20 Gallon Nano

[Guest]

This is my first saltwater aquarium, so I figure I would start a journal of my 20 gallon nano reef!

 

The tank as of august 10th 🙂

[Christopher Marks]

Welcome to the community @FreshwaterFishMan! 20 gallons is a great size for your first nano reef. What kinds of corals are you hoping to keep?

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Christopher Marks said:

Welcome to the community @FreshwaterFishMan! 20 gallons is a great size for your first nano reef. What kinds of corals are you hoping to keep?

Thanks for the welcome! I am going to start out with a macro algae, and then over time hope to introduce some low - medium light easy care ones, not really anything specific. 🙂 there is one that really caught my eye from wwc, called splatter goniastrea. But any suggestions would be much appreciated!

[Guest]

Got all of my bags of salt measured out, for ease of water changes, and am going to pick up sand and whatever rodi water they have at my grocery store! ( conveniently my grocery store is literally next door neiboors to PetCo )

[Guest]

Edit: I have now got my sand, so just filled it all up and added salt, got the filtration running, so next comes rock and powerheads!

[debbeach13]

Glad to see things moving right along. Which light are you using?

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, debbeach13 said:

Glad to see things moving right along. Which light are you using?

Unfortunately I have not really found a light that suits my needs for a reasonable price yet, so I am using an old fluval fresh and plant from my 36 gallon. Since it is full spectrum I was able to adjust it to include more blues and violets, and less whites. I am planning on getting a much better light when I decided to start adding in coral. 🙂

[Guest]

Powerheads just arrived! Rock is going in soon too! Then I will start stocking, thinking about doing a yellow clown goby or a royal gramma, whatever fish I do will be the only one for the first few months, then I will hopefully do a clownfish sometime.

[Guest]

Well..... I got my rock in and don’t even comment about the fish 

 

If you want to know the whole story of why I have a fish in already, then go to my thread talked into impulse buy.

[Guest]

The clowns name is Hilda Mae Heifer Holstein you really dint want to know why it is named after multiple cows, but anyway, she/he/they ( how do you tell sexes in a clownfish? ) is doing well, here is a shot of her finally leaving her corner to explore a bit:

 

[Guest]

today, august 12th, I got a flow diverter ( 3d printed using prusa i3 ) installed on the power head to make it lower flow, so I was able to get it started up again 🙂 Hilda Mae has loved swimming through the flow, and also, after waking up this morning, for some reason the water was insanely clear!!

 

here is a fts

[TerraIncognita]

1 hour ago, FreshwaterFishMan said:

today, august 12th, I got a flow diverter ( 3d printed using prusa i3 ) installed on the power head to make it lower flow, so I was able to get it started up again 🙂 Hilda Mae has loved swimming through the flow, and also, after waking up this morning, for some reason the water was insanely clear!!

 

here is a fts

As your tank ages and gets older and older your tank water will be crystal clear. It will get even clearer than in this photo.

 

The older the tanks is the clearer the water stays I've noticed even after feedings and cleanings it clears up quickly due to all the life in there working together. It's pretty cool. :).

[Tired]

Looks nice. You may have some trouble cleaning the glass around those areas where the rock is against the wall, but that's mostly an aesthetic thing, it doesn't do any practical harm. 

 

Any thoughts on your fish stock? They'd do best with a bit more rockwork to tunnel under, but a shrimpgoby/pistol shrimp combo would be great to watch.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, TerraIncognita said:

As your tank ages and gets older and older your tank water will be crystal clear. It will get even clearer than in this photo.

 

The older the tanks is the clearer the water stays I've noticed even after feedings and cleanings it clears up quickly due to all the life in there working together. It's pretty cool. :).

Yeah, it also happens in my planted tanks, I just did a bunch of cleaning in them today and all the fish and snails and shrimp just went crazy for some nom nom algae snacks 🙂

 

 

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, Tired said:

Looks nice. You may have some trouble cleaning the glass around those areas where the rock is against the wall, but that's mostly an aesthetic thing, it doesn't do any practical harm. 

 

Any thoughts on your fish stock? They'd do best with a bit more rockwork to tunnel under, but a shrimpgoby/pistol shrimp combo would be great to watch.

Oh dang, never though about that 😬I actually haven’t even bought a algae scraper for this tank yet!! ( probably because all I’m tryna do right now is grow algae in some gosh darn rock 😅) 

 

I am planning on doing some more rock work soon, just only as soon as I can make it to my lfs again. 🙂 I really want another clown, so they can possibly mate, and after that I really don’t know, a yellow watchman goby would be pretty cool thoug.

[Tired]

Sounds good. If you get another clown, be sure to get one smaller than this one. That way, you can be relatively sure it's a male, whereas this one may be a female or developing into one by that point. Yellow watchman is a classic, and pairs nicely with a tiger pistol shrimp. 

If you get a shrimpgoby/shrimp pair, you should make sure to provide them with some nice building materials. Bits of seashell, small rubble chunks, that sort of thing. Bashing up some clam shells with a hammer will get you some ideal stuff. Scatter it around the rockwork, and the shrimp will use it as shoring material. They're amazing to watch, particularly because they're almost completely blind. Their level of tunneling and building is impressive enough even without the poor eyesight and the general complete darkness of their tunnels to factor in. They'll even take a slightly over-large piece of shell and trim it down to size with their snapping claw!

The one downside to them is that they will make periodic snapping noises. It can be a bit alarming at first, but you'll get used to it pretty quick. I used to have a tiger pistol in a tank on my nightstand, and it only woke me up... well, twice. I have a candycane now, and I like when I hear the snapping. Lets me know the shrimp is alive and up to something. It sounds like a small cap pistol going off. 
Oh, and don't put small coral frags on the sandbed, he might steal and build with them. Big frags are fine, as are ones on the rockwork.

 

If I were you, I'd try not to lean any rockwork directly on the glass. Better to have it supported on itself. Prevents extra stress on the glass, makes it easier to clean around, and helps prevent dead spots. You might like to see if you could build an arch of some sort, arch rockwork can look really nice. 

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Tired said:

Sounds good. If you get another clown, be sure to get one smaller than this one. That way, you can be relatively sure it's a male, whereas this one may be a female or developing into one by that point. Yellow watchman is a classic, and pairs nicely with a tiger pistol shrimp. 

If you get a shrimpgoby/shrimp pair, you should make sure to provide them with some nice building materials. Bits of seashell, small rubble chunks, that sort of thing. Bashing up some clam shells with a hammer will get you some ideal stuff. Scatter it around the rockwork, and the shrimp will use it as shoring material. They're amazing to watch, particularly because they're almost completely blind. Their level of tunneling and building is impressive enough even without the poor eyesight and the general complete darkness of their tunnels to factor in. They'll even take a slightly over-large piece of shell and trim it down to size with their snapping claw!

The one downside to them is that they will make periodic snapping noises. It can be a bit alarming at first, but you'll get used to it pretty quick. I used to have a tiger pistol in a tank on my nightstand, and it only woke me up... well, twice. I have a candycane now, and I like when I hear the snapping. Lets me know the shrimp is alive and up to something. It sounds like a small cap pistol going off. 
Oh, and don't put small coral frags on the sandbed, he might steal and build with them. Big frags are fine, as are ones on the rockwork.

 

If I were you, I'd try not to lean any rockwork directly on the glass. Better to have it supported on itself. Prevents extra stress on the glass, makes it easier to clean around, and helps prevent dead spots. You might like to see if you could build an arch of some sort, arch rockwork can look really nice. 

Wonderful! I will make sure to get a smaller one when I get the next one 👍sounds pretty awsome, and well, besides cats wake me up a whole lot more than twice a night 😅I did read In

a book somewhere that pistolshrimp were able to break aquarium glass, but honestly, it sounds like so many people have kept them that’s not even a thing....... definitely leaning rock work along the glass isn’t favorable, and so when I go to my lfs I will buy some more ( live ) rock to support the pieces of the scape that aren’t supported yet 🙂

[Tired]

Yeah, that's a myth. Very large MANTIS shrimp, which have claws intended to smash clamshells, are known to crack glass in the right circumstances. Pistol shrimp can't even crack shells with their "gun". They mostly use it to frighten predators, scare away intruders, and to stun and kill delicate prey like worms.

 

If you get live rock, be sure it's ready to be put in a tank. Put it in a bucket with a pump for a couple days instead, and test for ammonia and nitrites. You want to make sure nothing on it is decaying. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Tired said:

Yeah, that's a myth. Very large MANTIS shrimp, which have claws intended to smash clamshells, are known to crack glass in the right circumstances. Pistol shrimp can't even crack shells with their "gun". They mostly use it to frighten predators, scare away intruders, and to stun and kill delicate prey like worms.

 

If you get live rock, be sure it's ready to be put in a tank. Put it in a bucket with a pump for a couple days instead, and test for ammonia and nitrites. You want to make sure nothing on it is decaying. 

okay! sounds good 🙂 which should I get first? the pistol or the goby??

[Tired]

It would be good to get them both at once, preferably as a pair that already like each other. If you can't, get the pistol first. That way the goby will hear its clicking and go to its tunnels. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Tired said:

It would be good to get them both at once, preferably as a pair that already like each other. If you can't, get the pistol first. That way the goby will hear its clicking and go to its tunnels. 

okay! it would be prefferable to get them together but my lfs only has gobys, and I want to avoid ordering both online 🙂 although, there are accually now two more reef stores! one was a aquarium maintence only store, but turns out about a year ago they opend A reatil store too! and the other one was just a pond store, but when I went in today to get some pond stuff they had a whole reef section!! I gues after I found this place I sorta just stopped looking, but now I have like 3 options! so I can check at those other places too to see what they have 😄

[Poison Dart Frog]

Looks like you're off to a good start. I think it's best to have fish for a while to let the tank stabilize before adding corals anyway so it's no hurry.

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, Poison Dart Frog said:

Looks like you're off to a good start. I think it's best to have fish for a while to let the tank stabilize before adding corals anyway so it's no hurry.

Glad to hear the fish wasn’t for no purpose at all 🙂 and anyway, he was that one piece of life that I wanted in the tank so it’s not just a total boring display for like a month 😅.

 

and yes I am waiting probably like 3 weeks before going to the lfs, because when I go I am planning on getting quite a few things 🙂 ( gsp, pulsing Xenia, Kanye another coral, and hopefully a cleaner shrimp if they have it, wait can cleaner shrimp cohabitate with pistol shrimp???

[Tired]

Cleaner and pistol will entirely ignore each other. Tiger pistols don't bother anything that doesn't come into the tunnels. 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Tired said:

Cleaner and pistol will entirely ignore each other. Tiger pistols don't bother anything that doesn't come into the tunnels. 

Okay!  Glad to hear they will all coexist:)