Monica's Nano Build: 21g ADA-Inspired NPS Tank

[monicalooze]

Time for an update...

New Additions
It's been a while since I've posted, but the tank is really taking shape! I've added four Thread Fin Cardinalfish, NPS + Photoynthetic gorgonians, zoas, mushrooms, photosynthetic + NPS sponges, a blue hypnea frag, "wyld" dragon's tongue, and caulerpa prolifera. Things are still acclimating, so it's not completely "organized," yet, and the pictures aren't the *best* but I wanted to get an update out sooner rather than later.

Alyssa's Seahorse Savvy (my new favorite online vendor)
While scouring the "Google box" for oddball livestock, I stumbled upon Alyssa's Seahorse Savvy. I bought the sponge, four gorgonians and a cabbage leather (for my other tank) from her site. I want to put in a plug for her, especially if you like oddball livestock. The prices were extremely reasonable, the quality is OUTSTANDING, she's responsive to questions, and I just love the selection.

I purchased:
1 Yellow Finger Gorgonian
1 Bright Red Encrusting Ball Sponge (it is obviously HUGE)
1 Purple frilly Gorgonian accompanied SYMBIOTIC NEON ORANGE MICRO STARFISH (!!!!!!!!!) (pictured in the tiny ball jar) And this one is actually photosynthetic!

1 Purple Candelabra Gorgonian (big fluffy dark one on the frag rack)
1 Purple Whip Gorgonian (pictured in the video with the cardinalfish)

She assures me the NPS species are relatively hardy, and I shared my current feeding regimen with her. She says she expects them to do "very well." ....fingers crossed lol.

An Unidentified Crab
If anyone can identify the tiny bright red crab under the rock (not the giant mithrax crab), you get a prize. I have been trying to catch him on video, and so far, this is the best I could do. It's bright red, kind of stumpy and button-like. Legs + claws are tan and hairy. The tips of the claws are not black. I can't find anything online to help identify... (Rock from @KP Aquatics in the Florida Keys)


Bad behavior + a serious pest
Ken the Krab was caught red handed (literally) eating the caulerpa, so I moved the macros into my other tank for temporary safe keeping...until I can catch the MFer (he's going in my other tank when I do).

I also caught a Leopard Polyclad Flatworm as big as my thumb....after watching it kill a snail. It's SO gross. It's been in a bowl in my kitchen for five days without ATO, flow, or heat, and it's still cruising around. The stuff of nightmares... I'm considering putting it in a jar with a cover for my husband's desk. He's obsessed with the idea of a "pest tank."


On the next episode of reef adventures with Monica, I am going to outline my plan for a refrigerated auto-feeder. I'm bound and determined to keep NPS, sponges, and filter feeders because they're my favorite specimens, and I am a firm believer in the idea that "EXPERT ONLY" really means...learn how to care for the animals the right way. I know I might kill a few things along the way, but I want scallops, a sea apple, and more NPS, so I have to start somewhere. I figure dosing food constantly is the best way to do it...

xoxo,
--m

 

[MartinM]

Love the red sponge!

 

[monicalooze]

Just thought she was looking gorg this morning.

Image taken from the side. It's 36" to the other side. The live rock is.....incredible. Like...is there even water in the tank? I feed quite heavily for all the filter feedersand I do standard 10% water changes. Color me impressed. I will never start another tank with dry rock again. I don't care if I am going to be systematically removing crabs for the next five years.

I organized and did some gluing yesterday, adjusted the lily pipe so the flow is hitting the rock and bouncing off the side of the tank for more turbulence and diffusion. Things are still waking up, but you can see the NPS sea whip in the front is puffy and ready to eat.

*Excuse the schmutz on the lily pipes. I didn't finish my whole maintenance routine yesterday because of the gluing and adjusting. They actually take quite a while to get dirty. I will outline my maintenance routine in another post.

 

[MartinM]

Yep, standard stuff for live rock. After coming back to the hobby after a long hiatus of moving around the world, I was shocked to see that most people use dry rock…then I see nearly 50% of the threads on this forum are related to dinos or similar pests and think “yep, no wonder…”.

I would never use dry rock (at all) and I can’t stand to even follow build threads that use it!

 

[monicalooze]

Yep, standard stuff for live rock. After coming back to the hobby after a long hiatus of moving around the world, I was shocked to see that most people use dry rock…then I see nearly 50% of the threads on this forum are related to dinos or similar pests and think “yep, no wonder…”.

I would never use dry rock (at all) and I can’t stand to even follow build threads that use it!

I don't get the dry rock thing. Yes, pests suck, but they end up in your tank anyway. Even if you have the space, patience, and time to quarantine literally everything‍, you're still pretty much guaranteed to introduce something bad. I kept aiptasia out of my other tank for over two years, but I finally found one yesterday. I've had vermetid snails and asterina stars. I'm really on top of pests, so none of them have ever gotten out of control, but I don't think you can avoid it...unless you're really lucky.

I didn't suffer from dinos, but as I've mentioned, I can't get the tank to really thrive. I have tons copepods, I added mud from Hawaii, micro-brittle stars, various bacteria, snd anything I can think of to increase biological diversity, but it still won't grow coralline, the coral grows super slowly, the algae in the fuge won't grow, and most LPS don't do super well. Nothing is horrible, but nothing is great. I keep a close eye on parameters and I'm religious about water changes. I try to keep it simple, too. If I decide I can part with one of the rocks from this new tank, I will try adding it to my 10g to try to improve the ecosystem.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to get overconfident about this brand new tank, but it is just...so different. It makes me more hopeful about future success just by watching what has transpired over the last 3+ months...

 

[MartinM]

Get some live rock for your old tank and see how it does after!

Aquariums (with live rock) are always changing, always new things popping up as the invertebrate turf war for space, light, and/or food rages on. To me, the live rock is half of the fascination with a reef aquarium. Gluing fluorescent corals on ‘Marco rock’ doesn’t look anything like a reef and lacks any semblance of the biodiversity you see in a reef or in a reef aquarium with quality live rock, so yes, I agree: I don’t get it either.

I just ordered all the equipment for my 90L! I’m going sumpless with a UNS in-tank surface skimmer. I’m going to try to hide all of the equipment behind some rock on one side and wrap all cords and cables in a white cord organizer. I might do a build thread when I start on it all.

 

[monicalooze]

Get some live rock for your old tank and see how it does after!

Aquariums (with live rock) are always changing, always new things popping up as the invertebrate turf war for space, light, and/or food rages on. To me, the live rock is half of the fascination with a reef aquarium. Gluing fluorescent corals on ‘Marco rock’ doesn’t look anything like a reef and lacks any semblance of the biodiversity you see in a reef or in a reef aquarium with quality live rock, so yes, I agree: I don’t get it either.

I just ordered all the equipment for my 90L! I’m going sumpless with a UNS in-tank surface skimmer. I’m going to try to hide all of the equipment behind some rock on one side and wrap all cords and cables in a white cord organizer. I might do a build thread when I start on it all.

Please start a build thread! I'm back on the clam train because I realized I'm going to have to build a refrigerated doser anyway...an extra channel for some all-for-reef is a drop in the bucket!

Since I've never kept a clam, I suspect I would learn a lot, and with our similar set-ups, it'll be easier to replicate.

 

[monicalooze]

The PLAN for the refrigerated auto-feeder...

I already got help here, but this is what I started with (spoiler alert...it won't work!):

Since I know nothing about plumbing, I had to read everything on the internet I could find, and luckily, I stumbled upon this thread on Bay Area Reefers..

DIY Fresh Food Auto-Feeder

Background I learned of DIY fresh food feeders first through Scott Sweet’s fresh food auto-feeder design. Where the Scott Sweet Feeder uses 1/2” rigid plumbing and similarly scaled components for a continuously flowing system, I went minimalist in construction and with low water flow. I...

www.bareefers.org

The Improved Design

I believe the following (improved) design will work because it uses the same design, except, instead of flushing the lines by creating a closed loop with a sump, tank water, and an extra circulation pump on a timer, I would connect the RODI line directly to a manifold inside the fridge, then use the four channel doser to inject food into the manifold, and finally flush the line right after the food is injected using the RODI line on a separate dosing pump.

I have to add over a liter(~1200ml) of RODI into my tank over 12 dosing intervals per day, so there is plenty of fresh water running through the system to flush the lines.

The fridge and doser came in the mail...and, classically, the doser doesn't fit horizontally because there is a ~3mm wide frame of plastic about 2" inside the fridge. The measurements online did not account for this, otherwise the doser would have fit like a glove. I will either figure out how to design it with a vertical orientation OR file off the plastic inside the fridge. It won't make a difference with sealing the door or anything else (I don't even know what the purpose is), and since I'm going to have to drill three holes in it anyway, filing down some plastic doesn't seem like a problem at all...lol.

Please also meet my new friend Ol' Blue Eyes/Frankie/Chairman of the Board.

 

[monicalooze]

Pacific oysters!

Added Shigoku (Pacific Oysters) from the fish market yesterday. Trying them out as a biological filtration media. They're full of barnacles and tiny mussels as well- all of them are open, the barnacles are eating, and even the mussels are open. Excited to see how this goes...

I'm struggling to keep the nutrients down, and I believe the high nitrate and phosphate are inhibiting coralline growth. Hopefully the oysters help long term, but I've been doing big water changes as well as adding zeolite to the canister to prevent more inorganic build-up via ammonia sequestration. And I have dragons breath and blue hypnea that are growing like crazy. Fingers crossed.

 

[BARNAKEWLZ]

Very kewl tank! Nice work!

 

[monicalooze]

Very kewl tank! Nice work!

Thank you!!

 

[monicalooze]

Quick tank tour from this morning...


Check out Fluffy Boy, the healthy yellow finger gorgonian!

I have a little cyano outbreak, but I'm working on getting my nutrients down. This is the most challenging part of keeping an NPS tank. The corals and filter feeders are happy, so I'm doing it slowly.

Hypnea and dragon's breath are in the acclimation tank because I still have a crab in the tank...somewhere...who likes to eat my expensive algae. It's growing like crazy!!

 

[Dan Reef]

Hello!

Vey nice tank! I'm planning something similar. What do you think of the idea below?

I want to have the option to use pH and temp probes as well as an algae reactor.

The inline probe holder is this one:

 

[monicalooze]

So I've seen an algae reactor plumbed in-line after a canister...somewhere. I can't remember right now. (Might be mikeymikemike on YouTube?). I believe that part would work, and I'm considering the same to help keep my nutrients down.
As far as the probe manifold...I've never seen that, but in all honesty, I'm a lot better at the biology and not so much the plumbing. I didn't know what a manifold was about four weeks ago. So...I can't comment on whether that would work, but if it does, I would much rather be able to use a probe/controller for the heater, and that's been the biggest downfall with my current design. Do let me know what you learn. Sorry I can't be more help.

 

[monicalooze]

Hello!

Vey nice tank! I'm planning something similar. What do you think of the idea below?

I want to have the option to use pH and temp probes as well as an algae reactor.

The inline probe holder is this one:

I forgot to ask: don't forgot your ATO. You probably already thought of this and it's not on this diagram, but it's the other "thing" that has to happen.

Also, you'll want to think about how to make sure everything stays organized with the manifold. Everything with a FW set-up relies on plastic tubes, and I'm guessing it needs to remain up-right. I'm still working on not ripping my hair out every time I open the cabinet, but I think it's because I need to shorten the hoses and figure out a better solution for my cord management. Right now it's a Rube Goldberg machine under my tank.

Also...have you used an algae reactor before? I'm trying to decide whether it'll be worth the extra maintenance? Because my tank is NPS, the algae is going to grow really fast. My blue hypnea is out of control and it's supposed to be a slow grower.

Have you chosen your canister filter yet? While the taking apart and putting back together of the Oase Biomaster Thermo takes some practice, I still recommend it for the separate pre-filter sponges. I pull the rod of sponges out when I do my water change and rinse them out. They have kept my canister INCREDIBLY clean. I vacuumed it out yesterday after six months and the only detritus on the bottom was sand fines from when I first set up the tank.

...I just realized that you may know all of this already. I have never done FW, so the equipment was all new to me. If so, good for you and disregard. I'm not in the business of ladysplaining lol.
Do you plan to start a build thread? I'd love to follow along.

 

[Dan Reef]

Hello Monica!

I'm still debating inside my head if I'll go for the challenge. I'm moving to a new home and will set up a new and bigger tank. I'm used to skimmer and refugium but never used a canister or algae reactor.

My goal is similar to yours: minimalist ADA style tank (but mixed reef tank) and I'm happy I found you and your thread. The plan is to have close to everything a sump can hold with the exception of a skimmer.

I have never used an algae reactor. The experience I have is with standard refugiums. From what I learned, the Tunze Algae Reactor seems to be the one with the less maintenance. Just be careful as a sudden change in nutrients can cause new issues.

The Oase Biomaster Thermo is what actually raised my interest in using a canister not only because of the quick sponge cleaning but also the built-in heater.

I'll start a thread yes! Just need to chose between this challenge or the standard black background with overflow and skimmer.

Edit: forgot to mention about the ATO. I could either match the evaporation using a dosing pump (maybe add kalkwasser to it) or add the Apex optical level sensor. The sensor is small enough, I don't think it would hurt the minimalist style but it would require frequent cleaning as it would be exposed to light.

 

[monicalooze]

I forgot to ask: don't forgot your ATO. You probably already thought of this and it's not on this diagram, but it's the other "thing" that has to happen.

Also, you'll want to think about how to make sure everything stays organized with the manifold. Everything with a FW set-up relies on plastic tubes, and I'm guessing it needs to remain up-right. I'm still working on not ripping my hair out every time I open the cabinet, but I think it's because I need to shorten the hoses and figure out a better solution for my cord management. Right now it's a Rube Goldberg machine under my tank.

Also...have you used an algae reactor before? I'm trying to decide whether it'll be worth the extra maintenance? Because my tank is NPS, the algae is going to grow really fast. My blue hypnea is out of control and it's supposed to be a slow grower.

Have you chosen your canister filter yet? While the taking apart and putting back together of the Oase Biomaster Thermo takes some practice, I still recommend it for the separate pre-filter sponges. I pull the rod of sponges out when I do my water change and rinse them out. They have kept my canister INCREDIBLY clean. I vacuumed it out yesterday after six months and the only detritus on the bottom was sand fines from when I first set up the tank.

Do you plan to start a build thread? I'd love to follow along.

Hello Monica!

I'm still debating inside my head if I'll go for the challenge. I'm moving to a new home and will set up a new and bigger tank. I'm used to skimmer and refugium but never used a canister or algae reactor.

My goal is similar to yours: minimalist ADA style tank (but mixed reef tank) and I'm happy I found you and your thread. The plan is to have close to everything a sump can hold with the exception of a skimmer.

I have never used an algae reactor. The experience I have is with standard refugiums. From what I learned, the Tunze Algae Reactor seems to be the one with the less maintenance. Just be careful as a sudden change in nutrients can cause new issues.

The Oase Biomaster Thermo is what actually raised my interest in using a canister not only because of the quick sponge cleaning but also the built-in heater.

I'll start a thread yes! Just need to chose between this challenge or the standard black background with overflow and skimmer.

Edit: forgot to mention about the ATO. I could either match the evaporation using a dosing pump (maybe add kalkwasser to it) or add the Apex optical level sensor. The sensor is small enough, I don't think it would hurt the minimalist style but it would require frequent cleaning as it would be exposed to light.

I've been doing the evaporation thing and it has worked fine. I'm using the Kamoer X1, but I wouldn't recommend it. It is not consistent. This is the only issue I've been having with the evaporation set up. I'm getting a second reef dose to work alongside the reef dose I purchased for my auto feeder, so hopefully that will solve the problem.

At the risk of giving more unsolicited advice and feedback...you mention that you're going to set up a bigger tank. How large are you planning to go? I ask because the canisters are rated for FW tanks, so I purchased the Biomaster 600 for 20g tank. It's rated for a much larger (150g?) FW tank. I also did it because my tank is 36" and I wanted the flow from the canister to actually get to the other side. I have also seen folks connect two canisters for more filtration on larger saltwater tanks. That starts to get expensive, though I don't know your financial situation.

I believe Mikeymikemike has a video on YouTube about his tank, and he keeps primarily SPS. He uses the same filter as I do, but his tank is much bigger. I just want to make sure the canisters Oase makes are sufficient for your needs before you go down this path.

Also, I've purchased many things from Glass Aqua. They sell all freshwater equipment, but I have found their customer service (via the chat function on the page) to be extremely helpful. I know they have employees who keep reef tanks with the same equipment and I think they have some in their office. Top notch company, and they have everything you will need.

I can also get into the pros and cons of my set up at another time if that would be helpful.

 

[Dan Reef]

Today I run a 20g tank and the plan is to go to 80g! (48"x24"x16") I believe this is something close to MikeyMikeMike's tank?

No need to do that now but pros and cons would be very helpful. I'd like to see more tanks like yours in the future and hopefully this thread help to build a new community focused on minimalist reef tanks.

I'm also considering using a Oceanlife Overflow, manufactured in Italy. Not as minimalist as the lily pipes but still better than the black background.

 

[monicalooze]

Today I run a 20g tank and the plan is to go to 80g! (48"x24"x16") I believe this is something close to MikeyMikeMike's tank?

No need to do that now but pros and cons would be very helpful. I'd like to see more tanks like yours in the future and hopefully this thread help to build a new community focused on minimalist reef tanks.

I'm also considering using a Oceanlife Overflow, manufactured in Italy. Not as minimalist as the lily pipes but still better than the black background.

I wish I had come across that overflow. I don't hate it. If you painted the pipes behind the tank the same color as the wall behind it, you would barely see them.

I'm still trying to figure out how to hide my power head. It's a similar issue but I can't paint it. I don't think...

oh! I just realized you could do the same thing with the entire back of the tank. I wanted to literally be able to see the wall behind mine, but it would certainly help to not have a black background (assuming your walls aren't painted black).

 

[Dan Reef]

Since you can't avoid the power head, the best imo is to buy a good looking one such as the Vortech.

Thanks for all the input! Once I start my build I'll message you.