icenine's nano

[icenine]

This was a hitchiker, some kind of nass...

 

[icenine]

[icenine]

[icenine]

Not exactly easy to photo... there are four of the stringy guys in this pic.

 

[icenine]

My Aiptasia has been wiped out... not a sign of it anymore. Now I just need to make sure I can keep the shrimp fed.

Finaly got a pic of him, a bad one however(he's quck and always moving)

 

 

 

[BlakeyBoyR]

We need a newer full tank pic!

[xdannyx_]

indeed

[imafishboy]

ditto with the fts. and nice stuff. that's a cool snail btw the yellow and black one....dunno wht it is=D wht is it?

[icenine]

I'll post some Full tank shots when I get back, hopefully I'll be able to post some halfway decent progression sequence images.

 

Thanks for the comments!

[junglist]

ive really enjoyed reading up on the progression of your tank. great thread. ive been very intrested in zoos lately and am currently cycling my 12g. hope to be able to add some frags in the next couple weeks. i was wondering if you had any input on other dip methods. i know of a few companies that make coral dips. im kind of wary about dipping with freshwater. keep the posts coming.

[icenine]

Well, so much for the tank. It's dead. The pumps crapped out while I was on vacation and everything is lost.

Maybe I'll restart again sometime.

[richt]

Oh no I am so sorry

 

Is it really really dead? If you do a water change, remove the obviously dead things, put some carbon in, and start it all up again for a few days you might be surprised to and see some life in there. Some things are very resiliant - at least you'll have bacteria spores.

 

When I started my tank I used some spare sand that had been taken from an existing tank and stored damp for months in a bucket. A few days later I noticed a grown barnacle filter feeding on a small stone in the sand!

 

I hope you get it running again. It looked so promising.

[bunjiweb]

Looks great! Loving the colour on that live rock, and some of those zoas are very colourful!..

 

And your posts are sure in-depth!

 

Ben

[icenine]

Maybe not all was lost here. I worked on it a bit and over the weekend a few items have shown signs of life and even recovery... I still even have a blue brittle star left.

[icenine]

So things were not as bad as they looked for the first few days. Most of the zoas have at least some polyps that are showing signs of coming back... I even have a little bit of xenia that started pumping again. The gsp has polyps extended but they are bleached and always out were as before they would retract every night, so I think they are beyond revival... One of the candy cane clusters, while completely white still has started to puff back up and extend tentacles a bit. After a major water change the water params got back to stable quickly so my live rock did not seem to suffer much damage. Everything was bleached, in addition to the pumps going out something must have happened to the lighting over those three weeks as well. So, the lights were out and the pumps (and hence the skimmer) were out for who knows how long and I'm sure the temps were spiking up and down as well. The peppermint shrimp bit the dust as well as two of the astrea snails and the turbo. Luckily the nass army (I don't think I lost any of them) would have done away with the carcasses quickly to prevent them from causing a larger ammonia spike. I have some smaller rios running in the tank now (extra freshwater stuff) but I'll be replacing those with mini jets. I don't think the the rios just failed while I was out. I think that the topping off didn't get done for a bit and the overflow ran dry causing the pumps to fail.

If my water params stay in line and things look like they are continuing to recover I'll place that seacrop order next week and get things back on track. The pair of clowns (Nemo) will go in after that.

[icenine]

... and I added something too. I came a cross some nice (and cheap) rics.

[JustFin]

sorry to read about your bad luck, but glad that things are making a recovery... good luck

[TheNorthernLight]

Hello,

 

I've had similar problems, however their is a solution, it's a pain in the ass , but once fixed, you'll never see it.

 

Go to your local acrylic/plastic shop, they have this stuff called "Novus" it comes in 2 grades. 1 - Heavy / deep scratches,

2 - fine scratches.

 

Unfortunately, you'll have to empty your tank completely.! (ouch!)

I know this is the part that is both daunting and back breaking.

 

Here's what I did. went to wallmart, purchased 5 of their 10G

rubbermaid sealable containers. I got 5 just so that I don't have

to move a completely full bucket... which trust me you won't be

able to do! (170Lbs full!)

 

Now, I was doing it on a normal square acrylic tank, so I didn't

have to deal with the nano-cube chambers at the back, but that

still shouldn't be too dificult to remedy.

 

1st bucket) empty 1/4 of your water out into this bucket, put ALL

of you livestock into this container, including all snails, hermits,

fish, inverts.

2nd bucket) another 1/4 of your water, put in all the rock THAT HAS CORALS ATTACHED, and any loose corals.

3rd bucket) take out all your live rock, try and take note, so you

can get it placed back in its original place., and fill with just

enough water to cover the rock.

4th bucket) the remaining water, and this is where you'll empty

all your other equipment into, ie skimmer, pumps , etc.

 

then, once you have the rock out and everything else, here's the P-in-the-@ss part. take out your sand. put it in a bucket. don't worry,

most organisms will be fine. once you have all the sand out, simply grabe a few cups of salt water from ANY of the above 4 buckets, and fill this bucket JUST so that their is 1mm - 1cm of water above the sand.

put the lid on ALL the buckets , except for the fish.

 

Now take your nano, disconnect the light hood, and take it off completely.

 

rince it out with luke-warm water, either outside or in your

bathroom if you live in an apartment.

 

then dry out the acrylic with some paper towels to get it as dry as possible. Don't worry about the bottom.

 

Now take your Novus scratch remover, and squirt a good helping of it right on the scratch, then with more paper towel, slowly rub this stuff in slowly in circles. eventually it will start to disappear, then you may need to do this several times to remove the large scratchs, btw this stuff works for the small scratches too, just takes longer. basicly try and remove / clean it up as best you can.

 

once complete, take it back outside, and rince profusely, I suggest start with HOT water, and slowly go cool until it is "squeaky" clean, do the squeak test right @ the scratch.

 

then, once you have it cleaned out, here's the trick, 3 - 4 peices of acrylic 1/8" is fine, whatever the size of the sides of your cube measures out to, make it a little taller then the top edge of the tank.

 

put one sheet on each side of the tank, and push the bottoms right to the bottom edges.

 

then fill in your sand, once you have the sand it, slowly lift each panel, until the san fills in the spaces, flaten the sand to desired level.

 

then take the 3-4 panels, and stick'em back in again, but this time wedge them in a little in the sand. not much, just to help hold the acrylic. I used some masking tape to tap the tops to the top-edge of the tank to help hold until I was done.

 

Then put your equipment back in the chambers, put your rock back in the tank, and slowly fill the entire aquarium with the salt water from your buckets, except for the fish & coral bucket.

 

once you have the tank filled as much as possible, then carefully put all your corals back in, fill in the water from the coral bucket.

 

once done that, put your livestock back in the tank, and completely the rest of your water refill.

 

Once you have everything put back in, the water WILL be murky/cloudy again, my suggestion would be to put some carbon and mechanical filtration in your input just until the water clears up some.

then after 3 - 4 hours after your re-fill turn your protien skimmer on, and all should be ok.

 

oh, btw, you can put your lights on as soon as your done filling the tank.

 

Hope this helps some. I know my written skill is horrible but oh well!

 

Spy

 

P.s. - Btw to find a local distributor of NOVUS stuff call 1-800-548-6872, they are from Minneapolis, MN 55438, and i know the fine scratch stuff is PN = PC-20, so I suspect the heavy scratch remover is PC-10. thats all for now!. out.

 

 

 

 

Originally posted by icenine

Never buy an acrylic nano tank. Never.  

OK maybe that's an opinion, but for me it's now a mantra.  

 

This was the first acrylic tank I've owned and it will be the last. No matter what anyone tells you about how improved acrylic used in a tank may be today over years past... improved is still lacking.  

The stuff is way too soft for an aquarium display. I had my doubts about acrylic going into this but I did it anyway, big mistake.

 

I was messing around with the live rock and a piece slipped out of my hand. In a glass tank this would have meant nothing. In an acrylic tank it left a nice 4in long scratch right in the middle of the front panel.  

It could not be in a worse spot.  

So... I'm contemplating just ditching the tank and starting over with a glass one, I am still just curing my live rock. I could go on living with the gash in the front of the tank. The gash will probably get filled in with algae eventually making it stand out in some shade of green rather than the gauged acrylic white it stands out in now. I've looked in to what it would take to remove the scratch and it's just not worth it. Most of the scratch removal kits from what I've seen end up just leaving you with a foggy patch on the acrylic and that would actually be worse than the scratch in the center of the front panel.  

Acrylic is just fine for hang on the back systems and such, but it is just not a suitable material for the display. Especially in a nano size tank.  

 

Never buy an acrylic nano tank. Never.

[icenine]

Wow, that's a great post Spy. Thank you. You should probably copy that and post it in general or advanced topics as well, I'm sure a lot of people will find it very helpful. I've looked into scratch removal and just have not mustered up the ambition to try it yet.

Your post just might get me movin on that problem.

[icenine]

A few more Rics from e-bay this week... Orange and green to go along with the pink and purple. Here they are side by side:

 

[dweakl01]

very, very nice.

[icenine]

Yellow/green I have two of these, they are huge.

 

 

 

Thanks dweak they were a great deal too (compared to what Chicago area shops are charging anyway)

More to come soon....

[icenine]

Things have been stable for the last couple of weeks and most of the corals have recovered completely or are just showing a little bleaching still. I wound up losing a couple colonies of zoas as well as half of the GPEs and the GSP but things could have been worse. I tell you when I came back it really looked like the tank was lost and I'm sure just another day or two in the condition it was in and it would have been history.

I (finally) placed and order with seacrop. All of my selections came from their CPR menu. I'm adding a green hammer, yellow tipped torch and another few polyps of candy cane. There is also a green sinulara, yellow devils hand, speckled leather, long polyp toadstool, finger green star polyps as well as blue, green, red and green stripped mushrooms. (two each of the mushrooms). That's a lot of coral, but I'm also planning to set up a 2.5 gal pico soon so, what does not seem to work out in this tank will likely go in there.

I did a whole lot of looking and seacrop really had some of the best deals out there, in particular if you are looking for several and a variety of corals when populating a new tank. Their selection, flat rate shipping and the outstanding reputation Mary's customer service has made them the most comfortable choice for my (big) online coral purchase. I wasn't disappointed by them, the communication was very good, the packing was first rate and the frags I received looked fantastic. Their CPR frags may have been "salvage" but when they got to me they looked to be in great shape.

(ps... I've decided I hate mounting frags, it's a little nerve wracking. I'm always concerned that I'm going to squish, tear, glue over or generally stress them out to the point of no return in the process. it hasn't happened yet but I sweat it every time. It's such a relief when after an hour or so things start to puff up, open or extend.)

I've moved things around several times already as some corals when they fully extended got much larger then they looked like they would the first day I had them. In particular the toadstool turned out to be HUGE and a couple of the mushrooms got to be about 4 inches in diameter (not complaining about that, just surprised lol).

 

Here are a few pics of the order I received:

[icenine]

Mushrooms (there were eight): the blues are stunning and one of them turned out to be really enormous. The green striped look really nice as well, I'll get a pic up of them after they get mounted. They are currently sitting in the substrate while I wait for them to accumulate enough material on their base to glue in place somewhere.

 

 

[icenine]