Finally decided on new tank -delivery tomorrow!

[Oldfishwife]

Hi all! After hemming and hawing for weeks, weighing options and reviewing costs and space, I finally bit the bullet and decided to go with the Nuvo Fusion 20 for an upgrade to our 10. I've only had this 10 running for 8 months, but everything has grown so much that it is difficult to clean and do maintenance. Every time I try, I'm knocking corals off their spots and making the rock teeter. Plus I can't clean the glass well in some spots. So time to expand a bit. 
 

I really wanted a 25 lagoon, but our house is very small and I don't want to rearrange furniture to have a bigger tank. So a 20 it is. I picked up a lovely piece of branch yesterday and along with the big mound I have in the 10 gal., I think it will be plenty. I may add a few scattered small rocks to break up the sand and mount corals on. I'm thinking of covering much of the branch with different varieties of Zoanthids since they seem to like this tank. The mushrooms and frogspawn in the picture will be moved to more open areas around the branches. 
 

we are planning to partially empty the 10 gal and move it to allow us to set up the 20 in the same spot before the transfer. I'm thinking I will put the "mountain" in a bucket of water while we do all that. I'd like to use a little bit of my Bimini pink sand along with the Fiji pink I have coming. Not much, just enough to get some of the shells in. What is the best way to rinse sand? 
 

We currently have a Tail Spot Blenny and a Springeri damsel in the 10. I was thinking of adding a couple of Bangi cardinals and a purple firefish to the mix.  Opinions? 
 

any hints on making this move as simple as possible would be appreciated. Thanks! 
 

PS - I don't know how the poppy pic came up, but enjoy my first poppy of the year. 😂

[mcarroll]

23 hours ago, Oldfishwife said:

I've only had this 10 running for 8 months, but everything has grown so much that it is difficult to clean and do maintenance. Every time I try, I'm knocking corals off their spots and making the rock teeter. Plus I can't clean the glass well in some spots.

That is life with corals in a small tank.  (Small being everything around  50 gallons and less.)

 

You need a fragging strategy no matter what, but you're fragging strategy becomes necessary in a small tank much sooner.

 

8 months in your case.  It was more like 18 months in my original tank, which was 37 Gallons.  I think it was 2-3 years in my 50 Gallon.  Guessing it will be the same in the new 125 Gallon since height and width are similar to the 50 Gallon, but time will tell.  

 

My fragging strategy was to post on craigslist, and what didn't sell (only ever got a few sales – don't get your hopes up) went into a bucket. 🤷‍♂️  Now (10+ years later) I have a lot of home grown aragonite in buckets (dry) now.  Becoming useful as frag plugs/plates, etc.  

 

If you want to grow your colonies out, a nano tank is not a great place to be.  Unless you're OK with just growing out one colony at a time! 😉

[mitten_reef]

like you, I sat and contemplated my tank transfer and tried to visualize the steps in my head.  I did mine a while back tho (2018). (https://www.nano-reef.com/forums/topic/374445-mitten_reef’s-im30l-topdown-video/?do=findComment&comment=5607267)  some visuals.  

 

 

 

[Oldfishwife]

5 hours ago, mcarroll said:

That is life with corals in a small tank.  (Small being everything around  50 gallons and less.)

 

You need a fragging strategy no matter what, but you're fragging strategy becomes necessary in a small tank much sooner.

 

8 months in your case.  It was more like 18 months in my original tank, which was 37 Gallons.  I think it was 2-3 years in my 50 Gallon.  Guessing it will be the same in the new 125 Gallon since height and width are similar to the 50 Gallon, but time will tell.  

 

My fragging strategy was to post on craigslist, and what didn't sell (only ever got a few sales – don't get your hopes up) went into a bucket. 🤷‍♂️  Now (10+ years later) I have a lot of home grown aragonite in buckets (dry) now.  Becoming useful as frag plugs/plates, etc.  

 

If you want to grow your colonies out, a nano tank is not a great place to be.  Unless you're OK with just growing out one colony at a time! 😉

Frankly, I've never had corals grow as fast as these have. I don't know what we're doing right, but we never had this kind of growth when we had reef tanks years ago. And those were under halides.
 

We don't have the option of going bigger than this because our current house is so small. We're retired and downsized about 9 years ago. About 20 years ago we had a 200 gal, a 75 gal, a 37 gal and a 29. All at once! all we did was take care of tanks. 
 

we've decided to keep our 10 gal, too, and do a simple Anemone/clown tank with a few mushrooms and zoanthids for interest. 
 

We got the new tank set up in record time and are waiting for the sand to settle before moving stuff tomorrow. The sand is Fiji pink and is taking its good old time to clear. We are hoping to do the actual transfer .tomorrow after setting up the lights. 
 

as stuff outgrows this tank, I'll be taking frags to our lfs. He is only 30 minutes away and gives nice credit for frags. Since I'm scaling back some on rock, I'm hoping not to be too crowded too soon. 😂

[mcarroll]

17 hours ago, Oldfishwife said:

Frankly, I've never had corals grow as fast as these have.

The "curse" of success.  👍 😆 

 

17 hours ago, Oldfishwife said:

I don't know what we're doing right, but we never had this kind of growth when we had reef tanks years ago. And those were under halides.

23 hours ago, Oldfishwife said:

We're retired and downsized about 9 years ago. About 20 years ago we had a 200 gal, a 75 gal, a 37 gal and a 29.

We can make some educated guesses...

• Internet access was still far from universal.
• Over-lighting was pretty common.  
• Our collective understanding of alkalinity and related chemistry was much more in-development and less established than it is now.
• Dosers were extremely uncommon.  
• Calcium reactors were probably more popular, but even they were rare.
• Almost everyone hand-dosed.  Combined with the general lack of understanding, there was LOTS of room to go wrong on dosing back then.  
• Alk stability was hard to achieve back then!
• We had some misunderstandings with respect to nutrients+algae and nutrients+corals.
• Tunze was just about to invent the flow pump market with their propellor flow pump about 20 years ago – so folks were still using (e.g.) maxijets and closed loop systems.  Closed loops were rare though.  Most folks just had minimal/poor flow.

We've got it pretty easy these days.  😉

 

Though it's not all "roses".  The hobby has several retrograde currents within it as well.  Book reading has fallen off a cliff, replaced with Facebook and YouTube.  Live rock has been nearly forgotten (and even become feared by many), replaced by dead rock.  

 

"Thanks" to these things (and others), IMO, the hobby is as difficult for newbies as it's ever been.

[Poison Dart Frog]

Beautiful tank you have.

[Oldfishwife]

16 hours ago, mcarroll said:

The "curse" of success.  👍 😆 

 

We can make some educated guesses...

• Internet access was still far from universal.
• Over-lighting was pretty common.  
• Our collective understanding of alkalinity and related chemistry was much more in-development and less established than it is now.
• Dosers were extremely uncommon.  
• Calcium reactors were probably more popular, but even they were rare.
• Almost everyone hand-dosed.  Combined with the general lack of understanding, there was LOTS of room to go wrong on dosing back then.  
• Alk stability was hard to achieve back then!
• We had some misunderstandings with respect to nutrients+algae and nutrients+corals.
• Tunze was just about to invent the flow pump market with their propellor flow pump about 20 years ago – so folks were still using (e.g.) maxijets and closed loop systems.  Closed loops were rare though.  Most folks just had minimal/poor flow.

We've got it pretty easy these days.  😉

 

Though it's not all "roses".  The hobby has several retrograde currents within it as well.  Book reading has fallen off a cliff, replaced with Facebook and YouTube.  Live rock has been nearly forgotten (and even become feared by many), replaced by dead rock.  

 

"Thanks" to these things (and others), IMO, the hobby is as difficult for newbies as it's ever been.

You are right! We used to skim like crazy, had a Kalk drip going in the 200 and had 4x major halides plus many actinic tubes. It's was like a nuclear explosion! Between fans, many pumps and skimmers it was noisy! 
 

with these little AIO tanks, I do find it much easier, but then I do have experience. I battled alk and calcium levels a bit at first with the 10, but then I got it on track and I'm not constantly dosing. I do 20% water changes every 10 days, dose a few times in between and top off with distilled water or RO. It's pretty simple. The only problem I've had (besides a small outbreak of flatworms) is a bit of hair algae. Before I transferred the rock, I brushed it all off with an old toothbrush. I'll have a much easier time removing it in this tank because I'll be able to do it without knocking everything over. 
 

Being retired I can be diligent in watching the tank and taking care of small problems before they become major.