trial0r Posted December 3, 2016 Share Posted December 3, 2016 current FTS (november 2017) FTS (august 2017) hello friends, i'm returning to the hobby after a 13 year hiatus. i previously kept a very successful sumpless 29g nano while in college. it was largely lps/mushrooms/zoas with some sps and housed a mated ocellaris pair and snowflake eel. it was my pride and joy for 3 years with only minor setbacks. after graduating i left to post-graduate school across the country and the tank stayed at my parents' house. within a month, our neighbors had crashed into the transformer on the block, leaving us powerless for weeks, and with only flickering power for almost a month. the tank crashed and my parents broke it down. i passed the lfs on the road a few weeks ago and was overcome with the urge to pull over and walk through. i spotted a cute little all-in-one set up and decided i would start a pico reef. the tank: it's a aqua japan aj-30. not much about this brand online, but the deal was good and i was feeling impulsive. it looks sleek (glass with rounded corners and black bg, has 3 chambers in the back (though quite small) and comes with a light. Updated FTS (November 2017) 2 Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted December 3, 2016 Author Share Posted December 3, 2016 the tank with came some junky pre-loaded media: a "bio sponge" in chamber 1 and ceramic tubes in chamber 2. chamber 3 houses a return pipe but there is no pump included. here's the media: i put in about 10lbs live sand and filled the tank. i originally intended to trash the bio sponge and the ceramic tubes because they seem like silly detritus traps but i forgot to take them out before filling the tank! here is the resulting ceramic dust nightmare: i realized what i had done and removed the ceramic tubes and sponge. i'm now running floss in chamber 1 and changing it regularly to remove all dust remnants. my intentions with the chambers are: 1. heater & floss 2. lr rubble & chaeto 3. pump & chemical filtration Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted December 3, 2016 Author Share Posted December 3, 2016 after 3 days i got all ceramic dust out of the tank. went to the lfs and picked up what they described as cured lr. i've never cycled a tank with cured lr. it looked pretty dead to me. first crack at aquascape: 1 Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted December 3, 2016 Author Share Posted December 3, 2016 after being quite unhappy with my first batch of rock and aquascape attempt, i tracked down a much better lfs and picked up some additional lr: i elected to go with more of a rock wall look and epoxied some pieces together. i'm much happier with this set up: Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted August 13, 2017 Author Share Posted August 13, 2017 I never updated this after the first couple of weeks. The tank is almost 9 months old and doing great. I can't take a picture of it to save my life. side view 1 Quote Link to comment
TinyOcean Posted August 13, 2017 Share Posted August 13, 2017 Nice tank! I absolutely love your scape! Quote Link to comment
Christopher Marks Posted August 13, 2017 Share Posted August 13, 2017 This is coming along really nicely @trial0r, very unique aquascape! Is that a mangrove in the back chamber? Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted August 13, 2017 Author Share Posted August 13, 2017 45 minutes ago, TinyOcean said: Nice tank! I absolutely love your scape! thanks 13 minutes ago, Christopher Marks said: This is coming along really nicely @trial0r, very unique aquascape! Is that a mangrove in the back chamber? thanks, it is a mangrove and i'll post a better picture of it. 1 Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted August 20, 2017 Author Share Posted August 20, 2017 Maintenance today. Changing the filter floss and removing some chaeto. I'm always surprised by how much chaeto grows in just a couple weeks. Top down pic during water change. Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted August 20, 2017 Author Share Posted August 20, 2017 Shot of the rear 3 chambers. Chamber 1: heater, mangrove, some lr rubble Chamber 2: diy media tower with chaeto first, floss second, purigen third Chamber 3: tunze ato and return pump The chaeto is lit with a magnetic led strip (which I took a crappy picture of) on an inverse lighting schedule. It grows really well and I pull out a baseball sized hunk every couple of weeks. Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted August 24, 2017 Author Share Posted August 24, 2017 Picked up a new green plate 1 Quote Link to comment
TN09 Posted August 24, 2017 Share Posted August 24, 2017 That is an awesome looking plate you have there. Is that the pinwheel plate? Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted August 25, 2017 Author Share Posted August 25, 2017 18 hours ago, TN09 said: That is an awesome looking plate you have there. Is that the pinwheel plate? thanks. i don't think it's a pinwheel variety because there is not a pronounced pinwheel color pattern, but it does have some minor color variation throughout. maybe it will expose more color through regular feeding. either way it was a steal from the lfs at $30 imo. Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted November 30, 2017 Author Share Posted November 30, 2017 My tank turned 1 today. It has survived a rescape and near crash (miscalculated salinity) and is looking it's best imo. 3 Quote Link to comment
Lula_Mae Posted November 30, 2017 Share Posted November 30, 2017 8 minutes ago, trial0r said: My tank turned 1 today. It has survived a rescape and near crash (miscalculated salinity) and is looking it's best imo. Looking very nice! Cute clowns! That monti cap looks poised for world tank domination. Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted November 30, 2017 Author Share Posted November 30, 2017 2 hours ago, Lula_Mae said: Looking very nice! Cute clowns! That monti cap looks poised for world tank domination. Thanks! I agree about the monti cap especially because it's casting some serious shade on the life below. 1 Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted December 1, 2017 Author Share Posted December 1, 2017 above i referenced a near tank crash and wanted to document it here. during the world series my best buddy and i resolved to re-scape my tank. (see august FTS vs. november FTS). we drained 50% of the tank water, moved inhabitants to bowls and tupperware, and we were meticulous about every detail. well almost every detail. i had mixed the water that we were to use when re-filling the night before. we got 9/10 stoned before beginning the re-scape and i forgot to check the water's salinity. the re-scape otherwise went well and we were happy with the result. about a week later i became nervous that most corals had failed to reopen fully. i expected some sort of mini cycle from removing/moving all rocks and kicking up tons of sand, but after a week i could tell there was a deeper issue. at about the 10 day mark corals began rapidly losing color and bleaching. i considered that salinity could be the issue and checked. 1.015. woops. the feeling of helplessness and stupidity was pretty awful. i couldn't believe that i had waited so long to test the salinity. it's almost like i knew that i had screwed it up by failing to test the water to begin with and i was avoiding the mistake being revealed to me. anyway, you get it. i was disappointed with myself. i began to raise salinity through small water changes with hyper-salinated water. i worked slowly so as to not shock everything further. after 3 hours i had salinity up to 1.018. i thought that was enough change for one day. my plan for the next day would be to increase salinity by a similar amount. but the next day i woke up impatient. the corals had not responded to the raise in salinity (of course not, they were still dying) and i panicked. over the course of an hour i raised salinity from 1.018 to 1.025. within minutes little starfish inhabiting the live rock had loosed and were being blown about the tank. i didn't see any pods where there had been a robust pod community. it seemed like all the little life inside the rock was coming out and dying before my eyes. my feather dusters lost their crowns and emerged from their tubes to die on the sand. it was ugly. i mitigated by doing water changes every day until the water was super stable and returned to a once per week change. interestingly, my parameters never swung wildly. ammonia and nitrate stayed stable during the whole die off. after about a month, the tank finally looks good again. corals are opening fully (i lost 4 corals, a featherduster, and a coco worm), the water is crystal clear, and my livestock (clowns and a pistol shrimp) never seemed effected. i learned a fat lesson and won't make the mistake again. 1 Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted December 17, 2017 Author Share Posted December 17, 2017 Top down photo Fts from today 1 Quote Link to comment
TN09 Posted December 17, 2017 Share Posted December 17, 2017 Hey, I just bought the aj-45. Can you tell me how wide the back compartment is? Gorgeous tank btw Quote Link to comment
trial0r Posted December 17, 2017 Author Share Posted December 17, 2017 21 hours ago, TN09 said: Hey, I just bought the aj-45. Can you tell me how wide the back compartment is? Gorgeous tank btw It’s 2 inches wide measuring from inside the glass. 1 Quote Link to comment
Christopher Marks Posted December 17, 2017 Share Posted December 17, 2017 Thanks for sharing the details of the salinity mishap, that's a tough one, but I think something many can relate to (9/10 or otherwise ). It's really looking great now, the new aquacape is a nice layout! How has the plate coral been doing? It looks like it has grown some? Quote Link to comment
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