15g Mixed Reef

Hello this is my first post here however I've been a member for a few months now. This is my 15 gallon mixed reef aquarium and its just a few days over 6 months old now. I have been keeping aquariums all my life and have worked in two separate aquarium stores and attended a vocational aquaculture school in high school. This is my latest tank since recently moving from New England to the south I decided to stick with a nano reef to satisfy my addiction as well as being nice and mobile if I decide to only stick around for a short while. Any way enough about me and let me focus on this tank!

As far as equipment goes on this I went a bit over board but its all been worth it. I strongly believe in buying good long lasting products and not skimping on important aspects of stability. The tank is a Deep Blue 24" x 12" x 12" standard black rimmed and is currently on my kitchen counter top. My lighting system is the NanoBox duo M+ with built in Bluefish controller. as for filtration I'm using an Aqua clear 110 that houses my 75Watt Cobalt NeoTherm digital heater, Purigen, and two quarts of Marine Pure ceramic spheres. I removed all but two blades on the impeller so that the flow was not overly extreme as i have Oolite sand. Aslo a Tunze 9001 skimmer may be in the works to be added to the AC110 as well. For tidal action I am running a Vortech MP10 QD on Reef Crest mode at about half power with the foam guard. Last but not least there is my Tunze Osmolator with a 2.5 gallon deep blue beta fresh water reservoir. So fairly simple filtration especially for my stocking load haha.

Alright finally the live stock, I've got this tank quite full already and i know that some of the choices I've made will just have to be removed at some point in the future. Thankfully i volunteer at an exotic wild life rescue and the owner has a few large salt water tanks that are quite lightly stocked for their size so once pieces or fish out grow my tank i will be donating them there. I've got 4 fish in this tank which include, a yellow coris wrasse, a purple fire fish, a blue neon goby and, an engineer goby. they all get along well with the yellow coris wrasse and the purple fire fish goby being the two rivals in the tank. the purple fire fish and the engineer goby hang out quite a bit and sleep in the hole the engineer goby has dug at night. The blue neon goby just hang out on the rocks by himself and is the total bad ass loner of the group. My srhrimp are quite special to me as well, I've got 4 sexy shrimp, a harlequin shrimp and, a skunk cleaner shrimp.all have been growing happy and healthy as well. I started out with quite a few hermit crabs as well but they started eating my fish so i had to get rid of them. There are a few bumble bee snails, a cerith snail, two nassarius snails, 2 astrea snails, 3 margarita snails, and one turbo snail. I threw a hand full of micro brittle stars in a few months ago as well but have yet to spot one since. AS for corals there are Acans, Favia, Favites, Montipora, Euphyllia, Zoanthids, Lobophyllia, Discoma mushrooms, Yuma mushrooms, Nepthea, Blastos, Goniopora, fungi plate coral, and the all important GSP. On the non coral pretty things to look at list there are two rock flower anemones, a Squamosa clam, a Cristmas worm rock, and a pink coco worm. So yea waaaaay too much for a 15 gallon tank I know but I like to push the limits.

Ok so dosing, not too much to talk about here as I do very little here. I do a 5 gallon water change every 4 days so that really takes care of just about everything I need. But I also dose Kent marine Nano reef parts A and B, 1ml of each daily. Phosphate RX is also dosed every night at 1 drop. That's all folks not too much there but I also add 1.5 ml of Kent A and B to my 2.5 gallon RO/DI reservoir every time I refill it. My DKH is usually between 10.8 and 11.2 and my calcium is quite stable at 430ppm. Magnesium never drops below 1400 and i'm only using Instant Ocean reef crystals. Nitrates are always undetectable and my phosphates are around .02-.04.

Feeding is where I get a bit carried away but I have like 7 types of food for my tank. Lets start with frozen, Hankari canadian mysis and spirulina brine shrimp, H2O life E-z Arcti pods, cyclopese and rotifers. Then ive got Hankari Marine S pellets and Dr. Braums garlic granules for the dry foods. Last but not least is live phyto plankton. I only feed every other day and even sometimes every three days for the fish and corals but I dose live phyto every day mostly for my tube worms clam and millions of Tisbe pods that live in my tank. Once a month I will also cut up frozen shrimp and hand feed some of my corals and anemones which ive noticed helps considerably.

Well I hope you've enjoyed if you've taken the time to read all of this, at some point I'll be posting more pictures as well as reorganizing this post to be a bit more readable once ive figured out this site a bit but until them happy reefing every body!