peytron's reef

[peytron]

Starting my first reef tank. 

 

Tank: Innovative Marine 20g NUVO Fusion

 

Light: Aqua Illumination Prime HD

 

Powerhead: Aqamai KPS

 

Water: from Bulk Reef Supply 4-stage RODI System

 

Salt: Red Sea Blue Bucket

 

Rock / Sand: Marco's dry rock + CaribSea Aragonite

 

Spent a good 2 or 3 hours trying out different rockscapes. After landing on this design, I added ammonium chloride and Dr. Tim's One-and-Only to start the cycle.

 

Planning on two clownfish and a mixed reef. Happy reefing!

 

 

[FISHnChix]

Nice! Welcome to NR... scape looks good . Lot of room for coral placement.. 

 

Happy reefing!😎

[Humblefish]

Welcome to Nano-Reef!

[sadie]

Nice tank.  can't wait to see what you put in it.

[peytron]

First update!

 

5 or 6 weeks later, the tank has finished cycling.

 

I added a cleanup-crew around week 3 or 4:

- 3 trochus snails (Shellington, Shellie, and Shelby)

- 5 Nassarius snails

- many dwarf cerith snails

 

I believe there are diatoms (light brown dust?) growing on the sandbed and green algae on the rocks. The snails have been keeping this in check it seems.

 

I also purchased some chaeto, however it has since died off. I bought from a guy on ebay since every online site was sold out at the time, and it arrived in a cold envelope. I didn't think to temperature acclimate it or to put it somewhere shaded, so I'm assuming that's what did it in (plus the trochus snails liked to bulldoze it...)

 

My nitrates have been >20ppm despite 25% water changes every Sunday plus multiple extra 25% changes in the past week, so I'm guessing there are bits of dying chaeto wedged somewhere that are causing this (since I'm only feeding a few flakes every once in a while to keep the Nassarius snails alive). Planning on a 75% water change today or tomorrow, and I'd like to set up a chaeto reactor for long-term nitrate management.

 

Stocking plans have changed--I'm now planning on aiming for a SPS-dominated tank long-term. I re-did the rockscape to give an overhang effect and to achieve my desired look. I'd like to have the end result be similar to Pongpit's 10g cube SPS tank.

 

After removing some rock to make this new scape possible, I'm noticing a slight amount of ammonia in the water. I'm guessing the decrease in biological filtration and disturbing the sandbed (I fed algae wafers to be sure the snails were full, I think there are still specks of this buried in the sand) + the dying bits of chaeto are contributing to this. I'm thinking about adding some MarinePure to the rear compartments to ensure there's enough surface area long term.

 

 

[peytron]

12/15/19 (5 weeks later)

 

The tank is progressing nicely. I added a chaeto reactor that's been dropping nitrates like crazy, and I added a couple bags of MarinePure gems in the back chambers to ensure good biofiltration. We've got purple coralline growing on the rocks, an exploding copepod population, and cyano and hair algae that appeared briefly before dying back.

 

Since the last update, I added the following:

 

- green duncanopsammia 

- green stylophora

- purple stylophora

- cleaner shrimp

- fighting conch

- blue porcelain crab (R.I.P.)

- spotted porcelain crab

- 2 ocellaris clownfish (R.I.P.)

 

I think blue crab died because of a minor introduction of bayer into the tank. I rinsed the corals extensively three times after dipping, so there must have been a trace amount on my hands (I'm going to wear gloves next time...). 

 

I'm still unsure why the ocellaris passed away. They wouldn't accept any food (flakes, pellets, frozen brine shrimp, frozen mysis shrimp, and some other frozen mixtures) for about a week and then passed away. I never saw any visible signs of illness, but they did seem to have trouble breathing. Are there diseases that cause trouble breathing with no other visible symptoms? 

 

Water quality at this point is okay: 

77-78 F

1.025 s.g.

0 ppm ammonia

0 ppm nitrate (time to turn down the hours on the chaeto reactor light!)

8.6 dKH

425 cal

1305 mag

 

I did make a major mistake in that my refractometer wasn't calibrated until this week. The s.g. of the tank has actually been 1.020 or less until recently. I didn't think it would be that far off since I was purchasing it new, but lesson learned!

 

Now that the s.g. is at the ideal level, the stylo's are slowly coloring up, and the duncan is growing three new heads. 

 

 

 

 

 

[wrenchclench]

I've had a similar scenario (with the clownfish). Everyone will say the best thing to do when building a reef tank is to take it slow however sometimes we can end up going too slow. I did a fishless cycle as well and then added a CUC and some zoas just to see if any issues then after a week I added two clownfish. It caused my tank to do a mini cycle and the clownfish died. Maybe that was the case here? I see your ammonia is at 0 but how long ago did they die? After some research I realized that I should have added the fish right when my tank finished cycling in order to keep everything stable. Just my two cents!