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Innovative Marine Aquariums

12 gallon Coral Garden


ImAnanoReefer

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Once you upgrade you will notice a huge change in the color of your zoas. Just don't keep any sps untill you upgrade. The zoas won't reproduce fast either under those lights

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48 would be good but I would recommend a 72 watts. That is what I have on my soon to be 12 gallon nano cube, once the tank arrives.

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  • 5 months later...

I'm back!

 

Wow, it has been a long time since I have had a chance to sit down and write stuff for my thread. Thankfully though, I haven't neglected my tank like I have nano-reef.com. Its doing great, and the back wall is now completely covered in coralline algae and small feather dusters. I haven’t really added any corals in a long time, and I owe thanks to a few people for trading/donating to my tank. I am pleasantly surprised with the great people I started to meet when I started to get involved with the local Seattle reefers. I lost contact with all of you recently due to some not so fun health stuff, but I’m getting back into the swing of things and look forward to posting all my reef adventures that I missed and especially those to come. Thanks for sticking around…

 

Phil

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So I had this story laid out in a huge post, with tons of cool smileys and stuff, but somehow it got lost while posting… GRRR.. Anyway here is a revised second edition…

 

The Disaster

 

My aquarium became a pleasant routine of turning on the lights, feeding a tiny bit, coming home from work, staring for hours at copepods running back and forth, then feeding, turning out the lights and going to bed. That’s true more or less… and it was a good little relationship until my lights decided to not turn on nightmarish morning.

 

It all started with a hellish pop instead of the normal wash of light when I flicked the switch. Still half asleep I looked around and turned the switch off, then back on. No noise this time, but still no light. Tired and groggy from sleeping all night (it’s a rough life what can I say heehee) it didn’t dawn on me that my lights were dead until three or four more tries at switching the lights on and off.

 

 

 

Over the coarse of two days I desperately tried to figure out what happened to my lightsand ended up taking the whole hood to my LFS. He tested all the parts and we found out that the ballast was bad. After kicking myself once because ballasts sounded really expensive, I had to kick myself again when he told me I had to special order it from the makers of nanocubes. Well, to tell you the truth, I was about ready to beat the crap out of myself when I called the company and found out that they didn’t make those hoods anymore, so I would have to buy a whole new hood.

 

On top of all that, the kind lady on the phone informed me that I in fact couldn’t upgrade to a 48 watt hood because it wouldn’t fit on my 24 watt nanocube. That pretty much shattered my hope for any kind of positive outcome from this bad adventure. So I paid for the hood, and for the extreme shipping to get that heavy thing from god knows where to my house as fast as possible (In the end my corals survived and I guess that’s all that matters…) but I still had the problem of lighting my already sickly looking corals till the hood got here. I asked my father for any ideas he had, and he said he would think of something while I was at work… When I came home I was greeted by this…

 

The Ghetto Metal Halide System

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Another view of the Ghetto Metal Halide System (patent pending of course LOL)

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Comes complete with Bling Bling Strut Technology (a chunk of scrap 2x4 wood to hold up the hood and keep it from melting it)(Cobwebs sold seperately)

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And conveniently hangs from fire place flues

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I think that is what you call it, my cube sits on an old indoor BBQ and there is a chimney above it, and you clog the chimney with a flue to prevent drafts when its not in use… right?

 

Anyway, I thought it was pretty funny. If nothing else it brought a smile during the biggest reef disaster I have ever had. I got my new hood a few days later and it came complete with 2 moonlights and 2 fans. I don’t like the fans though because now I have to do four times the water top offs then I used to, and they make a lot of noise. I'm glad to have it though because my corals looked awfully brown without the actinic lighting.

 

So what do you guys think, anyone want to buy one of my new patent pending Ghetto MH Systems? Only 99.99! LMAO

 

One last pic of my coral garden under the Ghetto Metal Halide System

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