Mark's Nanobox Powered 40B -retired-

[markalot]

Update with some pics.

 

Purchased my final fish, a possum wrasse.

 

 

Look at those flatworms, would ya. They add color to the tank. :/

 

Took 20 pictures of the blenny, got one good one.

 

 

The firefish always looks bored.

 

 

So I thought this was neat. I did not know how to trim a gorgonian. I googled but could not find any confirmation that if trimmed they would heal over and continue to grow. My gorg was bent, due to a little accident in the 46, so I went ahead and trimmed off all the ends. 2 weeks later you can't even tell I trimmed them.

 

 

FTS

 

[gena]

Looks fantastic, Mark! I love your final fish selection...what a cutie!!!!! And that photo of the blenny is perfect! I've cut my gorgs several times...they always heal flawlessly and continue to grow .

[markalot]

Looks fantastic, Mark! I love your final fish selection...what a cutie!!!!! And that photo of the blenny is perfect! I've cut my gorgs several times...they always heal flawlessly and continue to grow .

 

Thanks Gena!

[Lalani]

Looks great, Mark! Love your fish selection

[markalot]

Looks great, Mark! Love your fish selection

 

Thanks. I'm going to try an rescape a bit, my cheato hiding behind the rock on the left keeps escaping. I wonder if I can put it in a mesh bag and have it still get enough light to grow? I also need to confuse the fish a bit, the clown Goby has harassed the wrasse a few times now. This will certainly put the firefish into hiding for a few days.

 

Oh, and I purchased a Caribbean Rhodactus shroom yesterday (bluish with some green and red), hope to get a picture tonight.

[markalot]

Best pic I could get of the shroom so far. Reddish brown tentacles with a blue/green base.

 

[Giga]

 

 

 

 

 

 

thats pretty cute lol

 

[markalot]

Angled shot of the shroom. A little distortion due to the glass. The blue really sticks out ... lets see if it fades.

 

[metrokat]

Possum wrasse looks adorable.

[Polarcollision]

This was restarted mid October to hold all my acros that were infested with AEFW. That didn't work out but I kept it running, added sand and live rock, and it's now a rescue tank for my purple firefish (pictured below) that was cowering in fear due to bad stocking in my 46.

 

The original history goes something like this.

 

Setup a 20 long as my second reef tank and my first real nano.

Had all kind of dumb issues mainly caused by poor planning and bad filtration.

Took my 46 planted down, cleaned it and converted it to a reef.

Moved everything from this tank into my 46 and took this down.

 

Latest FTS

 

 

Original startup below, the continuation starts here: http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/313051-marks-20-long-restarted/?p=4585408

 

----------------------------------------------------------------

 

Oct 16th 2012

 

 

Howdy,

 

Needless to say I've gotten a lot of inspiration pouring over each monthly featured nano and the member aquarium threads in here. I've been running planted tanks for 6 years, I started my first reef tank last February.

 

This tank was started Oct 1st, seeded with rock rubble from both inside my 40 breeder and the AC110 that I run on my 40B. I had added a bunch of rock rubble to the filter 3 months ago in preparation for a new tank. No ammonia was ever recorded and the uglies started 3 days after setup.

 

At startup:

 

- 20 gallon long

- Standard glass canopy

- 2 Current USA 30" T5HO light fixtures, 24" bulbs (Hagen Power-Glo, TruLumen 12K, TruLumen Actinic, TruLumen Actinic)

- 1 Marinelife 24" hidden LED strip, blue. Mounted under glass top on frame.

- Aquaclear 110 with a bag of carbon and Phosguard

- Koralia Nano 240 Flow Pump

- Fluval 100 watt heater

- 1 bag of aragonite sand

- unknown quantity of rock rubble plus 8 small live rocks from my other tank

- A 'mushroom rock'

- A small rock with zoas

 

I use Reef Crystals salt, Spectrapure (blatant plug) RO/DI water, test with a refractometer to 1.025, and run at 80F

 

I don't like the rock wall look in smaller tanks so I'm going to try rubble with a lot of flow.

 

This plan has changed twice but right now I envision mainly softies and LPS corals with 3 or 4 small fish. Lone inhabitant at the moment is a purple firefish. Planning on 1 or 2 neon gobies and, once the tank is mature, a small peaceful wrasse.

 

The flow is provided by the 110 and to some extent the Koralia. The 110, at full blast, starts moving the sand around.

 

Placing the rocks.

 

 

Filled and running.

 

Side shot showing the hidden LED bar mounted to the inside front of the tank. This gets me some nice blue in the morning and evening but no shimmer since it's underwater.

 

 

I'm reading through this thread today. :-) I don't normally find rock piles beautiful. Before you think of that as an insult, I mention it because this particular assembly of rocks reminds me of the riprap barriers around marinas/waterfronts. Gary Snyder wrote a poem about them, which also happens to be one of my favorite poems. So since I'm kinda high on nature today and your rockscape reminded me of it, I thought I'd share the love:

 

Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

placed solid, by hands

In choice of place, set

Before the body of the mind

in space and time:

Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall

riprap of things:

Cobble of milky way,

straying planets,

These poems, people,

lost ponies with

Dragging saddles—

and rocky sure-foot trails.

The worlds like an endless

four-dimensional

Game of Go.

ants and pebbles

In the thin loam, each rock a word

a creek-washed stone

Granite: ingrained

with torment of fire and weight

Crystal and sediment linked hot

all change, in thoughts,

As well as things.

[tibbsy07]

As always, great looking tank, Mark!

[gena]

Angled shot of the shroom. A little distortion due to the glass. The blue really sticks out ... lets see if it fades.

 

Love that shroom! You have a nice rhodactis collection going .

[markalot]

Update.

 

Latest FTS

 

 

Moved a couple of recently purchased frags from the 40 into here.

 

Baby Hammer

 

Green Pocillapora, This is greener and has a brighter skin color than my large green poci in the 40.

 

 

This is from the 46 and may or may not be AEFW infected, so it moves here for close observation. It's supposed to be a high end Rainbow millepora. I'm not so sure I believe it, but it has started to get some nice coloration. No sign of any aefw using a flashlight and magnifying glass. Dipped for 5 minutes in Bayer insecticide, inspected for eggs, rinsed, and put in here.

[markalot]

Hmmmm,

 

 

 

My 20 long grew 6 inches up top and is now a 29! And what a job it was. Let's see if I can explain what I did.

 

Aqueon 29 gallon tank

Aqueon Pro 100 watt heater (now all my tanks have these)

Aqua Clear 70 filter (carbon, purigen for now)

WP10 on wave mode, full power

Koralia Nano 425gph

BuildMyLED custom 30" strip light with Violet(UV), Royal Blue, Blue, and 3700K LED's

Current USA Marine orbit fixture (nice for sunrise and sunset effects and to add some PAR, but the white LED's used are horrid by themselves)

 

The brown flatworms were out of control in this tank, literally starting to smother some of the corals, so armed with 25 gallons of new water, lots of home depot buckets, and a new bottle of flatworm exit I went to work.

 

First step was moving out any corals I could not tolerate losing, just in case. The milli above was getting beat up by the clown goby so it went back into the 46, which may or may not still be AEFW infected. I also moved a couple of unique shrooms, my bicolor frogspawn, and a neon green poci.

 

Next I filled two 5 gallon buckets with old tank water, and a small container for the cleanup crew. Moved the hermits, trochus snails, and one loan nassarius into the cup. Then I nuked the 20 with a quadruple dose of flatworm exit. At this dose it works and works quite well.

 

After about 5 minutes it was time to start swishing the rocks around and moving them to the buckets. One by one all the rocks and then the fish all into the 5 gallon buckets. This went better than expected, though I seriously doubt I was able to kill all the flatworms before I had to start moving everything.

 

The 20 is now a brown mess of dead flatworms and the stink is incredible. I drain the rest of the water out and the wife and I move the tank off the stand and put the new 29 in its place. At this point I realize I forgot two things. I have no sand if I want to put a new sandbed in, and I have no backing to hide the wall. To late now!

 

So I wheel the garbage can over and ... wait a second, I forgot I did a gravel vac and water change on the 40 last week, I'm missing about 10 gallons of water. Bah, who needs it. I fill up the 29 with all I have, carefully move the rocks and fish back in, and reuse about 75% of the water in both buckets filling the 29 to about 3 inches from the top, high enough to operate the new AC70 I bought.

 

Amazingly everyone was happy yesterday when I finished. I am doing a daily dose of Seachem Prime and Stability, assuming there will be some kind of mini cycle. Today I topped off the tank with CaribSea - Sea-Pure sold at the nearby LFS because, while I do have 30 gallons of RO/DI made I was just too lazy to mix any new up SW.

 

Unfortunately (or fortunately) they had a black cap basslet who was healthy and eating, and I've wanted one of these forever, so he is in the 29 now as well. More reason to figure the tank will go through a mini cycle. I did keep everything in the old filter wet and placed it in the new AC70 just in case the old Purigen or carbon bag was part of the biofilter.

 

Pics.

 

Not quite enough water, but it's done.

 

 

And today it's full.

 

 

So close to getting all 4 fish in one shot, but the darn wrasse darted out of the pic just as I took it.

 

 

And finally a little more height to the scape, and some corals/frags from the 40 that I don't really know what to do with.

 

 

The scape turned out better than expected and I'm thrilled with this size tank. I always liked nor_cal_nano's 29 ( http://www.nano-reef.com/featured/_/2012/nor-cal-nano-r61 ) so I kind of imitated it with what I had to work with. It's too bad the clown goby likes to eat acro polyps or I could have a mili in here. When I have to frag my slimer I'll put that in here and see if he eats it as well.

 

Future plans are to do the same fuge mod I did to my AC110 on the 46. Take the basket, cut the mesh section, and use it as a screen on the output. I'll also silicone a hockey puck 4 LED lamp from Home Depot onto the hood. These warm white LED pucks grow chaeto like crazy and this simple mod has worked extremely well for me.

 

I took a video of the Basslet but I'm still working on getting it uploaded.

[markalot]

Man,

 

this thread is so dead I didn't even get any China lightbulb spam from my forum friend.

[tibbsy07]

Whoa! Nice upgrade Mark! It looks so much bigger - hard to believe only a 9 gallon increase. I like it

[markalot]

Whoa! Nice upgrade Mark! It looks so much bigger - hard to believe only a 9 gallon increase. I like it

 

Thanks. Yea, the tank looks huge and makes a really big statement when looking at it across the room. I was amazed and if I was just starting out this would be my tank size of choice. I really like it.

 

Here's a high quality FTS from today. Without any sand to catch debris it's still cloudy and I'm guessing I'll have to add some kind of filter material to catch all the dust. I have sand now, the larger grain like I have in my 40, but still not decided. I'd love a bed of GSP across the bottom.

 

 

I chose this shot because the Black Cap Basslet came out and held still for a second.

 

I use bubble algae to hold the rocks together.

[Arkayology]

I'm glad the move went well Mark! Any signs of AEFW?

[markalot]

I'm glad the move went well Mark! Any signs of AEFW?

 

Thanks! Nope, no signs anywhere so far. 40 seems clean, 46 seems clean, and this tank the clown goby was worse than the aefw, so no more acros in here.

[vlangel]

Nice tank Mark! Didn't realize you had a 3rd tank.

[Arkayology]

 

Thanks! Nope, no signs anywhere so far. 40 seems clean, 46 seems clean, and this tank the clown goby was worse than the aefw, so no more acros in here.

I've always wanted one of those little clown gobies but they seem like such punks.

[markalot]

Nice tank Mark! Didn't realize you had a 3rd tank.

 

Yea, I really enjoy all 3, but if I had just one I could spend more time making it look better.

 

I've always wanted one of those little clown gobies but they seem like such punks.

 

Yea, they are cute but total punks. As soon as I put the milli in there he nuzzled up to it and started munching on the polyps. I have to frag my big slimer soon and I'll try a big stick of it, see if he can handle getting slimed.

[markalot]

So the Firefish was looking stressed having problem finding a place to hide so I added sand. I used the same grain size I used in the 40 so I can gravel vac.

 

Fortunately I rinsed the sand about 10 times, otherwise it would have clouded the tank.

 

What i thought was the final result with just the blues on.

 

 

I could not find the firefish so this morning I moved around the rocks until I uncovered him. Not sure if he got trapped or not but I made sure to spot him this time before calling it done. Of course it never goes back together the same way. All frags from my 40. The very first slimer frag, which slimed up the entire tank yesterday when I added it. My first frag of Purple Stylo, my oldest SPS, and a frag / broken branch of the big bird.

 

 

 

The fish always pose when you don't have the good camera on hand.

 

 

I'm still treating with Prime once a day, plus some Coral Accel which has made the corals happy.

[vlangel]

Why did you add sand? Just for looks or are you thinking sand sifting gobies or something? I'm thinking of doing bare bottom in my seahorse build but I really like the looks of sand. Maybe I will paint the bottom to look like sand and give the BB a try and if I don't like it, I'll add sand like you did.

[markalot]

Why did you add sand? Just for looks or are you thinking sand sifting gobies or something? I'm thinking of doing bare bottom in my seahorse build but I really like the looks of sand. Maybe I will paint the bottom to look like sand and give the BB a try and if I don't like it, I'll add sand like you did.

 

The Firefish needs it, apparently. He was really acting odd without sand, obviously stressed. Now he's happily hiding in a little cove he made of rock and sand and comes out to eat, look around, and hide again.