🇨🇦🌲The Boreal Forest 🌲🇨🇦

[PJPS]

Tank

IM 20

Outside DIMS: Length 23.62” Width: 15” Height: 13”

Display DIMS: Length 23.16” Width: 11.38” Height: 13”

 

Sand & Rock

Ocean Direct Sand (10lbs)

CaribSea Liferock Shapes (15lbs)

 

Equipment

Lights

Radion XR15 Pro G6

Reefbrite KHO 15

 

Powerheads

2 MP10s set to alternating pulses switching every 4h.  I play with flow constantly, so this is unlikely to stay this way longer than a few weeks.

Nero 3 in the saltwater container.

 

Skimmer

Eshopps nano (foam removed from skimmer & pump)

Simple BRS style CO2 scrubber attached (non recirculating)

 

HVAC

Cobalt NeoTherm 75w

Honeywell Fan mounted to the wall beside above the tank.

 

Controller

Neptune apex circa 2019

 

Dosing

1 Versa (Kalk)

4 Head ReefDose

 

Testers

Trident 4x per day

Hanna Low Range PO4 weekly

Hanna HR NO3 weekly

 

RO/DI

Aquatic Life 4 stage

 

ATO/AWC

Auto Aqua Smart AWC

3 White 5G Buckets (ATO reservoir, Saltwater reservoir, Exported tank water) backlit so water level is visible.

 

Salt

Aquaforest Reef Salt (Mixed to 1.025)

 

Livestock

SPS

RR Red Dragon

RRC Holy Grail

CC Purple Haze

FG Gila Monster

FG Mother Pucker

FG Grape Soda

DV Bonsai

Cali Tort

Limeade Nasuta

Teal Echinata

ND Red Montipora Digitata

ND Rainbow Montipora

 

LPS

Goniopora

Aussie Blastomusa

ND Neon Trumpets

FCC Bling Bling Cyphastrea

Micromussa Lords

FCC Jack-O-Lantern Leptoseris

 

Soft

Long Tentacle Japanese  Deepwater Toadstool

2 Varieties of GSP

Photosynthetic Gorgonian

Ricordea

Red Discos - Discosoma

That 70s Shroom - Discosoma

Crock Skins - Rhodactis

Persian rugs - Rhodactis

Money Shot - Rhodactis

Bullseye - Rhodactis

FCC Hairy Green - Rhodactis

 

Fish

2 Clownfish

1 Royal Gramma

1 watchman goby

 

Inverts

2 Peppermint shrimp

1 Pistol shrimp

5 Dwarf hermits

3 African hermits

1 Polkadot hermit

9 Nasarius

2 Strawberry conchs

4 Trochus

3 Astrea

2 Star astrea

3 Turbos

A thriving pod population

 

Food

Frozen

Reef Frenzy big seaweed removed.  Get the nano to skip this.  Our LFS isn’t super consistent keeping nano stocked.

Hikari Mysis

Alternated Randomly daily.  1 cube mysis or 1 1” square of Reef Frenzy.

 

Powdered

Benepets

Coral Frenzy

Alternated randomly 1/16 tsp mixed daily with frozen.  We’ll substitute Reef Roids every now and then (twice a month roughly) to bump PO4

 

Frozen and powdered food is put in 20mls tank water, thawed, mixed, and fed in 3-4 feedings. Frozen is not rinsed.

 

Liquid

Oyster Feast - 4 drops into a powerhead a few times a week after lights out.

Live Phyto - 5ml every 2-3 days

 

Dry

Vitalis flakes and pellets - only used if no frozen is available, and used sparingly even then

 

Feeding regimen inspired by Reinaldo of Pirate’s Reef.

 

Maintenance

Daily 1-2L water changes

Change floss every 2 days

Empty skimmer cup every 2-3 days

Change carbon weekly

Change RowaPhos monthly

Clean skimmer pump and body every 2-3 months

Clean return pump every 2-3 months

Clean media caddies every 2-3 months

This is the ideal, bits and pieces slide around.

 

Filtration

Filter floss

Marine Pure gems

RowaPhos  3 Tbsp in a bag changed monthly

Carbon (ROX or ReefSpec) 3 Tbsp in a bag changed weekly

Eshopps nano skimmer

1.3ml daily NO3PO4X

 

We run an inTank IM caddy in each side of the IM 20.  Biological media on one side, carbon and Rowa on the other.  Filter floss top layer on both sides.

 

Parameters

Alk 6.8 - 7.5

Ca 400 - 430

Mg 1400 - 1440

NO3 10 - 20

PO4 0.03 - 0.1

PH 7.9 - 8.3

 

Dosing

Daily

425ml full strength kalk (Seachem) dripped 24/7 with Versa

1.8ml Foundation B (Liquid)

1.4ml Foundation A (Liquid)

1ml Foundation C (Liquid)

1.3ml NOPOX

We live in a high-rise condo, and this particular combination gets us to a pH We can live with in the cold Canadian winter, and a great pH the rest of the year when we can open the windows. The dosing is all spread out over 24h.

 

Live Phyto - 5ml every 2-3 days

10ml Eco Balance every 3-4 weeks

 

The Story So Far

This tank was started November 2021.

 

It was started with Stax rocks, but was rescaped by my wife with LifeRock in May.  That rock was run in a bucket of heated saltwater for 5 weeks, with 1tsp Aquaforest Life Source dosed weekly.  The lid was loosely on to keep light to a minimum.  We’ve had 0 algae/cyano/dino issues doing it this way.  The rocks were replaced 50% at a time, 4 weeks apart.

 

Live stock was added in the following order, after cycling for 4 weeks, and testing 0 Ammonia and 0 Nitrite.

 

Clowns

Mushrooms

6 each, hermits, nasarius snails, trochus snails

Various LPS (some we kept, some didn’t make it)

Royal Gramma

Toadstool

Goby Pistol Pair

More mixed hermits and snails

Montipora

Acropora

More mixed hermits and snails

This was spread evenly across 12 months.

 

Our philosophy is largely influenced by Nicholas Marion @Aqua Splendor.  Build a full ecosystem, from phyto, to micro and macro grazers.  Create habitats for the animals, adjust what you do in response to the animals in your care.

 

For instance, we feed many foods that everything can eat.  Pretty much everything eats the powdered food, phyto, oyster feast, and tiny bits of LRS. The goby  is well fed now.The fish eat anything large enough to see.  We like a nice diversity of invertebrates, and the microscopic food keeps them thriving.   

 

As we notice fewer inverts, we replenish.  As there aren’t any massively useful nano fish, we think a healthy and thriving crew of inverts is a necessity in a nano tank

 

That said, in the first year here are the bummers & battles.

 

Cyano (Best Fix: just go straight to a  chemiclean treatment, dose bacteria weekly for a month afterward)

 

LCA Dinos (Best Fix: Sponge Excel 3 drops every 4 days, 5ml live phyto every other day, Tisbe or other pods, 10ml Ecobalance weekly.  Don’t clean your glass.  You are trying to outcompete it with anything - cyano, diatoms, GHA are all easy by comparison.  Skip the blackouts and higher temps, they do nothing towards the solution and add stress to the already stressed system.  Run nutrients 100:1 eg Nitrates 30 Phosphates 0.3, neither should be 0.

 

Identifying strain of ydinoflagellates is critical to solving the problem. I highly recommend Mack’s Dino support group on Facebook.  They are THE dino solvers, just follow the advice, it’s literally the best around.)

 

Diatoms (Best Fix: Pods & Live phyto.)

 

GHA (Best Fix: get nutrients in line, 100:1 N:P eg 30:0.3.  Manual removal, increase snail and crab numbers by diversity and amount.)

 

3 Fancy mushrooms disappeared

 

An Australian and an Indonesian torch coral started to fight, and the Indonesian lost. The Australian one died six weeks later.

 

Several micromusa never got comfy and eventually died.

 

A chalice and cyphastrea frag didn’t make it.

 

Several Montipora frags were tossed after Montipora Nudibranch eggs were spotted on the frag rack (why you should monitor frags on a rack for a few weeks before placement).

 

Several acros stripped as the chemistry wasn’t yet stable enough.

 

Larger (maybe double the price) encrusted Acropora frags improve success approximately 90%.  20G is too small to nurse tiny frags until you get some SPS in there and your dosing is dialed in.

 

What Would We Do Differently

 

Start with Life rock and dose 1 teaspoon of LifeSource mud for the first 10 weeks that the tank is wet with rock in it, including during the cycle.

 

Add two bottles of pods and dose a couple of mls of live phyto every few days and get them reproducing after adding the first fish.

 

Start dripping Kalk much earlier on, even if it’s a very mild solution. Upping the saturation as the demand from LPS slowly climbs.  Do this slowly, go by Alk tests. Get a Hanna checker, you’ll be testing Alk weekly if not daily.  Run high alk & calcium while only softies to encourage coralline.

 

Our Reefing Story

We got into reeefing shortly after my diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 2006. Prior to that I was a software engineer, my disability was enough to take me out of the workforce however.

 

We were immediately addicted.  A weekly LFS trip minimum.  That first tank was taken down within a year. Although largely a success, we hadn’t anticipated how much of a roller coaster MS would be.

 

Fast forward to 2019, I am now in a wheelchair and have plenty of time to dedicate to something. We started a FOWLR in a BioCube 16.  It eventually got overrun with algae, and with the pandemic keeping us home… We had never lost our love of reef tanks and had contemplated numerous times starting another reef. So last fall we started up the Innovative Marine Nuvo 20.

 

We agreed to split the duties. I’d handle all the research, the chemistry, monitoring, dosing, anything that didn’t need fine motor skill. She’d handle all the stuff that did, and all the heavy lifting, and we’d automate as much as we could as budget allowed. So while there is a great deal of automation, you can think of it as accessibility.

 

It started with an AI Prime HD, but that got switched for a Radion XR15 pro when we started to go for SPS.  Then we added the Reefbrite strips.

 

We tried a small refugium in one of the back chambers, that turned out to largely be useless.

 

After the rescape we decided to put everything on inch and a quarter frag discs and plugs, Securing them to the rock with a glue - epoxy - glue sandwich.  This makes them easy to remove with bone cutters.  Eventually you have a series of flat platforms of epoxy that you can just move the Frag discs between as you learn what corals like it where.  This is mostly for the SPS so we can easily move them around without drilling the rock.

 

Our set up is pretty dialled in at the moment.  Input matches export, The ecosystem is stable to a large degree.

 

Photos

 

These are iPhone 14 Pro Max photos.  We can’t find an orange filter that fits so any tips are gladly appreciated.  These are largely from late October.

 

Long View

 

FG Grape Soda

 

Limeade Nasuta

 

Teal Echinata

 

RRC Holy Grail

 

RR Red Dragon (Daylight, before lights come on)

 

More photos coming soon, questions welcome 😊.  I use voice typing, so ignore anything too crazy, just point it out and I'll re-answer 😉 

[PJPS]

Is there a spectrum we can flip the lights to?  That’s PHX14 to the iphone.  Is 12k a better spectrum for photos with no filter?  Please advise 📷

[Gsepanik]

Wow will be following along. I hope to have an SPS dominated nano one day. Until then I will be soaking up the information and experience here!

[ninjamyst]

What a great write up!

[PJPS]

We found a 67mm clip for the iphone, good photos coming soon.  The tank runs heavy blues, even at it's peak running PHX14 the blues blow out the sensor, hell even at 12k it's all blue in the photos.  I wrote the write up as if speaking to myself, so "you" is me, please nobody think I'm saying how YOU should do stuff, it's just how we do it 🙂

 

Getting some stuff placed today, so there may be a very blue FTS later today/tomorrow.  Amazon isn't "next day" this close to the holidays 😞

 

 

[PJPS]

Also all lineage corals, RR or FG or whatever, the lineage is VERY likely the real deal.  No chop shop look-a-likes, those have trade names with no lineage.  My vendor for these pieces is Adam from Frag Garage (watch his Reef Bum or Reef Dudes appearances), he knows the providence of essentially all his pieces, or they are purchased from the source.

 

Personally, I could care less about the snobby side, but these tank hardened specimens are 1000x easier in a 20G nano.  I have lost 0% of stuff from Adam, his system is also crazy clean.  I've yet to find more than pods in the dip water (I still dippem).

 

For my Canadian reefing brethren, here's where we shop:

Livestock

Corals: Frag Garage (expensive but entirely worth it), New Dawn Aquaculture, Candy Corals/Fragbox

 

Fish & Inverts: Fragbox (exceptional hermit crab variety) / Candy Corals (good aptasia eating peppermint shrimp, consistently has the right species)

 

Dry Goods: Aquriumdepot.ca, reefsupplies.ca, jlaquatics.ca.

 

Those are listed preferentially.

[Reefkid88]

Great looking tank. 

 

 For pics,order a 52mm brown filter off of Amazon or Ebay for like $8,and order a cheap amazon phone case and use a few small drops of super glue to make the filter stick and just swap cases during your photoshoot. 

 

 Brown filters are 1000000x better than orange when shooting under full blue. 

 

https://youtu.be/Bb0jio-Pfck

[PJPS]

1 minute ago, Reefkid88 said:

Great looking tank. 

 

 For pics,order a 52mm brown filter off of Amazon or Ebay for like $8,and order a cheap amazon phone case and use a few small drops of super glue to make the filter stick and just swap cases during your photoshoot. 

 

 Brown filters are 1000000x better than orange when shooting under full blue. 

 

https://youtu.be/Bb0jio-Pfck

Thank you! We got the 67mm so our existing orange Tiffen filter could be used.  This isn't the first time I've heard brown > orange.  I'll start saving for a 67mm brown, unfortunately we're far from well off, so it'll likely  be after xmas.  I massively appreciate the tip!  We'd been trying to get the new phone to play nice with the tank, as the latest iphone camera is nicer than our Rebel T5 DSLR so far for easy macro shots.

[joshthebox]

Nice to see some classic Canadian strains! Agreed, Adam at FragGarage is great. Be careful if you buy Acros from Fragbox.  

[PJPS]

4 hours ago, joshthebox said:

Nice to see some classic Canadian strains! Agreed, Adam at FragGarage is great. Be careful if you buy Acros from Fragbox.  

I've never bought acros from FB, all wild acros to my knowledge.  They're great for inverts, like a say. and they get the occasional crazy mushroom or LPS.  Both have super friendly and helpful staff :).  Toronto pricing, is what it is (too expensive for a person on disability).

 

Your TOTM looks amazing!  Also, our tank setups are ridiculously similar 😂

[PJPS]

It’s maintenance day, and someone very kindly took some photos with her new phone.  The Radion is set to 14k, no filter, straight from the phone.

 

Most of the setup

 

 

Rainbow Montipora

 

Counterclockwise Toadstool, GSP, Scarlet Hermit, Money Shot, Green Hairy, Bullseye, Peppermint Shrimp

 

Croc Skins, Polka dot hermit, Assorted Ricordea 

 

DV Bonsai

[PJPS]

Teal Echinata

[PJPS]

FG Grape Soda

[mitten_reef]

On 12/13/2022 at 9:38 PM, PJPS said:

 The Radion is set to 14k, no filter, straight from the phone.

If you can turn off the Reefbrite bars, the 14000K spectrum should be pretty friendly to phone camera. At least, it is on my Hydra32HDs when I use about 13500.  Worth a shot   

Here's a link to my post that was shot at 13500K 

 

[joshthebox]

On 12/13/2022 at 9:38 PM, PJPS said:

It’s maintenance day, and someone very kindly took some photos with her new phone.  The Radion is set to 14k, no filter, straight from the phone.

 

Most of the setup

 

 

Rainbow Montipora

 

Counterclockwise Toadstool, GSP, Scarlet Hermit, Money Shot, Green Hairy, Bullseye, Peppermint Shrimp

 

Croc Skins, Polka dot hermit, Assorted Ricordea 

 

DV Bonsai

Just thought I'd give you a little back history on your DV bonsai strain if you didn't already know. It originated from this tank: https://reefkeeping.com/joomla/index.php/current-issue/article/128-tank-of-the-month

[PJPS]

1 hour ago, joshthebox said:

Just thought I'd give you a little back history on your DV bonsai strain if you didn't already know. It originated from this tank: https://reefkeeping.com/joomla/index.php/current-issue/article/128-tank-of-the-month

That's awesome!  Thanks, I had no idea 🙂

[PJPS]

Interstellar Ricordea

[PJPS]

Limeade Nasuta

[PJPS]

Latest nutrients

 

NO3 = 4.7

PO4 = 0.05

 

Currently feeding heavy, but the nutrients are low.

 

Params

 

Alk = 7.5

Ca = 405

Mg = 1405

 

Things are looking great.  Just waiting for the new case to hold the camera filter.  I can't get anything remotely colour accurate on the iphone  14 pro yet.

[mitten_reef]

how is it that there were more photos of your acros on @Variant's thread than on here.  came here to check out the rest of your tank, hoping to see more acros.  Post em up!  😁

[PJPS]

On 1/19/2023 at 9:34 AM, mitten_reef said:

how is it that there were more photos of your acros on @Variant's thread than on here.  came here to check out the rest of your tank, hoping to see more acros.  Post em up!  😁

Well, you’re in luck 🐒

[PJPS]

Btw, if you want to follow my tank, I use AquaticLog to keep track of my tank.

 

https://www.aquaticlog.com/aquariums/shieldspj/2

 

It’ll always have the latest data and livestock pictures.

[PJPS]

PJ’s Nano Gumbo V2

HEAVY (currently not used)

15ml live phytoplankton

1” square complete frozen

1/8 tsp probiotic powder food

1/8 tsp different probiotic powder food

LIGHT (every day)

10ml tankwater

5ml live phytoplankton

1/8 probiotic powdered food (I alternate between two different ones)

1” square complete frozen

 

9 drops of amino acids dosed daily - basically a bit under the daily dose for the water volume.  Start slow and add a drop every 5 days.  I dose these straight to the tank, they don’t go in the gumbo.

 

I just mix everything, let the frozen thaw in the rest, then feed in pipette sized servings across the day.  It’s more time spent feeding, which may or may not be appealing.  The ocean is a steady flow of various foods.  Phytoplankton, pods, bacteria, seafood, are constantly floating by.  This “gumbo” tries to replicate the ocean’s food chain requirements and feed the whole reef.

 

This is Shaun Acro-Man Russell’s famous “soup” tank conditioning recipe, incorporated into daily feeding.  All credit to him for creating a recipe for problem free marine tanks.  My 20G Nuvo has been on autopilot and problem free since adopting a full biological approach.

 

I must credit @Aqua Splendor for all his painstaking work.  His nano series made me completely rethink the way I manage my tank.  A complete food chain, properly maintained, is the best reefing philosophy I’ve tried.  Run your saltwater aquarium like the ocean, sounds obvious.  Endless thanks Nicholas.

 

This will absolutely grow algae, it’s on purpose.  It’ll feed all your herbivores.  You should have plenty for every surface.  If you see algae growing, add herbivores (pods, snails, hermits, fish), or add less gumbo per day.

 

One thing I’d like to get dialed in is a liquid food for the SPS, but they thrive regardless.

[PJPS]

Softie Corner (refuge for the inverts, sometimes the flow is hard on the peppermint shrimp)

[PJPS]

FTS