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Can I keep SPS in my nano reef? Yes I can! *Photos*


KevinM

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Update 29 Mar 17

32915301833_a40cd2196d_k.jpgreef by Kevin McRae, on Flickr

 

Update. Just a new photo of the reef, nothing new. Snowflake clownfish has been MIA for a month now. 29 Feb 2016

 

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Update. More SPS! Dec 15 2015

 

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Update. SPS addiction has began.

 

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I've been lurking on this forum for around a year and finally signed up. I've kept small reefs on and off for the past 6-7 years. About 6 months ago I purchased a used nano/biocube (I don't know what it is). It has a light mod, now with ebay chinese 60 watt LED which is actually pretty great. I got the nano running with a few zoas/LPS however I've since added many frags which are doing quite well.

 

Here are a few photos.

 

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Equipment

6 Gallon Cube

60 Watt LED - Here is the light http://www.ebay.com/itm/2015-Full-spectrum-Dimmable-20x3W-Led-Aquarium-light-REEF-AND-SPS-/331500565974.

Koralia nano

 

Coral list

GSP

Candy Cane

Favia

Acans

Yellow Polyps

Bunch of different zoas

Octospawn

Hammer

Torch

Frogspawn

Kenya Tree (I think)

Ricordeas and other shrooms

Alveopora

The only SPS....green encrusiting montipora....

 

Livestock

2x Ocellaris - Black and Snowflake

7 x Astrea

2 x Sexy Shrimp

A few random unknown snails...

Couple blue legged hermits.

 

Lots of local reefers in my area with plenty of inexpensive frags. I was thinking of trying some birdsnest or perhaps some acropora. Thoughts? I conduct water changes every 1-2 weeks, the LPS and zoas seem to look much better when I do less water changes. I occasionally dose calcium/alk/mag as well however with reef crystals I've been having to do it less frequently. Euphyllia is doing amazing in the cube, growing a new head every 1/1.5 months.

 

Anyways, do you think birdsnest would do okay? Do you think it'll get bleached?

 

Thanks!

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Thanks for the reply, great video...very informative and great picture.

 

Oh yes, I should have mentioned params...

 

Salinity - 1.026

Cal - 460

Alk - 9 Dkh

Mag - about 1400

 

I feed brine/mysis/bottled phytoplankton twice a week. I have been using the phytoplankton for about two months and no algae bloom, alvepora seems to respond well to it. There is a tiny bit of bubble algae thanks to a new frag, may introduce a emerald crab.

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Keeping parameters stable in a small tank is pretty challenging. I'd try a Montipora capicornis as your first test SPS. They're probably the easiest SPS.

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Many of the Montipora should do fine (Setosa and Sunset Monti come to mind). Leptoseris are excellent, too, and don't require much light. Pavonas adapt easily to many intensities of light, but tend to be aggressive (1-2" sweepers).

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So this happened....

 

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Was offered this colony along with a little symbiotic crab at a price I couldn't refuse. I added the colony last night, so far tons of polyp extension. A bit nervous as this is my first time with acro but this little nano keeps its parameters pretty stable.

 

Added a purple monti cap as well, and possbily some nice size birdsnest next week.

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So this happened....

 

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Was offered this colony along with a little symbiotic crab at a price I couldn't refuse. I added the colony last night, so far tons of polyp extension. A bit nervous as this is my first time with acro but this little nano keeps its parameters pretty stable.

 

Added a purple monti cap as well, and possbily some nice size birdsnest next week.

Awesome! Judging by how everything else looks in your tank and how long you've been doing it I'm sure you'll do fine with Acro! I think what separates the guys who are godly at keeping hard coral vs. the plebes is consistency. A quick Google search tells you just about everything you need to know now a days. I don't mean to sound like they don't know their shit because it's the opposite, I just mean it's pretty black and white what you need to do to keep certain corals alive. Personally I can't remember all that stuff at any given time so I just write out where my tank needs to be and then test against the baseline and make sure everything I add fits within the parameters. The guys who keep logs, religiously test their water, and keep up with routine maintenance seem to have the nicest tanks. Smaller tanks are just hard because if something goes wrong it might only take an hour for it all to go south but no one tests and monitors their tanks that often lol. The larger the tank the more time you have to respond in a way. In the past I've never set myself up for success. Always had relatively small tanks, spent way too much on coral but never a home RODI and ATO. Always ended up getting sick of lugging jugs, topping off daily, spilling water, cleaning up water...lol this time around I did the opposite and hoping to get a nice looking tank like yours. Looking forward to following this and seeing the growth!

 

Oh also I seem to read a lot of posts about Zoas and Palys liking a little dirtier water where as hard corals are the opposite. Let us know how it works for you, I'm interested to see.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

So, I've added a wack more SPS frags. I also added a emerald crab to take care of a tiny bit of bubble algae. Which was a HUGE mistake. He was knocking everything over, including recently mounted frags. Nano is packed pretty tight so when one item falls it usually falls onto another coral which in turn isn't very impressed. So after spending a few hours of my afternoon using epoxy on everything I was happy. Well, wake up the next morning and he somehow knocked frags over again (apparently my epoxy skills are lacking). So I decide, screw this crab, he's outta here. Off course, he knew this was coming and made it incredibly difficult to catch him so I had to rip out all the rocks again.

 

While I wish I never got him in the first place and I do feel bad for the rough week I put my nano through.

 

As well, though about the crab eating bubble algae. It is spread via the bubbles being poped the spores spread throughout the tank. When the crab eats the bubbles, spores will spread thus a never ending cycle. Not exactly what I want.

 

However, all the coral is fine and the crab did give me credit towards some new SPS....

 

Added some small frags of:

Crayola plana acro

Bonsai acro

Purple chronic tort acro

Fire and ice millepora - Love milles.....had to finally get one.

Red digi - Freebie, never cared for them much but the polyps look pretty neat actually!

Purple stylophora - Bleaching in my nano, too much light perhaps? I moved it to the shade for now.

 

And a few little odds and ends 'scraps' that weren't in the best shape (which are already recovering great in my nano)

 

Here are some photos.

 

Purple chronic tort...hopefully the polyps will start to open up.

 

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Euphyllia corner....

 

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This birdsnest was 100% white less than a week ago, greening up already. Not bad for a freebie.

 

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Crayola plana...

 

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FTS - Bit of a mess since the crab left but I don't want to touch it again until the new year. I find it incredibly frustrating rescaping....I just want the corals to be open and grow. So no more touching and no more frags for awhile (I hope, hahaha).

 

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Also, here is a reason why it's nice to live North of the USA. Took this photo last week!

 

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  • 1 month later...

Thank you!

 

A few photo updates. Struggling keeping the alkalinity up, drops like crazy everyday. I really need to make a automated doser. Have noticed much better colour since I've started to dose alk though.

 

RTN is very frusturating though. Purchase a few frags at a time, some do fantastic and others from the same tank start to recede within hours. So far I've lost a bonsai and millepora to RTN. Purchased a small frag of bird of paradise birdsnest which got RTN within hours, I fragged it and so far I'm hopeful it will improve (fragged it about two weeks ago, polyps extension, just bleached now). Purchased a few frags locally and they got RTN overnight which seemed to have affected some of my long term SPS. All seems well now, STN seems to be receding in those that were affected. Wouldn't be as fun if it were easy I suppose.

 

Playing around with the white balance, birdsnest colour is a bit off but still represents the tank well.

 

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Rainbow montipora is spreading like wildfire. Happy to see, it is one of my favourites. Can't capture the colour as well as I'd like.

 

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Pink millepora

 

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Freebie digitata - Can't believe it was free, love the polyps.

 

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New acro

 

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This was also a freebie - seems to be colouring up quite well. Excited to see what it turns into.

 

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  • 2 months later...

Update - Haven't added anything new since mid December. I'd love to get some new frags but I'm at the peak of the school year and am lacking coral funds.

 

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  • 7 months later...

Little update - I think I need to setup a larger reef. Look at maybe a 30g cube.

 

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I also added a crocea clam.

 

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Your progress looks amazing! I am growing SPS in my 5 Gallon! :D its such a great feeling seeming them happy and healthy... have any advise? what is your husbandry schedule look like? are you dosing or just water changes? THANKS!!!

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Thank you. My biggest challenges so far has been finding the right balance of water changes and dosing. I've had the best results with a 25% water change once per week and dosing 1-2ml of Alk/Mag/Cal every 3 days. Perhaps I'd have better result doing it daily in small increments? I tried doing 2 x 25% water changes a week and I didn't notice a difference for my SPS but my Euphyllia weren't as happy.

 

I should mention I added a Tunze 9002 skimmer. It doesn't really skim all that much - I probably need to clean it actually. I think this may be why I've had better acro colour and encrusting.

 

It took me about 8 months before my SPS started encrusting - I have one acro frag in there that grew 1 or 2mm and it has been 12 months. I add my red planet acro frags last and they have better growth than the acro frags I placed in 12 months ago.

 

While zoas look really cool and it sucks having a bare tank at the start I think if I went back I'd avoid them. I have some pretty green zoas that have made a carpet of about 200 polyps. They are quickly approaching my red planet and I'm worried who will will the encrusting war.

 

Another issue I had was poor feeding. I was using phyto and brine and later switched to primarily reef roids and the very occasional mysis. Colour and polyps extension is great.

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