bluprntguy's nano

[bluprntguy]

I figured it was time to get a build thread up here on R2R so that everyone would have a better idea of what I'm about. I'm a member of bareefers (our local reef club in San Francisco), so there's one there as well (link here). I had a 20 gallon ADA nano tank in this same location about 5 years ago. The current build uses the same light and 120 year old built in cabinet (seriously made out of 2" thick redwood), but I replaced the tank with a new Aquamaxx 32 gallon that seemed to fit perfectly and gave me some extra water volume.

When I started this tank, I wanted to focus on stocking it responsibly using captive bred fish and inverts. While I've called this the "nothing from the sea" build, I do have a few hermit crabs and snails that I wasn't able to source as captive bred. I've held true to the goal for everything else and stocked it only using captive bred fish, corals, and snails. The rock structures were built from Marco Rocks and E-Marco 400.

I've also carefully quarantined all the fish and inverts. Fish went through tank transfer method and prazipro treatment. All inverts, including snails and corals go into an invert only quarantine tank for 76 days to insure that I don't transfer anything into the tank. So far, I've managed to avoid aiptasia, bryopsis and other pests that made my previous reef tank far less enjoyable.

Initial Full Tank Shot:

Equipment:

• Tank: Aquamaxx 32 gallon rimless
• Overflow: Modular Marine Nano Overflow
• Sump: Modular Marine Custom Sump and ATO Reservoir
• Skimmer: Tunze Comline DOC DC Protein Skimmer 9004
• Light: AI Hydra (original) and Controller, Kessil A80 for refugium
• ATO: Smart ATO Nano
• Flow: Aquaillumination Nero 5
• Zetlite WiFi Dosing Pump

Supplements:

• Salt: Accurasea 1
• Tropic Marin "All for Reef" alk/ca
• Pohl's Xtra Special
• Zeovit Amino Acid
• Pohl's Coral Vitalizer

Fish:

• ORA Yellowline Goby
• Sea and Reef Davinci Clownfish Pair
• Sea and Reef Orchid Dottyback
• Biota Blue Mandarin

SPS Corals:

• Bubble Gum Digitata
• Oregon Tort
• Tyree Setosa
• Montipora Orenji
• Tyree Aquetuburculata Capricornis
• Cornbred's OMG Acro
• Cornbred's Holy Grail Acro
• Cornbred's Gold Digger Acro
• Sunset Montipora

LPS Corals:

• TBD

Soft Corals:

• Eagle Eye Zoas
• Sonic Flare Zoas
• Gatorade Zoas
• BBEB's Zoas
• Bam Bam Zoas
• Blow Pops Zoas
• Red Hornet Zoas
• Vivid's Rainbow Zoas
• JPS Mystique Blue Zoas
• Cornbred's Black Widow Hornets

Clean Up Crew:

• ORA Cerith Snails
• ORA Trochus Snails
  
• Blue Legged Hermits

 

[hdsoftail1065]

The tank looks great and the "nothing from the sea" concept is really neat!

 

[NorCal Reefer]

Sweet tank. Are you running a full Zeovit system?

 

[MnFish1]

Your 'not much from the sea' build looks great.... Congrats

 

[bluprntguy]

The tank looks great and the "nothing from the sea" concept is really neat!

Your 'not much from the sea' build looks great.... Congrats

Thanks! The pics are a little old, hopefully some new ones coming soon showing current corals and fish (they are growing up fast!)

Sweet tank. Are you running a full Zeovit system?

Technically I'd say yes. I'm also using the Tropic Marin "all for reef" one part CA/Alk combo. The one part acts as a carbon source and when I was also using zeofood/zeostart as an additional carbon source it resulted in zero phosphates in this system regardless of how much I fed, so I had to discontinue the zeofood and zeostart (maybe just temporarily). I'm still using the other zeovit products. I also have zeolites in the sump, but not in a reactor. So I guess it's more of an adapted zeovit system. I used zeovit products on my last build and was pretty happy with the results, so I'm sticking to that system as much as possible.

 

[Andrew Higgins]

Awesome setup. Do you have any pics of your sump?

 

[ReeferReefer]

Any updates?

 

[bluprntguy]

Awesome setup. Do you have any pics of your sump?

Sorry, been AWOL on this. The sump has been looking pretty gnarly, but here’s the current pic:

 

[bluprntguy]

Any updates?

All the fish came down with flukes. Of course, it happened a week before I was going to a conference. 95% sure it was the yellowline goby as he came from a LFS that I usually avoid. The clownfish were in the worst shape. They needed freshwater dip and back to quarantine for antibiotics. Dosed the tank with prazipro as well. I put the clownfish back in the tank before I left for the conference. A few days after I got back, the dottyback had an infection from the flukes and was in such rough shape that I was able to just reach my hand in the tank to get her out. She recovered after a few days in antibiotics and everyone has been fine since.

Most of the corals are doing pretty well. All the frags are starting to encrust and I’m starting to see some growth. The RBTA moved around a bit, but seems to have found a place that it likes. Obviously, the clownfish haven’t warmed up to the RBTA, yet.

The Mandarin is doing great. I just looked back at some of the older pics from when I got her, and she’s at least double the size. She mostly eats decapsulated brine shrimp eggs and live baby brine shrimp that I hatch every couple of days. I’ve also been culturing pods and replenishing the tank pretty constantly.

The clownfish are going through a phase. The male is very outgoing and headstrong and hasn’t decided whether he’s going to submit to the female. There have been a few fights and some tattered fins. They still sleep together at night. I’m keeping an eye on them and prepared to put the female in time out. This weekend I was wondering if the female had to go (I like the male more), but I *think* they’ve turned the corner and are working it out.

Finally, ordered a battlebox from @Battlecorals a few weeks ago and got some great pieces. Those are still in quarantine (the frags looked fantastic, I’m just very cautious). Hopefully moving them to the display before July 4. Also noticing a bit more algae in the main tank, so I bought some more clean up crew, but they are in invert quarantine for at least a few more weeks.

That’s the update. I’ll pull out the good camera someday...

 

[RCeiver]

Are you a Lion King fan or just coincidence?

 

[tabungrahim]

This is using what overflow?

 

[bluprntguy]

Are you a Lion King fan or just coincidence?

LOL. You aren’t the first person to notice this. Unintentional, but I did see the new lion king movie last night! Was considering naming the fish after the characters, but I’ve never really named my fish...

This is using what overflow?

It’s the modular marine nano overflow. Took forever to get it, but I wanted something small and simple and it’s the best I could find.

 

[bluprntguy]

I've been debating adding a controller for a while and decided to take the plunge and add one to my system. I experimented with something a little less robust (teffo controller) and it seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. This seems like overkill for a nano to me, but it will be nice to have a way to turn off all my pumps to feed without having to go into the cabinet. Also looking forward to heater controller and notifications. This is going to be a bit of a slow add. I also want to put my sump on sliders to make it easier to access and clean, so I'll probably be doing both about the same time so that I can reorganize cords and get everything back behind the sump.

Decided to go with GHL for a few reasons: The first being that everyone that uses one seems to rave about it. Second is that the controls and app seem simpler and need less programming and fussing. The final reason is that I'm looking ahead to replacing my light and considering the GHL Mitrax primarily because the light source is towards the outer edges of that fixture and I think it will help reduce some of the shadowing I get in my tank.

 

[RCeiver]

I've been debating adding a controller for a while and decided to take the plunge and add one to my system. I experimented with something a little less robust (teffo controller) and it seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. This seems like overkill for a nano to me, but it will be nice to have a way to turn off all my pumps to feed without having to go into the cabinet. Also looking forward to heater controller and notifications. This is going to be a bit of a slow add. I also want to put my sump on sliders to make it easier to access and clean, so I'll probably be doing both about the same time so that I can reorganize cords and get everything back behind the sump.

Decided to go with GHL for a few reasons: The first being that everyone that uses one seems to rave about it. Second is that the controls and app seem simpler and need less programming and fussing. The final reason is that I'm looking ahead to replacing my light and considering the GHL Mitrax primarily because the light source is towards the outer edges of that fixture and I think it will help reduce some of the shadowing I get in my tank.

I’m debating one of these myself. Would be interested in your thoughts on it.

 

[bluprntguy]

I’m debating one of these myself. Would be interested in your thoughts on it.

So far so good. I wasn't planning on setting it up until sometime next week, but I unpacked some of the boxes for the monitor, decided to plug it in, then decided to connect it to the app, then decided to connect the probes... Within an hour or so it was already up and running!

Hopefully will get the power bar connected this weekend. So far I'm really impressed.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Very cool build!

 

[bluprntguy]

A little update: I installed the profilux before I went out of town last week. I was planning on just unboxing and making sure everything worked, but it ended up being so simple, that I decided to configure everything and somewhat haphazardly install it. I’m still programming some features, but it’s generally running what I needed. Still working on where everything is going to go in the end. I want to take my sump out and put it on heavy duty sliders so that it's easier to clean. I also think I want to move the profilux eventually. It's current location is a little too easy to dump water on it during maintenance.

My anemone split while I was on vacation. Notice the absence of clownfish in either one of the anemones. They are starting to get close, I think...

Snail laid eggs on another snail:

Mandarin just because she was there and looking photogenic

 

[Paul Sands]

How’s Blair The Mandarin doing? Still chowing down on grindal worms and BBS?

 

[bluprntguy]

How’s Blair The Mandarin doing? Still chowing down on grindal worms and BBS?

Seems to be doing well. Chunky and happy. She loves the grindall worms, as do all the fish.

 

[bluprntguy]

Did a little sump reorganization this weekend. I liked the idea from some people in my local reef club of having a "dry" area for the controller. While I couldn't quite pull that off with my limited space, I was able to at least move the controller to a spot above the sump where it would be less likely to get wet during normal maintenance. I ended up lowering the sump a fair amount, which made my return pump a wee bit undersized, so I upgraded that to a DC pump that's controllable.

I also put the sump and ATO reservoir on heavy duty sliders a few months ago, so I can get to them a little easier. That was really simple for the ATO, but the sump takes a little bit of creative plumbing and arrangement of cords and connections to make it able to be pulled out. The sliders are rated for about twice what my sump weighs, but I rarely pull them out all the way and even more rarely leave it out for more time than it takes to swap a filter sock out or clean the skimmer cup. It's really nice to have and I'm surprised I don't see more people with their sumps set up on sliders.

Finally, I added a KH Director. This kind of snowballed from my decision to upgrade my Kamoer dosing pump to something a little more reliable (I was unhappy that it just stops dosing after a power failure unless you reconnect with bluetooth). Since I was already on the GHL system, and everyone seems to love their dosing pumps, that seemed like an easy decision. Once I was decided on the dosing pump, it made sense to go ahead and get everything in a package together with the KH Director and "save" some money by spending even more...

I'll try to post a review on that once I've lived with it for at least a few days. I need a little dosing tube management and still need to find somewhere to permanently keep the reagent and my alkalinity solution, but it's running and I'm pretty impressed so far.