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Well, it's time for a Reefcleaners order and I've been eyeing the microdecorators and the fire fern macro they carry, that said mithrax and true decorators are SERIOUS no-go's for clam-keepers from what I've read. However the only similar florida-native species to what they've got in stock, at least that I've been able to dig up, are the cryptic teardrop crab and the banded-clinger crab. The former *may* be okay simply because of its' small size and potential to be a near-exclusive algae-eater and omnivore as a last-ditch survival adaptation, the latter would probably (eventually) result in aggression and removal at some point. Species identification can be near-impossible so I guess my question is does anyone have experience or additional photography of these little guys, or are there any invert guru's out there who may be able to take a shot-in-the-dark in terms of compatibility? Otherwise I suppose I'm probably better-off going without to be safe... (Nobody wants to lead the pack on animal "compatibility" lol, obvious reasons) https://reefguide.org/carib/peliamutica.html https://www.reeflex.net/tiere/11859_Pelia_tumida.htm https://reefguide.org/carib/bandedclingingcrab.html

Well, it's a little late to start a build thread now seeing as the tank is mostly put together, if anything I suppose this will be more of a "polishing up" stocking and grow-out... thing... I do have some pictures I've taken of the process though and some little stories about how one thing or another got thrown together, but at this point I like the scape and stock enough I wanted to share it. Hope you enjoy! About 8 months ago I bumped into the opportunity to purchase a used Nuvo Atoll and AI prime light for $150 and I just couldn't say no. I'd been really wanting to get back into the hobby after moving off the big island of hawaii for ongoing health-reasons after a bout of myocarditis. It came in pretty scratched but I polished it up within an inch of the factory using the three-step Novus polish kit and some microfiber towels. Unfortunately I no longer really have any before and after pictures of the 6 or so hour process of getting everything nice a bright again, but I definitely learned I never want to deal with an acrylic tank again. I can't believe how easily these tanks scratch and how deeply at that... Next up was grabbing some rocks, I didn't want to deal with all the pests and unknowns which can hitchhike on live rock so I went with dry, instead figuring I would cycle the tank using ammonia, bottled Tim's, and some time. I couldn't really think of a fantastic scape Idea and had too many plans laid out, so I just ended up walking out of the LFS with a 30lb or so pile of Dry rock. I figured I could do some kind of really vertical scape to take advantage of the cylinder-shape of the tank, and I grabbed enough flat pieces that I felt like I could easily make a cove or island layout if I wanted to down-the-road. I replaced the stock pump with a Sicc nano 120 gph and bought a Sicc Voyager 240 for circulation alongside Brightwell N03 cubes, about "50 gallons worth" of Matrix and No3-out media, some chemi-pure blue nano satchels, phosguard, carbon, and egg-crate to hold it all in the AIO section. Underneath the overflow is filter-floss, carbon/phosguard, and then a chemipure satchel, to the right of it in the section which gets essentially no-flow is the NO3 seachem media, then in the large-middle section is half-a container of the brightwell NO3Out media and the Seachem Matrix. I also fashioned a little DIY lid out of Lowes scrap acrylic to keep evaporation down, though I really should have used some rods to keep it from warping, I still can't say I'm unhappy with the results. Bought a continuous power-supply UAC, which doubles as a backup for the nebulizer-compressor... And a Finnex 100W heater. Next-up the protoscaping while the tank cycled, I really wanted to try to maximize the amount of space I had for corals and livestock, while working with keeping a kind of full-tank-gyre action going. I was never really happy with the initial-concepts but couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to do, shy of keeping things bare-bottom, either. I managed to skip any huge algae or cyano breakouts and ended up with a 0-ammonia 10-nitrate tank within two moths, though I did get a few diatom blooms they always cleared up as fast as they came on. (That said I still get the occasional bloom after playing with my rockwork >_>) After two months wet, and about 1 month of feeding an empty tank, I decided to test the waters with a small clean-up crew, four nerite snails and a dwarf cerith. I never really took any pictures of them, but my wife and I both love watching the nerites zip all over the tank despite supposedly being "nocturnal", and have enjoyed trying to figure out where on earth the cerith is hiding during the day. Shortly thereafter we decided to grab a maxima from a local LFS, at the time it looked almost opal-white and was barely two or three inches across. I placed it towards the top of my rockwork and woke up the next morning to find that the little bugger had jumped into a hole and quite-firmly attached itself, prompting a "quick" re-working of the tank. Unfortunately working in the tank and scaping is much less pleasant than I had expected, certainly nowhere near as enjoyable as it used to be for me. Because of my various conditions I've lost most of my postural muscles over-time and have swinging electrolyte-imbalances which can cause shaking, spasms, and pain at just about any angle or weight. Needless to say working in the tank can at times be incredibly frustrating and physically-unpleasant, that said I still love aquascaping dearly and will probably end up with a planted bookshelf-tank or jar in the future. A shot of the clam and a Photo-bombing pair of nerites a few weeks-in. About a month later I decided it was time to start adding some corals when I chanced upon a bunch of indo euphyllia about to run out its' timer on Ebay, I picked up an unknown piece which I think is Baliensis, a bi-color frogspawn, and a yellow-ish hammer; plus a Florida-ricordea, chalice, and blasto-merletti colony for about $15 a piece after-shipping. Here's a grumpy shot of everyone after shipping, dipping, and dropping into the tank: And everyone a few days later: After an ongoing, impressively-successful, feeding regimen of sera-marin-granules (once a week) and 1/4 the recommended dose of RedSea AB I decided to order some plastic-coated neodimium magnets to replace the frag plugs, with the plan of epoxying and gluing their pairs into the rockwork, this way I can remove, swap, and frag the colonies without tearing apart my scape or worrying about much of anything. Unfortunately I think I went overkill on their strength as I can pretty much pick my rocks up by the corals XD Shot of the Maxima and Pink-green chalice after about a month settling-in and my dialing in the two-part dosing to keep alk and cal stable. The longer I had the scape up the more I realized the flow levels just weren't working out for the euphyllia or the chalice. The water coming off the voyager was getting deflected down directly onto the colonies and buffeting them, so I bought a timer to turn the powerhead off a few times a day as a temporary-solution until I felt ready to begin more re-scaping. After a week or so I decided breaking up the rock the Maxima was attached to was a great starting place as its' size and awkward shape left itself and the entire scape unsteady and prone to constantly coming apart while I tried to work with the coral. A few days ago my wife fell in love with this dark black-purple and rich-green anchor coral we found at a LFS, it reminds me of a truffula tree or some goofy fairytale-plant. Which leads me to the current iteration of the scape, overnight the new anchor coral decided to go cliff-diving and fell off its' plug entirely, to fish it out I pretty much had to tear apart the whole tank. With that said it did give me the opportunity and excuse I needed to completely-redesign my rockwork into something that would work better for my animals and for me. Four hours and a very sore back/core later and we have this beautiful little lagoon/cove which keeps the euphyllia sheltered from harsh flow and light, keeps the clam high-and center toward the Prime-puck, and the chalice in highish-flow and medium-ish light. The plan from here is to get a Lobo/Favia/Acan colony for the center and some bubblegum Digitata for the back-right of the wall (to be suspended by magnets) and decide on a small fish which won't harass the clam (No clown gobies, no damsels, I've heard clownfish can be mean...) maybe an assessor? I would love to try a yellow-stripe clingfish, but I know you're not supposed to keep pipefish with clams and am not sure if there's a similar rule. On top of that they're very difficult to keep and, while I would be willing to make it a little-feeding dish and shelter and go the extra-mile, even those who seem to do everything right tend to have their fish die within 3 years... Since there's no real information about their actual lifespan in the wild, I don't know how comfortable I am with the idea of potentially doing that to an animal when other species seem to adapt or even thrive in captivity by contrast. Anyway, that's pretty much the whole process of setting up this 13g nano, it has been a really long time since I've been able to play around with this hobby and honestly this tank has been jumping back into the deep-end for me. I'd love to hear any suggestions on livestock, but I want to keep it light and 10% every-other week or even monthly water-changes in the realm of possibility because of my condition (I test every three days to make sure nitrates are undetectable). Hope you enjoyed the read as much as I've loved browsing around the community and admiring all of your tanks and projects, hope you have a great day!

Does anyone have experience with Possum wrasse and Maxima Clams? I know cleaners, six-line, and a handful of others have been known to go after clam mantles, but I haven't been able to google-fu much info about the smaller species like four-lines and possums, that said a fair-few folks seem to swear up and down that "wrasse-are-wrasse" and will eat any invert they can.I did manage to find out that gobies on average don't work, never would have guessed lol, that said I also can't find anything about the micro-gobidae species like Trinimas.I keep seeing so much conflicting information I'm half-a-step from grabbing a swordtail-molly hybrid or some endlers' livebearers and acclimating them into saltwater, but my nano is high-flow so I'm not sure how well that would work out lol. I'm really just looking for a super-low bioload fish to keep in the tank for a touch of movement and to keep the biofilter going a bit stronger than my sloppy attempts at feeding the LPS haha.

Hey what's up everybody, just wanted to pop in and share my tank, it's just over 8 months now, it's mostly Lps with a few sps. EquipmentIM Nuvo 20IKEA kallax stand2x AI primeHD's Icecap 1k gyre 2x custom daddy's running floss and carbon Eshopps nano skimmerSmart ato micro DIY cheato reactor (TLF 150 reactor)For livestock I have 2 normal clowns1 2 spot hogfish Corals Medium size blue maxima clamGarf bonsai acroBali green slimer Scrambled egg zoasUnknown plate coral Hollywood stunner chalice Few other unknown chalices that I picked up from wwc. Unknown war coral Green monti cap Ricordea Florida Jason Fox burning banana Unknown purple acro That's about it for now, here are a few pics of the setup and a few coral shots, hope you all enjoy.

Started this tank on March 30, 2017 with stock pump and filter sock, koralia nano from previous tank, and 5 lb of LR, and about 8.5 gallons of saltwater to start. The tank is almost a year old now and some upgrades have happened. (will take some better pics with the camera later) Equipment -IM Ti ATO (going to tunze nano ato) -Ran a kessil a80 for 11 months before going to a radion (diffusion kit/rm -Jbj 1/15 hp Chiller with 1.0 return -Sicce 0.5 return - inTank Media rack with 2 filer floss on top, seachem matrix, bottom two filter flosses -inTank universal media skimmer -was running a IM desktop Media Reactor with carbon but since the RMS mount is fairly big i had to remove the reactor (don't mind that because its freaking study!) So in turn I have a Fudge basket that I might run with more matrix in it if the tunze 9001 doesnt work out (coming) -MP10 wQD -inTank Frag rock (2) - 5 lb LR -3 lb Sand (going to take down to less lb's till its barley covered probably -Cobalt Aquatics Neotherm 100w heater - 6.5 chemipure Live Stock: - Rainbow Acans - Duncans - Walking Aussie Duncan - Purple Tipped Frogspawn - Young Maxima Clam - Rock anemone -3 nassarius snails -3 Trochus Snail -3 Aussie young scolymia/s? LOL -Side plant is one of 3 succulents I got at a baby shower and decided to try to grow it under the XR-15 instead of my bedroom window lol, so if they switch out ever that why. Let me know if you have any thoughts on the tank! Plan on upgrading to a Lagoon 25 at some point this year I hope!

So I have a strange question for everyone. I’ve noticed what I can only call a strange organ or possibly some kind of worm that has been coming out of my maxima clam right at the inlet siphon. It has recently been coming out later in the evening when the lights start to dim. I’m just wondering if anyone knows what the heck this is and if it’s something to be concerned about. I appreciate any help you guys can offer with figuring out what this is. I took a picture but it’s not the best...