties such as this. Just a question here regarding your light. How high is the structure. from top of tank to the base of the bulb (where it meets the fixture) I am contemplating the Par 30/38 but I want to see if it would work in my current structure. Link to comment
snakemau Posted January 28, 2011 Share Posted January 28, 2011 Ok so I see 2 days ago you added 1.4 ML of alk and 37 ml of magnesium solution to increase your levels. What products exactly do you use to increase those levels? can you give me a brand and other info on what has worked for your tank? Thanks for the info again Link to comment
sean-820 Posted January 28, 2011 Share Posted January 28, 2011 New pictures. Again I cannot stress this enough, if you have a pico buy a 2 little fishes nanomag. Glass or acrylic! This thing is amazing. Bye bye magfloat, toothbrush, scraper (that ends up knocking corals off ect). What is the big mushroom looking coral thats pink with the green trim to the left of the gsp? It looks like a mushroom but im not sure as ive never neen one like that. The tank looks great. Link to comment
andrewkw Posted January 29, 2011 Author Share Posted January 29, 2011 Ok so I see 2 days ago you added 1.4 ML of alk and 37 ml of magnesium solution to increase your levels. What products exactly do you use to increase those levels? can you give me a brand and other info on what has worked for your tank? Thanks for the info again I use bulk reef additives. I've been using them for several years with great success. I stopped running a calcium reactor on my big tank a long time ago. What is the big mushroom looking coral thats pink with the green trim to the left of the gsp? It looks like a mushroom but im not sure as ive never neen one like that. The tank looks great. That is a mini carpet anemone. It sometimes hosts the sexy shrimp as it is their natural host in the wild but they don't stay in it like a clownfish and their anemone. Link to comment
andrewkw Posted January 29, 2011 Author Share Posted January 29, 2011 So I hooked up an aqua lifter pump and put a 1 gallon container on the floor. Drilled a hole in the lid so it's mostly sealed. I think 1 gallon should last 1-2 weeks but I really have no idea. I've been keeping a couple of plastic cups on my window cell and replacing them every few days with fresh water. Morning pics before the light comes on. Link to comment
andrewkw Posted January 30, 2011 Author Share Posted January 30, 2011 So what the heck spawned? I don't think it could be the sexy shrimp they are so little. I think maybe star polyps but I'd like to know for sure. The water is still cloudy the next morning so I will be doing a water change today. After the water change I'm going to test and from now on try and make Sunday water change day. still changing anywhere from 1/2 to 1 gallon. Link to comment
pj86 Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 Check the female sexy. When mine were born they were very little exactly like in your video. Take some out and put them in a bowl, then maybe you can make a positive ID on the organism. Link to comment
DönitzDK Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 Where did you get that little algea magnet? O: Btw your tank is amazing! Link to comment
andrewkw Posted January 30, 2011 Author Share Posted January 30, 2011 Check the female sexy. When mine were born they were very little exactly like in your video. Take some out and put them in a bowl, then maybe you can make a positive ID on the organism. They're all gone. I should have collected some but I was just too tired. If it is the sexy shrimp when can I expect them to spawn again? are they like clownfish with a very set routine? Link to comment
pj86 Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 If you check the female you will clearly notice if she released her eggs. They do spawn like clockwork. Mine a day after she spawned she was already carrying a new clutch of eggs. I searched the web for how long it takes the fertilized eggs to mature and didn't find an answer. One website says about 2-3.5 weeks but they are uncertain. I'm keeping good track this time and gonna see how long it takes the eggs to mature. One think that I noticed is that they get caught really easily in the filter floss and can survive for a few hours. Link to comment
dedman Posted February 2, 2011 Share Posted February 2, 2011 Great thread and awesome tank! Not to hijack, Just wondering here - do you think that you could take the dymax LED fixture and retro 3-4 larger LED's and get a result similar to the par 30? (What are the dims on the dymax LED panel, and is there an access panel on top?) Link to comment
andrewkw Posted February 2, 2011 Author Share Posted February 2, 2011 Great thread and awesome tank! Not to hijack, Just wondering here - do you think that you could take the dymax LED fixture and retro 3-4 larger LED's and get a result similar to the par 30? (What are the dims on the dymax LED panel, and is there an access panel on top?) No idea, but for that kind of effort / cost I think you'd be better off just getting a par 30 light. However I'm not really a diy person. I have been forced to make some changes due to the lighting. I moved a few corals down and I will be placing a couple sps at the top to fill the empty space. I don't really keep many sps so I can't just take from my other tanks I'll have to go out and buy new corals Link to comment
andrewkw Posted February 5, 2011 Author Share Posted February 5, 2011 Bought some new stuff today. A green clown goby - I'm kinda regretting him. His stomach looks pretty pinched which is surprisingly considering he just landed yesterday. Maybe he was in the wholesalers vats for a while. He's pretty big and very dark. Blends in to the black background. If he doesn't work out I'm going to try a tiny damsel or chromis. I saw a couple today around 1" that are actually smaller then the goby, but the goby is or is close to full grown. On the plus side he was $6 I also bought a couple of SPS corals and then made tiny frags for this tank. A monitpora digitata, a blue millie, and some kind of blue acro. They are pretty stressed since they just arrived yesterday but should colour up nicely. They are maricultured. It will be interesting to see how they colour up under the par 30, vs how the colonies will under my t5's. I will take pics of everything tomorrow. For now here is a pic of something I wanted to bring home,but don't have a spare tank or a spare chiller for Link to comment
andrewkw Posted February 5, 2011 Author Share Posted February 5, 2011 Lots of changes to the tank, and lots and lots of pictures.. Took some before lights on, and then obviously with the lights on. It will be interesting to see how the new corals effect the alkalinity. Tested today at 7 dkh! added 1.4 ml of alk to bring it back to 8 and tomorrow I will be doing a water change with coralife salt which mixes at 9.6. I almost need a micro dosing pump. It seems silly to buy one if I'm only going to turn it on once maybe twice a week for 1 minute. Still I like keeping this tank simple. for now I will just keep 1.4ml of alk solution on my desk and set an alarm to remind me to dose it wednesday and go from there. The clown goby would not eat yesterday both floating food or with food right up against his mouth. Today he is going crazy swimming around. I'm pretty sure he is picking off copepods as there are 1000s in here. Will try again tonight this time with cyclopeeze. yesterday I tried brine and mysis. side shot of the new sps in the morning, they are pretty bleached out, but that's expected of new arrivals, they all have good polyp extension so hopefully it won't be long for the colour to return : Hammer in the sun I'm having trouble getting the colour of this montipora digitata to show up in the photos, this is with the lights off Then the colony in my big tank New acro with just a hint of blue, I'm not sure of the species, not really an sps guy, and the blue milli. Only photo of clown goby so far where purple and green meet x2 The hammer is doing much better since being moved down. It bleached out pretty bad, and has already recovered. I really didn't want to rearrange the tank but the par 30 was forcing me to, and now the tank looks much better and is much more diverse. 2 corals that don't mind touching Duncans still doing well I like this shot, the regular paly dwarfed by the grandi I'm 100% sure the fat one is a female, and I'm 90% sure the other one is also female and the one that spawned a few days ago, any care to confirm? The 3rd one I know is a male as he's much smaller and I've seen him mating with the big female. The middle one I just can't say for certain what sex it is. Someone really hates those green zoos. They've been knocked twice so for now they are on the sand. a shot from the left side Full left Full right FTS front - i know it's not the best but after a dozen or so attemps I give up for now. I gotta find my tripod it's around somewhere... Link to comment
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