Firefish’s 14g Bow Front - Trying an acro!

[Firefish15]

Hey all! 
This tank is the next evolution of my current (soon to be past) tank, a 10g budget reef that’s over three years old now. Link to that tank’s journey here. 

 

The new tank will for the most part be an upgrade in terms of equipment and aesthetics. The overall reefing philosophy is staying the same, mainly just keeping it simple and low maintenance. I’ve found that it is within my capacity to keep more challenging corals alive, but it takes more consistent effort than I am realistically able to give. 

With that, here is my equipment list. 
Tank: Aquatop Eurostyle 14.3g Bow front

Background: Matt Black Plasti-Dip spray

Top: Red Sea DIY screen kit w/modded acrylic hinge

Lighting: Hipargero AquaKnight x2

Heater: 100w Cobalt Neotherm w/Inkbird controller

Filter: Modded Aquaclear 70 with magnetic overflow box from Oceanbox Designs

Wavemaker: Jebao SOW-3

ATO: Smart ATO Micro

 

Livestock Section

Fish: 

Blue-Green Chromis

Inverts:

Scarlet reef hermit

Emerald crab

Nassarius snail

Trochus snail x2

Cerith snails x4

Blue Tuxedo Urchin

Corals: 

Hairy mushroom

Various discosoma mushrooms

Orange yuma mushroom 

Clove polyps

Pulsing Xenia

Various zoanthids

Neon green Sinularia 

Neon green cabbage leather 

Green toadstools 

Red Montipora cap

Red candy cane

Japanese Pink Nepthea

Garf bonsai acro

Purple stylophora

Current FTS: 

Monthly FTS: 

August 10, 2021

 

[Firefish15]

Here she is! So fresh and full of potential! 😄

[The Rainy Day Aquarium]

Looks pretty fresh to me! 👌 excited to see everything come together with this.

[Tony Bologna]

Thanks for sharing your experience. Following.

[gena]

14g is a nice size!  Gives your current tank corals more room to grow yet still small enough not to be overwhelming!  Looking forward to seeing the switch!  I love your green leather Sinularia or Nepthea?  I can never really tell them apart :).  It's gonna love the extra space.

[Firefish15]

2 hours ago, Tony Bologna said:

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I think in most cases, my experience consists of going “Hm. That’s not right.” 😜

 

1 hour ago, gena said:

  I love your green leather Sinularia or Nepthea?

Sinularia I believe! But yeah, I want to focus on growing my few softy colonies larger, rather than cramming in more frags. 

[mipster]

Ooo that looks like it's going to be fun!

[gena]

21 hours ago, Firefish15 said:

 

 

Sinularia I believe! But yeah, I want to focus on growing my few softy colonies larger, rather than cramming in more frags. 

Nice!  I'm going to add one to my tank eventually.  I'm with you on having just a few softies and growing them large, rather than cramming in a bunch of frags!  

[Firefish15]

I made my order from TAP Plastics for the front part of my lid that I’m planning. One small 1/4” thick piece of black acrylic, one cut to size hinge, and a small pull handle. 
The idea is that I’ll use the Red Sea DIY screen kit for the bulk of the aquarium top. I’ll cut the acrylic to fit the bow front, and superglue the hinge to the Red Sea frame. That way, the front will be protected from leaping fish, and I will have a small feeding door. 
Still waiting to buy the 2’ screen kit from the LFS I work at part time, the shipment is supposed to get in in a day or two.

[Firefish15]

Tap Plastic shipment should be here on Wednesday. 🙂

Also, my LFS still hadn’t gotten in the shipment with the 2’ screen kit, so I just jumped on a 3’ kit that they had in stock. The price difference was only $5 between the two, so that was an acceptable compromise to me. 

 

Going to start calculating measurements for everything. Going to make a cutout for the HOB filter dead center, and then have the lights directly on either side of it. That should give me nice symmetry and decent spread with the lights. 
 

[Firefish15]

Got my acrylic sheet in! 
Here’s the layout I’m playing with at the moment. 

Got the curve traced out on the protective layer on the acrylic. Once that is cut and sanded a bit, I’ll superglue the hinge so that it connects the acrylic front piece with the aluminum rail. The hinge can be cut to any size, so if it feels too stiff having a full lid length one, I might opt for two smaller hinges instead.

[Firefish15]

Got the acrylic cut and sanded to fit. It went smoother than I anticipated, it being my first time cutting acrylic. 

 

I will use a chop saw to cut my aluminum rails to length on Sunday. After that point, the lid will really start to take shape.

 

From there, it should be a pretty short leap to getting the tank wet and livestock moved in!

[Firefish15]

Got the screen frame mostly assembled, going to test fit it before I put the screen and spline in. 

 

If anyone else does a Red Sea screen kit, I would highly recommend using a chop saw, as opposed to a hack saw and miter box. Nice clean cuts that don’t show on the finished product. 👍🏻

[Firefish15]

Lid is almost done, just need to glue the little knob on the acrylic sheet. 

Overall, it was a little bumpy of a ride from vision to reality. Not really a fan of how the superglue looks under the hinge. The screen and spline didn’t get quite as taut as I would like it, but I’m calling it good enough for now. Overall, it is still forward progress and looks better than the previous tank.  
Functionally though, everything is in good order! I glued a scrap hinge piece to a scrap acrylic piece, and I could not tear those two apart! Definitely not worried about the lid falling apart.

[Firefish15]

Alright, I think tomorrow is the day! 
I’m mixing up 12g of new saltwater, as that’s all my container will hold. 
Got my live sand, my bacteria, the tank! 
I will make a trip to the LFS to get a booster supply of pods once the transfer is completed.

Exciting and nerve wracking, all at once!

[Firefish15]

Welp, the area around the tank is still cluttered and disorganized, but the tank is in place and running! The transfer went pretty smoothly, took my time cleaning each rock individually of cyano, bubble algae, and hair algae. 
The fish are still in hiding, but the corals are opening back up. 

 

Happy with how the top looks too. 

 

Still a few odds and ends to tie up, but I’ll deal with that over the next few days.

[Tony Bologna]

The new tank looks great!

[Firefish15]

Thanks! Fingers crossed the cyano and bubble algae stays away! 🤞🏻😅

 

I like the new open space, but I’ve already had thoughts cross my mind that a single blasto would have some good room to grow over on the sand bed.
Maintaining negative space might be difficult.

[Firefish15]

Hey all! Things are looking pretty good a week after the move! All the fish and corals have been looking great, good polyp extension and coloration. There is a single patch of cyano on the sand bed, but it’s a mere fraction of the infestation in the previous tank. And it’s been a week since I’ve done a water change or anything. 
 

There’s a golden brown growth on the sand bed, but I’m pretty sure it’s just diatoms, not dinoflagellates or anything like that. I did replace the whole sand bed, so I think that there’s a fresh supply of silicates for diatoms to take advantage of. I’ll of course keep a close eye on things, but I’m not worried. 

 

I’ve been doing new-tank levels of Microbacter7 since the move, just to be sure the biological filter is well established. 
Tomorrow I’ll make a run to my LFS to grab a fresh bag of pods too. 

 

I’ll be getting some new corals soon too... 😄

[Firefish15]

Little update!

 

Worked at the LFS for a bit today, and I even came out ahead! 
I got a little CUC booster, a blue leg hermit and two more ceriths, as well as a bag of pods. 
I fragged up a neat Caulastrea colony that had been in the shop for a while, and kept a single chunky head for myself. It has a new home on a disc of rock that I bored a hole through. Hopefully it does well. As far as LPS goes, should be relatively hardy. 

 

My buddy also dropped off a big chunk of a blue toadstool leather, so I just rubber banded it to the back right corner of the rock structure. Should have a decent bit of room to grow there, a lot more than my last

toadstool did. It’s still grumpy at the moment, but it looked really nice on the sand bed earlier. 

 

As far as future coral additions go, I think at most I’ll get another discosoma mushroom, and possibly another zoa. I want to try to keep things more open and grow things bigger. (That’s the intent anyways.)

 

Things are still looking pretty good!

 

[Firefish15]

Did my first water change in the new tank. I appreciate the bowed front of my tank, because it makes a nice gap for my arm to get through. In the 10g, I’d have to remove a light. 

The gramma passed, unfortunately. He started scratching and getting some spots, suspected ich. I ordered Seachem Metroplex and Focus, but the gramma jumped into the overflow box and went facefirst into the impeller. I’ll be covering that gap before anything else goes in. 
 

Other than that, things have been doing well. There was some cyano on the sand bed, but I didn’t touch the tank for a week just to see what it would do. It wasn’t nearly as widespread or thick as previous outbreaks, so not freaking out about it. I haven’t seen any bubble algae since the transfer when I meticulously inspected each rock. 
 

I still haven’t set up my ATO, so just been manually adding RODI every time I pass the tank. The overflow box has a good reference point. 
 

I’ll add some photos later today. 
 

The candy cane appears to be getting larger though!

[Firefish15]

I made a GIF of my tank, hopefully it works. 

 

And a FTS. 🙂

[Firefish15]

Been a while since I posted anything. Tank has had some ups and downs. I lost some livestock due to jumping, which was pretty discouraging considering the work I put into the lid. My pistol shrimp jumped and got tangled in the mesh, and then his watchman goby jumped out a few weeks later. I’m going to design an STL file for a plastic piece that will fit tighter to the cutout for the HOB filter, get a buddy to print it.

 

I was having some GHA issues, but a few water changes and a bolstered CUC have it more in check now.

Cyanobacteria is still an issue, but it’s not nearly as bad as it has been in the past.

I think I’m going to start running carbon full-time for a month or two and see how that affects the tank.

Nutrient wise, I’m still not registering NO3 or PO4. The algae growth would suggest otherwise though. I have some nutrients, it’s just getting sequestered into growth. 
The corals are doing pretty well. The big monti cap up top is getting quite large and shading some things, so considering breaking it apart and letting the clove polyps take its place. I have a monti cap frag growing on a magnetic frag rock, so it won’t be completely gone. 
 

I’ll try to get some photos up in the next few days.

[Tony Bologna]

It is nice to see an update. This is one of my favorite nano reefs. I can't wait to see new pictures.

[Firefish15]

Hey all.

This past week I found out that Moto Moto had passed. He didn’t show up for food last Wednesday night, and then I started digging around on Thursday. The Tuesday before he seemed hale and hearty, ate like a champ, looked good. Thursday he was just a chunk of flesh in the HOB filter. I’m puzzled as to how he got in. Must have jumped up the waterfall, because the intake is completely covered except for the surface skimmer teeth that the water flows into.

 

I looked at the calendar for his introduction into the tank, he’d been in there since October 13, 2018. So about three years and four months I had him. 
He was my first saltwater fish, and he was the best one I’ve had. Survived no quarantine for him or any of his tank mates, went on an 8 hour road trip with me from Nampa, ID to Seattle, WA. Had almost his whole dorsal fin cut off by a rogue emerald crab, but he regrew the whole thing over the course of a year or so. He was king of the tank, didn’t take crap from the royal gramma or the chromis. He’d chase them right back when they got too rowdy. 

I miss the little guy.
 

October 13, 2018

 

Last good photo of him.

 

So as of right now there is just the one chromis in the tank.

I’m almost done setting up a 10g quarantine/observation tank, so that’ll be in the works for whatever fish comes down the road.