First time reefer, second chance reef (Fluval Flex 15 build)

silly_blenny · Dec 4, 2023

First reef tank in progress!

Basic background: I was patrolling facebook marketplace looking for deals when I saw a fairly complete and clean-looking Fluval Flex 15 for sale. Came with a lot of what I needed, so I sprung on it. Turns out that it came with more than I was expecting and I ended up with a clown and hermit crab in tow, even though the tank had been fully broken down by the time I arrived to pick it up. Got the surprise livestock into a 10G QT I had more or less ready to go while I set up the main tank with some upgrades. Three weeks later, I moved everyone in and added a tailspot blenny and nassarius snails.

Pretty happy with how the rocks ended up fitting together to make a nice wide tunnel that goes from the left to right of the tank. The tailspot loves all the nooks and crannies, and it's a blast watching him pop into the rock in one place and come out another. No plans on adding any more fish--maybe more invert CUC members if it seems necessary down the road. I'm definitely planning on adding soft corals once I'm more confident about the tank's stability, but so far I've just been looking at the selection of frags at the LFS and dreaming of the possibilities!

Asterisks below indicate something that came with the original setup, mostly for my own reference.

Equipment

15 gallon Fluval flex with stand*
Fluval stock return pump*
Aqqa powerhead*
Fluval M100 heater*
Chamber 1: InTank media basket; currently running filter floss, ceramic rings, and activated carbon
Chamber 2: Rubble rock
Nicrew 30W reef gooseneck light
Rock (LifeRock I assume??)*
Arag-Alive Special Grade

Current livestock

1x Ocelaris clown*
1x Tailspot blenny
1x blue-legged hermit*
3x Nassarius snails

hdsoftail1065 · Dec 4, 2023

Nice looking set up!

silly_blenny · Dec 4, 2023

hdsoftail1065 said:
Nice looking set up!

Thanks! Hoping that I can hold myself to not overcomplicating it going forward because I do think I have a good foundation to build off of.

Gumbies R Us · Dec 5, 2023

silly_blenny said:
First reef tank in progress!

Basic background: I was patrolling facebook marketplace looking for deals when I saw a fairly complete and clean-looking Fluval Flex 15 for sale. Came with a lot of what I needed, so I sprung on it. Turns out that it came with more than I was expecting and I ended up with a clown and hermit crab in tow, even though the tank had been fully broken down by the time I arrived to pick it up. Got the surprise livestock into a 10G QT I had more or less ready to go while I set up the main tank with some upgrades. Three weeks later, I moved everyone in and added a tailspot blenny and nassarius snails.

Pretty happy with how the rocks ended up fitting together to make a nice wide tunnel that goes from the left to right of the tank. The tailspot loves all the nooks and crannies, and it's a blast watching him pop into the rock in one place and come out another. No plans on adding any more fish--maybe more invert CUC members if it seems necessary down the road. I'm definitely planning on adding soft corals once I'm more confident about the tank's stability, but so far I've just been looking at the selection of frags at the LFS and dreaming of the possibilities!

Asterisks below indicate something that came with the original setup, mostly for my own reference.

Equipment

15 gallon Fluval flex with stand*

Fluval stock return pump*

Aqqa powerhead*

Fluval M100 heater*

Chamber 1: InTank media basket; currently running filter floss, ceramic rings, and activated carbon

Chamber 2: Rubble rock

Nicrew 30W reef gooseneck light

Rock (LifeRock I assume??)*

Arag-Alive Special Grade

Current livestock

1x Ocelaris clown*

1x Tailspot blenny

1x blue-legged hermit*

3x Nassarius snails

Nice looking tank!

kevgib67 · Dec 5, 2023

Love the scape, following!

silly_blenny · Dec 7, 2023

I've been upping the light cycle intensity over the course of the week and unsurprisingly, I'm seeing the first signs of algae (diatoms?) on the rockwork. The blenny does seem to be happily consuming algae off of the glass and powerhead, and is probably grazing on the rocks too. I'm debating whether now is the time to add some algae-eating snails to the mix now that there's definitely something for them to eat.

Another interesting thing I've noticed is that this Nicrew light definitely has a disco ball effect that's way more pronounced in pictures than in real life.

Still trying to figure out my plan for corals/other inverts. Honestly, part of me wants to just see the rocks covered in GSP with some RFAs on the sand! Visualizing other possibilities is hard, but I think I just need to spend more time looking at photos of other tanks for inspiration. Onward!

silly_blenny · Dec 9, 2023

After more debate, I decided that I wanted to at least try for some mushrooms on the lower part of the rockwork. The LFS had an inexpensive mushroom frag that looked right up my alley, so I took it home, dipped it, and placed it in a temporary spot. Excited to have my first coral in!

silly_blenny · Dec 11, 2023

Adding phosphate testing to my regimen now that I'm confident that we're through cycling (no ammonia or nitrites and nitrates at ~15 ppm). Initial test today was definitely higher than I'd like at 0.26 ppm (Hanna). The plan for now is to reduce feeding to once a day (instead of twice) and continue weekly water changes. Since I'm not planning on adding any stonies any time soon, I'd like to see how well I can stabilize things without any drastic changes to my chemical filtration.

I also mounted my little hairy mushroom frag on the bottom left of the scape and it's fluffed up nicely! Hopefully I'll have time to bust out the DSLR for some nicer pictures in the next few days.

silly_blenny · Dec 15, 2023

Parameters

Water change day is tomorrow, so we'll see how the phosphate levels change over the next week. They've risen to 0.3 ppm since my last test.

Algae

The diatoms seem to have been reduced substantially from some combination of the blenny, pods, and hermit crab, which is great!
It looks like some hair algae might be starting up, but I figure it's just another thing to keep an eye on.

Livestock

I got a bunch of shells from Amazon to see if the hermit wanted to upgrade, and before a day had passed, they'd taken up residence in a new shell. They're out in the open much more than before!
Tailspot Blenny is out in the open much more as well, and seems to have really settled in.
Clownfish continues to do clownfish things. At one point I thought he had decided to use the powerhead cord as a host, but he's really just content to be all over the tank.
Hairy mushroom frag looks healthy as far as I can tell. It's so tempting to continue adding coral, but I keep reminding myself to take it slow and enjoy the tank as it is.

Feeding

I fed reef frenzy for the first time today and as advertised, everyone loved it!
I'm settling on a food rotation of frozen brine, frozen mysis with spirulina, reef frenzy, and TDO. The TDO is tricky because it seems to sink before the blenny has a chance to get any of it. Hoping tht it's not a big deal given that he does feast on the algae around the tank, and definitely gets the frozen food which tends to stay suspended longer.

silly_blenny · Dec 16, 2023

Still learning how to dial in my DSLR for tank shots, but I did manage to get a not-so-horrible photo of the tailspot poking out of his favorite hiding place!

I did end up deciding to add a couple of RFAs to the tank, although I'll have to keep an eye on the hermit to make sure that he doesn't bother them too much.

lil sumpin · Dec 21, 2023

That tank has a cool shape, I almost scooped one up myself! This is a neat looking system you got going here.

silly_blenny · Dec 25, 2023

Nothing major to report, but I did get a nice tripod for Christmas which I immediately put to use for some aquarium shots. Two of my favorites from today:

Blenny peeking out!

Mushroom closeup

Getting a good shot of the RFAs continues to be difficult mostly because of where they've decided to set up shop, but I'll get some eventually!

silly_blenny · Dec 31, 2023

Starting to get other nuisance algae including what might be dinos. I don't have a scope to confirm, but the tank is small enough that I can do a lot of manual removal to keep things tidy.

In terms of equipment, I got a Kraken lid which I'm pretty stoked about. I also upgraded to a hygger wavemaker which did initially cause one of the RFAs to retreat to the cave. It's since come back out and looks pretty happy. Otherwise, not much to report livestock-wise. I think everyone except the snails (2 RFAs, hermit, clownfish, blenny) made it into the pic below. Here's to hoping that 2024 is a good year for reefing!