Bringing life back to my Nano Reef: A 2.5 year tale (lots of photos!)

[NonstopSoda]

This is the beginning, July 2022. The first month of my tank with my first ever aqua scape, I had just finished cycling the tank and was starting to stock my tank

My old cat gazing at the tank ^

^ Now it’s November and my tank is fully stock with coral and fish a happy site to the start of my reefing journey after years of freshwater

^This is when life started getting busy! Fresh outta high school and just starting to go to college and work! Which means more coral and new lights! Seeing some growth and starting to get over run by hair algae.

^Now getting to the end of the line. The growth was abundant but I was having a bad GHA and cyano outbreak and this was when I saw a little gray anemone and thought it looked cool out any research. That anenome was the first aiptasia hitchhiker, which I let live and started to blow up with the abundance of nutrients.

 

[NonstopSoda]

At this time it was over a year old and I had just lost my 8 year old cat to a kidney disease and started to start go down hill mentally, I dropped out of college and stop weekly care of my reef (except for everyday feeding) and with the constant high nutrients the aiptasia took over almost everything in this little reef. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of this phase.

 

[NonstopSoda]

As time went by I started to heal and (thanks to the love of my life) I started to feel mentally better enough to start taking care of my beloved reef. At this point it’s been almost a year since I did my last water change. I took the rocks out of my tank and did a 100% water change and moved my surviving clown and goby to a temp tank thanks to my friend while I redid everything. I changed out the rocks and did my best to clean everything to as brand new as I could. I added new live rocks and made a new scape. The parameters slowly went back to normal as the weeks went by and I added my old fish back to the tank. At this point I still had aiptasia anemones but very few. The tank has been healing ever since with a burst of GHA but has been getting less and less prevalent as time passes now.

 

[NonstopSoda]

This is the first ever picture I took when I started adding coral back to the tank and the tank started to come back from the brink of death. I felt such pride and happiness when I finally got everything stable enough for corals again

 

[NonstopSoda]

Now we’ve come to the present! This is over the course of the last few months when the tank is finally back to its former glory with happy and healthy coral and fish teeming with life from copepods to my big xenia colony. My old goby and clown from the start of my journey are still with me and I love them with all my heart. The tank is now thriving and gets better with each passing day. I’m dosing everyday and got kessil. I started working hard and got a great job to help fund my renewed reefing addiction! I made this thread because I didn’t get the chance to capture my journey into saltwater and wanted to show how even in the worst of times, it’s never too late to start a new and make a change for the better. With time and patience you can do anything and this hobby may be hard to master it just takes persistence to succeed. Now weve got up to my first post of my tank when I changed my rocks again! Thank you for reading this thread and I’m looking forward to being a part of this community for a long time

-Soda

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This is the before ^. I decided to finally change up my rock scape on my 26 gallon nano tank! I’ve been thinking about it for a while but I didn’t wanna wreck everything for it to look worse but the top rock had gotten unglued and I worried that it would fall over and break my glass or crush my coral so I changed it today!

^ this is the new scape that I’ve made! I crushed the top rock so I could have more room and design, moved all the rocks more toward the back wall so would have more open sand bed in the front for more coral. Over all I love this new scape and it’s opens up so much more space for more frags .

The fish are settling in just fine and the corals are starting to open back up, my twin spot goby is already hard at work making a new burrow!

 

[NonstopSoda]

Here’s the info about what is currently in my tank!

It’s an Aqua top 26 gallon nano, I use a Kessil a160 Blue tuna about 11 inches above water level. I have the standard equipment that came with the tank like the clip on protein skimmer and the bio filters in the back, a standard heater and a hygger nano wave maker. The tank is stocked with my 2 year old clown and spotted mandarin goby, the new additions are a twin spot goby, a fire shrimp, and I got a baby yellow coris wrasse but he’s getting a little too big for my liking now and also taken a liking to killing my smaller snails, he’s about “1.2 inches” so I’ve been trying to get him out of the tank and rehomed. I also have a wide variety of CUC such as hermits, nassarius of several sizes, ceriths of several sizes. As for coral I have a large colony of pulsing xenia, a large patch of gsp contained on a small rock that I might move to the back wall to grow. A small frag of Halle berry Zoas, an ultra button scoly, encrusting starry eyes leptastrea, an indo yellow hammer and a monsoon splatter green hammer, long tentacle red goniopora, a green Duncan, and three large green hairy mushrooms.

 

[NonstopSoda]

Here’s a the newest picture after everything settled down and adjusted to the move! The corals are much more open and most fish out and about except for my mandarin who is eating copepods behind the rock

 

[NonstopSoda]

update! The surprise from my twin spot goby when I got home from work today

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[NonstopSoda]

Just fed the corals and tank life’s going swimmingly!!

 

[NonstopSoda]

Update: finally caught the snail killer!! This was last night and now he’s back at my LFS, gonna miss his banananess though.

 

[NonstopSoda]

These two always hang out around each other!

 

[NonstopSoda]

Some close ups From my phone. I’m currently getting my canon camera back and running to take some cool coral shots, Also my splatter hammer is splitting!

Also button scoly is quite happy : )

 

[eliaslikesfish]

you should get a bubble tip for your clown!

 

[NonstopSoda]

you should get a bubble tip for your clown!

Would love too but unfortunately had a anemone wavewaker slushly crash my tank a few years back and im still traumatized and im scared of it moving to a place i dont want and stinging my coral

 

[NonstopSoda]

also just realized I can edit the picture size so now they aren't ginormous...

 

[NonstopSoda]

I recently purchased some new corals for the tank!

^Frogspawn, and alveopora^

^Torch. Stylo^

And toadstool! ^

This is after they haven been acclimated and dipped, pictures taken right after being put into the tank.

 

[NonstopSoda]

Here they are the next morning! Look much more happy and open but not fully, still acclimating and should be more open later today

 

[NonstopSoda]

Latest full tank shot 8/19/2024

new corals very happy and fully open! Hoping my torch doesn’t get too aggressive with my stylo : )

 

[chaewon]

So cool to see the corals settling in nicely and puffy