Innovative Marine 10 Home Office Build

[Brandon44322]

Hey all, my name is Brandon, I've been in the hobby on and off for quite some time. My aquarium journey started in elementary school with freshwater and has stuck ever since. I'm now in my late twenties, with a career in aerospace engineering well underway. I work from home a few days each week and have also recently enrolled in graduate school, so i'm in my home office quite a bit. I decided to start this small AIO reef aquarium to help accompany me as I work and serve as an outlet. My goals for this aquarium is a low maintenance mixed reef with as many automation features as possible (as an engineer, this is the "fun" part)due to time limitations and work travel on occasion.

Equipment:
-Innovative Marine Nuvo Fusion 10 Gallon
-Stock MightyJet Return Pump w/ Spin Stream
-Cobalt Neo-Therm 50 Watt Heater
-Innovative Marine Desktop Manual Fleece Filter Roller
-Innovative Marine Media Reactor (carbon 100% of time, GFO as needed)
-Aqua Illumination Prime 16HD with Rigid Mount
-Coral Vue Hydros Controller, X2
-Coral Vue Hydros Triple Water Level Sensor for ATO
-Coral Vue Hydros Magnetic Temperature Sensor for Heater Control
-Coral Vue Hanna Instruments Nitrate, Phosphate and Alkalinity Test Kits
-Generic Refractometer
-Flipper Nano Algae Scraper

Other:
-CaribSea Arag-Alive Special Grade Sand
-Reef Saver Rock from BRS (10 Pounds)
-Live Rock from LFS for cycle in media chamber

Current Livestock:
-Yellow Tail Damsel - for cycle (with Live rock and Dr Tims One and Only) - will return to LFS after ugly stages

Planned Livestock:
-Clownfish Pair
-Standard Clean up Crew
-Algae Barn Pods

Planned Coral (focused on ease of care)
-GSP (back wall)
-Pulsing Xenia (on island)
-Zoanthids
-Toadstool Leather
-Mushrooms
-Recordia
-Blastos
-Candy Canes
-Duncan
-Torch
-Hammer

Future Plans:
Once the tank cycles fully and starts the ugly stage, I'll introduce the clean up crew and pods. After that settles out i'll add the clownfish pair after removing the damsel. Then i'll add coral slowly over the next year. I plan to do 10% water changes weekly to start and then add dosing pumps for automatic water changes. I know thats overkill, but I enjoy the technology and the automation. I'd like to have this tank configured to be very hands-off and make it as stable as possible for a nano tank. I don't plan to dose, but instead do automated water changes to replenish levels and serve as nutrient export. Let me know what you guys think!

 

[Alenya]

Looks great! I adopted maintenance of a 40% water change weekly in my nano once corals were in, which totally removed my need to dose anything other than a drop of aminos. You may find that a useful option later on.

 

[Brandon44322]

Looks great! I adopted maintenance of a 40% water change weekly in my nano once corals were in, which totally removed my need to dose anything other than a drop of aminos. You may find that a useful option later on.

Thanks! Definitely going to watch my levels and adjust the water changes up as needed. Since i'm going to use EcoTech Versas for automatic water changes, it'l be as simple as reprogramming them to do more. I like to feed heavy, so likely will settle on more than 10% for sure.

 

[PocketGoose]

Any updates? Love these little tanks!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[Brandon44322]

@Gumbies R Us @PocketGoose
My apologies! Life's busy...Here's the long-awaited update on how the tank has progressed since I first posted back in September.

The tank is fully stocked with livestock other than a cleaner shrimp which I plan to add within the next few weeks once the tank settles into a good rhythm. I've added two clownfish, one mocha clown and one normal orange ocellaris clown. My original plan was to remove the yellow tailed damsel who helped me cycle the tank when I added these clownfish however the damsel had other plans and was virtually impossible to catch. There has been some aggression from the damsel, but nothing resulting in any injury to the clownfish, so I've decided to leave things as is. I figure the damsel has earned his keep and I'm fine with him claiming the reef as his territory. I'm feeding once a day with reef nutrition TDO chroma boost, which the fish absolutely love. I've also been feeding phytoplankton at 10 ml per day to assist the pod population increasing. Currently the population has exploded, and the glass is covered with pods every night. I plan to continue to feed phytoplankton daily for the foreseeable future as I think it contributes to a stable and balanced reef.

I've added about 10 different types of zoanthids, GSP (backwall), xenia (island), a neon green Kenya tree, a neon green toadstool leather, two different branching hammers, two blastos, one bernardpora, and a couple of clove polyps. Everything has been doing phenomenal, in fact, I've never personally had this much success with zoanthids in such a short time. Within a month almost every frag has added at least 2 polyps and the colors and polyp extension have been immaculate. I suspect some of this is to do with nitrates which I've been keeping at around 15 ppm. There have been two colonies which are still settling in though after a colder than expected shipment... but getting better everyday.

Equipment wise, I've ditched the roller and replaced it with a InTank filter floss caddy which I prefer over the roller. It's also freed up space for about 3 MarinePure cubes. I've added two Ecotech Versas, which are programmed to change about 1000 milliliters per day of salt water, to get me to about a 20% water change weekly. This has been running for about a month and has worked absolutely flawlessly. I've kept a close eye and salinity to make sure that these have been calibrated and are changing exactly be the same amount. I've increased and decreased the quantity of water changed to try to stabilize nitrates at 10 to 15 ppm, which has been a very easy control loop to implement to control the parameters. I've also started using the Innovative Marine media reactor, with one tablespoon of carbon and a quarter teaspoon of GFO. I've also added a Nero 3, which I have set to a very low setting just to help dial in the flow in the tank. I've been generally happy with the Hydros tank controller as it gives me good control over all the tanks equipment as well as redundancy and heater control and use it as my ATO. I've also added a Hydros doser and have started to add an extremely low dose of kalkwasser (3 ml of 50% saturation kalkwasser solution) every two hours to help bring up alkalinity.

My only issue with the tank so far has been with alkalinity as it's consistently tested low sometimes as low as the high-fives and the low-sixes. I have no idea how this alkalinity is being consumed given that the corals in the tank are mostly softies and are very small. One of the issues probably stems from the Fritz RPM salt which seems to be mixing low, even at 1.025. My calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium are all low which led me to think that my refractometer was off resulting in a lower salinity, however, I recalibrated and I'm definitely mixing at 1.025. I was going to dose AFR, but given that I'm doing automatic water changes and that takes care of my trace elements, I decided to do kalkwasser instead. Which also helps with my pH given that I'm skimmer-less and the pH would run low otherwise.

Overall, this tank has been doing phenomenal and I've been very proud of how quickly the zoanthids have been spreading in such a short time frame, which is I think a product of dialed lighting and stable parameters. I've been having a blast with this build and I'm super happy with how it's shaping up. Attached or some pictures.