Spiny's LED nano

The tank has been dry forever, now I am finally inspired to start it up again. This time, I have not cut corners like every time in the past and went with the best stuff. This way I won't have to buy cheap equipment, throw it away, then buy the proper stuff anyways. Also of note, I will be using a quarantine tank, which I have not used for my reef before (I know, but I was really cheap, remember.).

The main tank will be a 25 gallon (29 long) tank with a HOB Aquamaxx skimmer and two AI Sol blues. Deep sand bed and phosphate/carbon reactor. Flow will be made with a Vortech MP10 with battery backup. This tank will be mostly SPS consisting of Acropora millepora, staghorn some Pocillapora and Montiporas of various kinds and 1 or 2 clams. I may throw in a Favites, Ricordea and zoas if the mood strikes me.

The Q-tank will be an 8 gallon CAD Lights system (Starphire glass, removable enclosed chambers, glass lid) with an AI Sol blue nano light to replace the stock ones. This tank will essentially be a full time, minimal reef/frag grow out tank. I am considering getting an Atlantic pygmy octopus to live in there for a while (either Octopus joubini or Octopus mercatori). Species depends on which one arrives in the mail since correct ID is so hard.

I also plan to do more regular water changes on these tanks. I have a little system set up where I take a 1 quart container, fill it with Q-tank water and dump it. Then I replace that water with 1 quart from the main tank, then I replace the main tank deficit with a quart of new saltwater that comes from a carboy living in the kitchen. I will do this once or twice a day depending on what I'm feeling which will amount to about a 1% daily water change in the main tank and a 3% daily change in the Q-tank. This will take about 30 seconds and is much more likely to actually happen that the traditional method which took 45 minutes, lots of spilled water and cussing and only happened about every 6 months.

Haven't decided on fish yet, if any (obviously not with the octo). If I get anything, it will probably be a pair of Ocellaris or Helfrichi firefish or something small and perty.

Q-tank should get here Wednesday, other tank is just waiting to get filled, so here we go.......

Nice plan!!!! Where did you get the LEDs from???

Sounds like a good plan! I'm rooting for you to get an octopus, just because I don't know anyone who's had one before :P Can't wait to see updates and pictures!!!

ohhhhhhhhhhh leds

hehe - luckily water changes on a tank that small are super easy compared with a 100 gallon tank!!

Got the LEDs from Aquacave. They've been awesome recently, free shipping and the last one was here in two days!

And yes, nanos are waaaay easier in my opinion. My 160 was a pain in the butt.

Q-tank arrived. The tank itself is super nice, the lid is kinda crappy, don't know what they were thinking with that one. it's in two pieces and is held hanging inside the tank by these very unstable little clips which they didn't provide enough of anyway. So if you lift the lid up, half the time it tries to fall into the tank. Anyways, I think I'll be going to the glass shop to have a custom lid made up. The stock lid also has no way to octopus proof it. The lights it came with are kinda ugly too and they don't really point down at the tank, there is a slight lean towards the back that makes the lights point out toward you. but they'll be getting replaced anyways, so not a big deal.

Still waiting for q-tank lights, the USPS sent them to Denver on thursday, then up to Wyoming, and now back in Denver. Should have gotten it weds or thurs but they're very inefficient shipping route means I will have to wait.

Hopefully tomorrow they'll send it my way rather than out of the state again. This has happened once before with a plant shipment. It went from California to Boston, then back to Denver. Two day shipping ended up taking a week and my plants were just brown soup when I finally got them.

lol - sometimes I think tracking every movements out shipments make just make it worse!! hahaha and it explains why everything costs more than it should!

WOO HOO!!!! spiny's back in the game!
I am sooooooooooooooooo happy you're getting an octopus! ....I loved Alice (it was Alice right?) and can't wait to follow the progress with your octo!

Originally Posted by spinycheek

Q-tank arrived. The tank itself is super nice, the lid is kinda crappy, don't know what they were thinking with that one. it's in two pieces and is held hanging inside the tank by these very unstable little clips which they didn't provide enough of anyway. So if you lift the lid up, half the time it tries to fall into the tank. Anyways, I think I'll be going to the glass shop to have a custom lid made up. The stock lid also has no way to octopus proof it. The lights it came with are kinda ugly too and they don't really point down at the tank, there is a slight lean towards the back that makes the lights point out toward you. but they'll be getting replaced anyways, so not a big deal.

........um..........so...........just where are photos to document this build?

Photos are hard with screaming infants...

Ive almost filled the display tank. Been doing it 4 gallons at a time using DI from work. The nano Sol blue is awesome. They changed the lighting configuration, so instead of four 3 LED pucks, it has two 5 LED pucks. Still throws a lot of very good quality light, but still, they should update their advertising to match the product. The new light looks waaaay better on the Q-tank than the stock light.

I will try my very best to get pictures this week, no school due to thanksgiving, so I will have a full weekend for once

No pictures, sorry. But I got the tank filled and some live rock in. The live rock is hardly alive, I'm a bit disappointed. So far I've found one mushroom polyp, one zoanthid polyp, 2 snails, yellow sponge and coralline algae. Its been a couple days now, and still only the above minus the snails. I think I will order a bit of aquacultured live rock, the really good stuff, to seed the tank properly. At least I got a zoanthid out of it....

Tried the vortech pump too, it is awesome!!! It moves so much water, I had to turn it down to about 1/3 it's output because it was carving out the sand bed on the opposite side of the tank.

Having trouble wight the skimmer, it is running super wet, as in, it fills the cup in about 30 seconds. The collection cup is adjusted all the way as high as it can go and it still runs super wet. Luckily there is a collection cup drain that drains right back into the skimmer body; so I've just been running it wet and flowing back into the skimmer hoping it will calm down. I've read of others having this problem, and time was the only fix, but it's been about 36 hours now with no improvement....

The skimmer finally calmed down, went to work and it was overflowing back into itself, came home and it was working fine? So it took 3 full days of overflowing to finally get to where it can actually work. I'm glad, because everything else about this skimmer is great. It's practically silent, easy to disassemble and clean, small footprint, high quality pump.

Found some more critters too, Nassarius snails, polychaete, Asterina star, brittle star, amphipod, mysis shrimp. They must have been hiding really well the first few days.

I also have a mystery polyp growing in the back, it's so small I can't tell what it is, might not even be a polyp at all. It's has bright green points surrounding a brown center. I'm hopin it's something cool...

Originally Posted by spinycheek

The skimmer finally calmed down, went to work and it was overflowing back into itself, came home and it was working fine? So it took 3 full days of overflowing to finally get to where it can actually work. I'm glad, because everything else about this skimmer is great. It's practically silent, easy to disassemble and clean, small footprint, high quality pump.

Found some more critters too, Nassarius snails, polychaete, Asterina star, brittle star, amphipod, mysis shrimp. They must have been hiding really well the first few days.

I also have a mystery polyp growing in the back, it's so small I can't tell what it is, might not even be a polyp at all. It's has bright green points surrounding a brown center. I'm hopin it's something cool...

Skimmers are so funky sometimes. Took mine forever to figure itself out, and even still sometimes it has its days. Glad yours has righted itself!

Polyp with bright green points surrounding a brown center, eh? Hmmm...sounds like it could *possibly* be a baby majano, which is considered a pest anemone because they can split and multiply like mad, and move all over your tank. They can be eradicated with joe's juice, lemon juice, hot water, etc. They're not as bad as aiptasia, thank goodness!

Hopefully, though, it's not majano, and is just a nice polyp ^_^ Try to get a pic of it up here - maybe one of us can identify it for you!

hehe ive seen some real pretty majanos too in my time - almost felt bad killing them

maybe its a favia too Spiny!! I found one of those in my tank a few weeks ago - some bud off of an old one from back in the day - was prolly the size of a dime when I finally realized it was a coral and not some lame snailshell orsomething

Ah, I forgot about majanos, I've only dealt with Aiptasia. That's probably what it is, but I can't get a good enough picture to ID yet, it's about the size of a large sand grain and is in the back of the tank. I'll wait a little before I nuke it to make sure it isn't something worth saving.

Tank is blooming with bryopsis. The food I put in there is completely decomposed, now I just have to wait for the bryopsis to die back down and then I can finally add some hermits! Nitrates, ammonia and nitrites all tested at undetectable, so the bacterial cycle is complete.

pH is at 8.2,
calcium is 450
mag is 1370 and
alk is 10.7 dKH

have you tried killing the bryopsis. it's hard as all get out, but can be done.

No, I'm not too worried about it, it only came out because I intentionally overfed to boost the bacteria and brittle star population. if it doesn't die back, I'll get a lettuce nudibranch, they specialize in bryopsis.

I couldn't resist, I had time to go to the LFS and they had the clean up crew I wanted. So I got a scarlet hermit, a zebra hermit an electric blue hermit and a small tiger tail cucumber. The two little hermits began immediately chowing down on the bryopsis as soon as they went in, so that's a plus.