20L AIO build -365 Day All-in-One Nano Reef Challenge

[spectra]

It’s fine nothing wrong with them. 

[Tamberav]

25 minutes ago, waldoz said:

My son found this guy while fragging.

Trying to see if we could drop him back into the tank.  What you guys think?  As long as it doesn't eat coral should be fine.🤭 Did I say my son is freaking out right now 😂

Good guy 🙂

[waldoz]

Sweet!  Going to put him back in the display side.

[waldoz]

We're trying one more time to move the RBTA.  

 See if he climbs up into the cup.  The only other way to get him out us to break the rock and we are not going to do that.

[waldoz]

Well we finally got the little guy out.

 

Been trying to print with PETG with out heated bed . Not going so well.

 

Got to get heated bed on this thing but took a torch made little more straight. It works but still at least it's something.

Now the turbo snail can't mow down the frags.👍

[kimberbee]

I almost missed that all your FTS are in your first post! Make sure get your FTS and your 2-3 paragraph summary done by the 31st for voting! Good luck!

[waldoz]

Will do.

Thank you!

[waldoz]

 

 

 

How I came about to getting a tank:

My dad had been trying to convince my mom to let him get a reef tank for a couple of years. After seeing a 2-gallon anchor hocking jar, I asked my dad how much everything might cost if I were to “possibly” be interested. The price started out as a rough estimate of $50. Then he slowly kept adding equipment that would be needed, and the price slowly went up to about $100. If he had laid it all on me, I probably wouldn’t own a reef tank. 

After that, I wanted to try it out, but first I had to convince my mom to let us get one. It took some explaining of where it would be and how noisy the air pump was going to be. She finally said yes. It wasn’t long until I decided I wanted a 10-gallon instead. After a few days, my dad had been offered a 20L by a forum member (thanks @righttirefire!) instead of the 10-gallon that we were going to go with. My mom had already said that we couldn’t go over ten gallons, but after some more convincing, she reluctantly agreed.

 

Things we like about our reef tank:

We like the light that we are using for our tank because we can customize our own settings. It also makes the corals look nice. We also like the height of our tank stand because it’s pretty close to eye level and it isn’t too tall.

 

Things we would do differently:

We wouldn’t do a 20-long again because it’s too long and doesn’t have a lot of depth to it. It’s also hard to make a rockscape that looks good in the front and the back.  We probably wouldn’t do an AIO again unless it were larger than a 30-gallon. There isn’t really any space in a smaller AIO to put a frag rack and an anemone basket in. If we had a sump we could put the cut/split anemones in one of the chambers and it would leave more space in the display area.

Our stand looks nice, but something that we would change is  having the frame covered so it would hide all the junk and wires I have laying around on the frame.

If we had the room, I definitely wouldn’t have the tank in my room. It tends to make noise when I’m sleeping. The noise goes anywhere from the thermometer becoming detached from the tank wall and clanking on the glass, to the equipment wires buzzing because they decided to touch something.

 

Tank routine:

It’s pretty low-maintenance. I do 2-gallon water changes every other week. I blow off the rock with a turkey baster, unless I forget (which doesn’t happen too often). I clean the glass whenever it needs it, whenever I have the time, or whenever we do tank shots. Syphoning only happens when the sand actually needs it, but we can’t get into some areas because our tube is too big. I test the salinity only when I’ve added a bit too much of the RODI water, or whenever I’m concerned. I also test newly mixed water for salinity. I test for Ammonia, Nitrites, Nitrates, and PH when I feel up to it because I don’t like washing the test tubes out. I change out our filter floss whenever I notice that it really needs to be changed, or when it gets too clogged and the pump starts sucking air.

 

Advice for anyone getting into the hobby:

I think having basic quality items has given us a solid foundation. Don’t try to cut corners on the important things such as the refractometer, the lighting system, and the RODI system. Another thing is cycling the tank; we cycled ours for a month and a half, and put a raw shrimp in while cycling to help move along the process.

 

Don’t be hasty with selection:

So far I’ve had two impulse buys and they’ve both died. The first one was Fathom, the Percula clownfish. He wasn’t a bad purchase, but I should have waited and bought a nice pair. The second one was Benny, the Lawnmower blenny. I bought him mainly because he pecked algae off the rock, and I thought that was cool. Unfortunately I didn’t realize that I didn’t have any algae that he could pick off the rock. He wouldn’t eat anything we offered him, and copepods didn’t last him very long. He sadly ended up dying from starvation.

 

In conclusion:

We’ve learned a lot along the way and have had a great time reefing. Nano Reef has been a great place to learn and find information and the reefing community is very supportive and helpful. Thanks to all the help we got, we have a very nice and successful reef tank.

 

Equipment

• Sicce 1.0 pump (thanks @spectra)

• Jebao PP-4 (from ReefBreeders)

• AI Hydra 26 (thanks @shaneandjohn )

• Media basket (DIY)

• Magnetic Flipper algae cleaner ( thanks spectra )

 

Media

• Intank filter floss

• Caribsea life rock: two domes, one used arch (thanks spectra )

• Caribsea Fiji pink sand

 

Coral

• Neon green star polyps

• Duncans

• Meteor shower

• Montipora

• Light green frogspawn

• Orange leptastrea

• Mushroom

• Green ricordea

• Nuclear green paly

• Mind-blown paly

• Utter chaos zoa

• Spider flakes zoa

• Mohawk zoa
• Orange blowpop zoa

 

 Livestock

• Six lined wrasse (I would recommend this fish)

• Fathom, the Percula clownfish: dead

• Benny, the Lawnmower blenny: dead

• Porcelain anemone crab

• Mr. Bubbles, the Rainbow BTA

• Scarlet skunk cleaner shrimp: dead

• Nautilus, the older scarlet skunk cleaner shrimp:dead (from old age)

CUC

• Turbo, the Turbo snail

• Three Nassarius snails: one got eaten by its fellow nassarius

• Rip van Winkle, the Cerith snail

• Astrid, the Astrea snail

 

[debbeach13]

Congratulations on making to the end of the contest. Following your DIY projects and the tank has been great fun. You two make a great team. The tank has progressed nicely. Good luck.

[waldoz]

Thanks!

It been fun ride with its ups and downs.  There is always something new to learn is what I like about it.  🙂

[debbeach13]

29 minutes ago, waldoz said:

It been fun ride with its ups and downs.  There is always something new to learn is what I like about it.  🙂

Perfect.

 

Just like the world this hobby is always changing. We can always learn more.

[Tamberav]

Do you plan to upgrade to the lagoon? You may like the dimensions better since you have more depth to work with.

 

For noise, if you don’t find yourself looking and checking the temp often then you could remove the glass thermometer. It’s not like it will alarm and let you know when your heater breaks. A pinpoint monitor will be a good option.

 

I use the cord organizer type things from Home Depot. They are basically a sticky pad with a zip tie holder. Works great to zip tie the cords down in the back so they don’t move or vibrate. I have two tanks in my bedroom 😉

 

Your corals look happy and healthy and the tank will only get more beautiful as it grows in. Careful with the six line, they sometimes bully new fish.

[waldoz]

6 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

Do you plan to upgrade to the lagoon? You may like the dimensions better since you have more depth to work with.

 

Careful with the six line, they sometimes bully new fish.

We will probably upgrade to the lagoon. No luck finding a used 60 cube.  My son really wants a sump.🤭   Yeah wonder if the six line was the problem. We watched them like a hawk. Never seem to do any but play together.  Just thinking it was bad luck with the clown. 🤡

[kimberbee]

For what it's worth, I think the scape looks great in this long tank!!

 

Congrats on making it to the end and good luck!!

[waldoz]

Went down to it CFC  saltwater shop with my son. He has been asking for a bit. We spent about an hour there, always a good time. We also headed home with some spoils.

Cats paw sps

 

 

Also got Peppermint shrimp, gonna keep an eye on this one.  Pretty shy though and might just stay hiding.

And picked up another Astrea, love these guys.

 

Also saw few nice tanks on in particular was the water box 7 ft x 28 I think.  One thing though we were thinking , that's a lot of water changing.  My son said " I don't want to do more than 5gl bucket.  😂

I would be fine with a 50 gallon"🤭

 

[debbeach13]

That new coral looks awesome.

[waldoz]

Yeah it's a nice piece, I guess he has wanted one for a while.  I didn't think we would get into some SPS though. 🙂

[waldoz]

Well good news is we have the PETG cranking out some good frag plugs.

Going to try a few out. I have seen some where you can disconnect the base that might work out better. At least you would not have to cut them up to glue them down. 🙂

[waldoz]

Eh they float at 10% infill scratch that. Trying 100% see how that does.  Don't know why did not think of that. I was just excited to get a good print with the petg.🙂

[waldoz]

Looks like 100% infill sinks so probably will back it off some to see if we save on filament. 👍

[waldoz]

Yeah look what we found.l?!?! Someone has the munchies.

 

We are pretty sure it's the peppermint shrimp.  I hope it grows back, he chewed that down to the bone.  I told my son to him to throw him in the aio chamber but he wants to take him back.  Should have listened to all the post I read on here.🙄

 

[salzwasser]

Very cool tank.

[waldoz]

Thanks it's been great ride. We have learned a lot. 🙂

[waldoz]

Picked up few sticks from a friend.  

 

 

Few shots of regular guys. I need a filter for the phone lol.  This is our second RBTA

 

 

Everything seems to be doing good. Though if we keep this up will have to dosing. 🤪

 

 

 

[waldoz]

Also pep is coming out in the day still watching him like a hawk.

 

 

And the frag rack is filling up. 😁 My son is having lots of fun.