AJ's 14g Nano (Leathers, inverts, and fish—oh my!)

[AJ Odasso]

I started this tank about 7 months ago.  It's an Aqueon frameless glass 14-gallon.  I'm using a Kessil A-80 hooked up to a Nicrew LED timer for lighting.  I also have a Duetto ATO.  Instead of a wavemaker, I'm using a Fluval AquaClear for flow.  The current it produces is surprisingly strong!  Instead of housing filter media, the casing is where my Aqueon Preset Heater is housed.  It does an excellent job of keeping the temp between about 78.1 - 80 degrees.  I've never seen it fluctuate more than that, so I definitely recommend this hack if you have a small(er) tank and a) can't obtain/use a wavemaker, for whatever reason, and b) want an easy approach to keeping your temp stable.  This kinda-budget build has been great so far.

 

At the moment, I'm doing 50% water changes weekly.  My list of inhabitants currently looks like this:

 

Reef Tank Video Clip 1/11/21

 

 

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by AJ Odasso
Major tank population update!

[WV Reefer]

4 minutes ago, A.J. Odasso said:

I started this tank about 10 weeks ago.  It's an Aqueon frameless glass 14-gallon.  I'm using a Kessil A-80 hooked up to a Nicrew LED timer for lighting.  I also have a Duetto ATO.  Instead of a wavemaker, I'm using a Fluval AquaClear for flow.  The current it produces is surprisingly strong!  Instead of housing filter media, the casing is where my Aqueon Preset Heater is housed.  It does an excellent job of keeping the temp between about 78.1 - 80 degrees.  I've never seen it fluctuate more than that, so I definitely recommend this hack if you have a small(er) tank and a) can't obtain/use a wavemaker, for whatever reason, and b) want an easy approach to keeping your temp stable.  This kinda-budget build has been great so far.

 

At the moment, I'm doing 50% water changes weekly.  My list of inhabitants currently looks like this:

 

CORALS

3 Kenya Tree frags

2 Toadstool Leathers

1 Purple Sinularia frag

1 Devil's Hand frag

 

INVERTS

1 Arrow Crab (Snippers has grown way faster than I anticipated, as I was told he was fully grown when I got him; he still seems happy and doesn't bother any other residents, but I have the feeling he'll be going to live with a friend of mine who has something like a 70-gallon very soon.)

1 Chestnut Cowrie (Rose is such an excellent algae/diatom eater, and she doesn't chew on my leathers like a friend's Arabian cowrie does, whew.)

2 Ring Cowries (Todd and Dirk are tiny and mostly hang upside down down in the live rock "cave" during the day, and then come out to eat at night.)

1 Ninja Star Astraea (Lulu likes clinging to the sides of the tank, where she hoovers algae and generally looks pretty; also cleans the other snails' shells.)

1 Small Conch (I don't know Nevil's species, and neither did the LFS, as he's apparently several years old and hasn't grown past about 1.5 inches long and has an unusual shell shape; spends most of his time down in the sand bed, although I do see him come up once or twice a day.)

1 Olive Snail (Amanda spends most of her time down in the sand bed with Nevil; she has not attempted to eat any of my other snails or do any of the nasty things Oliva sayana has been known to do, and I really hope she continues to behave herself, because she's good at her job!)

4 Cerith Snails (We just call them the Rowdy 3; it's a joke from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, where a quartet of characters are called that.)

 

I had a turban snail, too, but it died.  You can see it in the photos below.  I'm going to miss that snail, because it really was so pretty next to the Kenyas!

 

FISH

1 Flametail Blenny (Ben sits in his bolt hole in the live rock with his little head peeking out; we see him go swimming about once a day, though, when he thinks nobody's looking.)

1 Black Snowflake Phantom (Five)

1 Snow Onyx Clownfish (Jerome)

 

The clownfish sort of merit a paragraph that isn't a parenthetical.  Jerome was in the Petco where a friend of mine works for somewhere between 6 months to a year.  Different staff remember it differently.  He had to be isolated in a tank with leathers and a firefish goby, because he was getting badly bullied by the other juvenile clowns in his initial tank.  He was known for biting fingers any time anyone reached into the tank, just generally super ornery.  I brought him home about a week before I brought Five home from Southwest Reef Co., the only other major saltwater supplier in town.  Both of these young fish were real outcasts, for some reason, but they've been inseparable from the moment I added Five to the tank.  I've seen both of them displaying submissive behavior to each other, but nobody's clearly in charge yet.  My partner thought Five was slightly smaller than Jerome, but honestly, the more I look at them together, the more I'm realizing they're almost exactly the same size.  I've been watching them very closely, but no fights have broken out.  In addition to both displaying the twitching behavior, they also tend to give each other the occasional gentle nip.  I'll be fascinated to see how this pair settles out.

 

 

 

 

Looks like you are off to a great start. 🙂 

[AJ Odasso]

Just now, WV Reefer said:

 

Looks like you are off to a great start. 🙂 

Thanks so much, Christy!  Great to meet you!  Where's your tank thread?

[WV Reefer]

16 minutes ago, A.J. Odasso said:

Thanks so much, Christy!  Great to meet you!  Where's your tank thread?

Here is one of many:

 

Warning:......some of it is total nonsense. 😄

[Ratvan]

Looks great, love the fish and kitty face off

[AJ Odasso]

4 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

Looks great, love the fish and kitty face off

Thank you.  Zel is so well behaved around the tank!  She mostly just sits and stares in at the fish, and the fish stare back.  They're curious about each other.

[Gramophone]

Nice clowns! I see you have a very rare cat coral as well 

[AJ Odasso]

Just now, Gramophone said:

Nice clowns! I see you have a very rare cat coral as well 

Aw, thank you!  And yes, Zel is one of a kind☺️

[billygoat]

Hello and welcome to N-R! Good to have you. 😁 Looks like a pretty cool little system so far. I really like the patterns on your clowns.

[AJ Odasso]

28 minutes ago, billygoat said:

Hello and welcome to N-R! Good to have you. 😁 Looks like a pretty cool little system so far. I really like the patterns on your clowns.

Thank you so much!  Honestly, that's part of what caught my eye about each of these fish - even for their respective types, each one has very unusual patterning.  I did a lot of poking around and image-searching for both varieties.  I was excited to realize Jerome, being a Snow Onyx, is a percula x oscellaris hybrid.  As far as I can tell, Five falling into the Black Snowflake Phantom category means just straight-up oscellaris.  When I got Jerome from that Petco, they weren't even actually which price tag/type of clown name applied, so I paid only like $30!  Admittedly, Southwest Reef Co. knew exactly what variety they had in Five, and we paid a bit more there (I think about $70).  $100 for a mix-and-match compatible pair with unusual markings isn't bad!