Eheim 9 Pushing The Limits of A Nano

[xavier1]

Hello everyone,

This is my nightstand nano, and it kept me going while I was setting up my larger tank in the living room.

Equipment:

Eheim AquaStyle 9g

Stock Internal filter with carbon, filter floss, and purigen when necessary

Aqueon power head

Koralia nano 240 run occasionally

Stock Eheim led, with a wave point 6" blue led for supplement.

From my bed

Thanks for stopping in! Constructive criticism and comments welcome!

[hinnenkm]

Wow, beautiful!

[DodgerDave]

wow, that's awesome. Looks like you have a good amount of NPS corals. How often do you feed? Ever worried about too much bioload in a small tank?

[hey]

stunning tank, loving the nps in there aswell. How long did it take the sun corals to become acclimated to opening in the daytime?

[DriftingNemo]

Dude, it's like you took a piece of the ocean and put it in a glass box... Amazing tank, one of the best ones I've seen in a while

[Fishstiks]

Stunning little tank! Great job!

[xavier1]

Thank you everyone! I very much appreciate the compliments!

The nps all open 24/7 (sometimes they close for a couple hours) and have been doing that since day 3 or 4. I fed an exhorbant amount of food the first days to get them on track, but it has paid off.

 

And yeah, I worry about the bioload every day. Lots of water changes and a huge clean up crew to make sure any left over food is processed

[xavier1]

Figure its time to update this.

 

The fish are gone, Bangaii and yellow tail damsel were both eaten by the Dendros, and the yellow bell damsel got bullied to death. Since then I have tried a baby yellow coris wrasse who was also eaten by something in the tank.

 

The yellow gorgonian started losing body mass, and I have moved it back and forth between here and my 45 gallon trying to get the polyps back out regularly enough to feed it back to health, no such luck as of yet, but I will keep trying until its really dead.

 

I have added some things, moved some other things, and lost a frag or two (Monti. digitata didnt do well for me, except the green one is fully encrusted and doing great)

 

I had a big issue with an extremely invasive sponge, and I'm still fighting it. Only thing that I have found that helped was a red spiny starfish. He went to town on it and hasn't stopped, but I don't think he can consume it fast enough to completely irradiate it. As long as its under control like it is now, I will live with it.

 

I did a big 5 gallon water change today (3 gallons out, 3 in, 1 out, 1 in, 1 out, 1 in) so I guess it is probably more like a 4 gallon change, but I really got into the rocks and sand with the turkey baster and cleared out some long-set-in detritus. Tank looks much happier now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tuffryu]

awesome tank! how many lbs of live rock do you think you have in there? i just bought the same tank and trying to figure out much to buy.

[xavier1]

Probably about 6 pounds, if that. The key is to get pieces that aren't that dense. Light, and shapely pieces are my favorite. in a small tank its easy to just fill the whole thing with rock, its a lot harder to do tunnels, caves, and cliffs. Post a pic when you get it up

[Tuffryu]

Yea the light pieces make sense. I have a 2.6 gal set up currently which i plan on moving completely over to the eheim. I have about 4lbs in the tank now so i'll probably buy a few more to fill the new tank.

 

Here's a link to my thread. Will shoot you some pics once it's up and running. The eheim is such a nice tank for reefs!