Nick’s 20G Nuvo Fusion

[sas226]

Thanks for the quick response. Much appreciated.

 

[Nick Steele]

Haven’t really been much of a change to the tank. Nutrients have bottomed out again so I am feeding reef roids every day to my corals. Also I should be getting a pair of clowns this week so that will also help with nutrients hopefully.

Love the trachy when it’s feeding!

 

[Noel01]

Nice!

I ruined my Xmas present the other day. My Girlfriend broke down and admitted she bought me the 20G tank I’ve been eyeing for awhile. Although it wIll be a little bit before I get it going I’d like to start this build thread now

First hurdle: Tank came with a few scratches so I’m in the works of contacting BRS to see what I can do.

Equipment list

Tank: 20G Nuvo Fusion
Light: AI 16HD x2
Filtration: IM media basket on right side with filter floss and carbon and home made media basket with filter floss and live rock rubble on left side, stock return pump (will upgrade sometime)
Heater: Eheim jager 75W
ATO: Tunze 3155 ato with a 5 gal bucket
Powerhead: Jebao sow 4 x2

Now off to the fun part a few pictures!!

sorry about the light, opened tank at her parents before taking it home

Messing around with the light!

This is where the tank will end up sitting on top of a 35” tall homemade stand

Currently full tank shot

 

[revhtree]

Haven’t really been much of a change to the tank. Nutrients have bottomed out again so I am feeding reef roids every day to my corals. Also I should be getting a pair of clowns this week so that will also help with nutrients hopefully.

Love the trachy when it’s feeding!

Beautiful and hungry!

 

[Nick Steele]

Nice!

Beautiful and hungry!

Thanks everyone!

 

[PR_nano]

Looking good Nick, what type of clown are you thinking?

 

[Nick Steele]

Looking good Nick, what type of clown are you thinking?

I really liked my old black ice clowns but I might be able to get orange storms so we’ll see on Thursday/Friday I’ll find out.

So it will either be
1 orange storm (m) 1 black ice (f)
2 black ice

Thanks for the compliment!

 

[Nick Steele]

Finally adding fish back to the system! Two black ice clownfish went in today after about 100 days after dealing with ich. They are adjusting nicely and are out exploring the tank. Female didn’t like rubbing against the trachy and swam away quickly. If all goes smoothly I will try adding neon gobys in a few weeks

 

[Nick Steele]

Time for another update!

Clownfish have been doing well and I love them! They are even helping me with some algae I have growing. They are always out in the open just enjoying themselves I’ve seen the little male rub against the hammer once but nothing more maybe it’ll host them one day.

Also added two neon gobys two days ago. They settled in quickly and have 2 different hiding spots not. Behind the Xenia on the right hand side of the tank and behind the rock dead center of the tank where there’s a slight ledge for them to sit on.

Most corals are doing great! But some SPS are suffering and I can’t tell why. The birdsnest has a few days where it was STNing and then it stoped I’m not sure if it’s due to shading or what. Also the green slimer isn’t green anymore it’s more a purple with green polyps (looks like a bonsai now) stil trying to figure why this is happening. I didn’t add the second light till two weeks after I got it and I slowly ramped it up so maybe that is why.

On to the good news!
Frogspawn is splitting into 4 heads and hammer is puffy and I believe is splitting as well. Both blastos have new baby’s heads! Zoas are growing and opened up. My rainbow acan is finally growing new heads had 5 and I believe I see 2/3 new ones. My montis are still hanging in there, spongodes is getting its green flesh back and the Superman is starting to bounce back from and algae takeover (clowns have helped here surprisingly) the sunburst is also rebounding from algae takeover.


Tank parameters
Alk 9.7 (working on lowering with WC)
Calc 480
Mag 1350
Nitrate 1? It’s not clear but slightly pink on salifert
Phos .02
Ph 8.1
Temp 79-80

Pictures of every coral in tank if you see any issues I haven’t mentioned feel free to comment.

Full tank shot

Green coming back to the spongodes

 

[Nick Steele]

Did a little water change today and decided to mount the blastos onto the rock I had planned for them finally and both are growing new heads. One head of the purple/blue one is actually splitting which I believe is rare for blastos to do.

Still having trouble with my birdsnest and green slimer. Birdsnest I’m still hopeful in but I’m almost calling the green slimer a goner. Weird alk jump last week sent it down hill. Keep an eye on my alk daily and trying to get it down to around 8.5ish this coming weekend.

Blastos mounted rock rock finally

FTS

 

[Nick Steele]

Been a little over two weeks since I started amino acids and I’m not quite sure if I’m seeing results or if tank is just doing better alk hasn’t gone up this week which is a step in the right direction!

Monti spongodes is gaining it’s green color back super fast and it might be trying to plate outward where there was a dead spotnow!

Superman digi is making a strong comeback as well! It’s fighting off algae where dead spots use to be and sending out new flesh! It’s been through hell and it still has the nice blue/red contrast that I heard many specimens slowly fade away from.

Green slimer is still dying and now is two sections of living flesh separated by a 1.5” of dead skeleton. I’m keeping it in to see if it will recover I like to bring things back from the dead.

All lps are growing well and are colorful.

Will get some pictures up soon!

 

[Nick Steele]

Okay so over the past week I have added 3 more sps frags to the system that I couldn’t pass up. Everything else is doing pretty good slimer is still going downhill but has stalled out with two sections still alive so I’m gaining hope for it now to bounce back! I moved the birdsnest down to the sand bed and broke a few pieces off to see how they’ll do.

So this week I added

Rainbow millepora (broke a piece off to have two frags)

Pink lemonade

Pc rainbow (this broke while trying to mount it so two frags now also)

FTS to see placement of new corals Mille is by the clownfish’s tail kind of blends into the rock work. Pc rainbow is under her head and pink lemonade is toward the back of the left rockwork.

 

[Nick Steele]

Been a few months since I posted so this will be a long post.

Have been dealing with Dino’s and corals not doing so well. I figured out I was running double zero for nitrate and phosphate which is a killer in reef tanks as I understand. I tried upping my feeding of just two clowns to a half cube of mysis or similar of rods and pellets once a day (felt I was way over feeding). Did this for two weeks with no increase so I started thinking about dosing nitrate and phosphate. I did my research and decided on neonitro and neophos.

I started dosing neonitro and neophos to up my nutrients. This took a few weeks to get a reading and I believe I have a consistent .03ppm phosphate and 2ppm nitrate now. This is a good thing and was helping slow down the Dino’s and I was starting to get cyano and green algae in the tank! To help push me over the edge I decided to do a 3 day blackout (didn’t cover tank) so still received ambient light from living room. This took care of 70% of my cyano and I didn’t see much Dino’s anywhere (some on my filter floss but I removed and replaced those).

Today was the first day I turned the light back on and I’m starting them at 20% and increasing them to 100% over the week.

Sadly 2 of my 4 sps didn’t take well to the blackout and are receding now hopefully they will bounce back. The pink lemonade has a few spots that is now showing skeleton (maybe 5-10% of the frag) but the rainbow Mille is 80% or so skeleton now. This makes me sad as both frags where starting to color up nicely before the Dino’s and blackout. I can still see polyps on both so there is still hope!

My euphyllia did horrible during the Dino bloom. I think they might have ingested some and this caused some issues. The hammer is angry but hasn’t lost any flesh and is opened more today then in the past month or so. The frogspawn on the other hand has went downhill quickly. It started to lose a little bit of flesh before the blackout and after the 3 days of no light it lost flesh about 90% of the flesh towards the heads. The good news here is that it is also opened much more today then it has been. Not sure if I should try feeding them yet though?

Blastos didn’t do horrible but they were closed somewhat but are seeming to open up more today then recently.

It’s not all bad news though!

The Acan on the other hand have done really well through all of this and I’m convinced they are indestructible. My rainbow acans are the fluffiest they have ever been and growing nicely. The green/red ones are growing as well. My other multicolored ones are doing okay but I accidentally blasted on head with my turkey baster and flesh peeled off (still is sending out feeder tentacles at night though).

The zoas have actually grown a few new polyps during the blackout which is interesting. Scrambled eggs added 2 polyps ,the blonde eyes added one and the blue tubbs added a few but also lost a few (basically just shifted their growth toward a different direction.


I will try and update a little more frequently as I am hopefully over the Dino phase and can continue to build my reef tank (no upgrades for two years).


Here are pictures

Skeletons mostly toward the back

Had more growth toward bottom before blackout like they migrated

 

[boomeraudio]

Hoping that you've rid it from dino's my friend. I found out the source of my issue was TDS in my water - even after filtration. I just picked up a new BRS RODI unit which should help with the issue. I typically run between 5-10ppm for nitrates and will start dosing for phosphates as I introduce a couple new frags this week!

I'll do an update on my thread in the next few days. Happy Thanksgiving man!

 

[Nick Steele]

Hoping that you've rid it from dino's my friend. I found out the source of my issue was TDS in my water - even after filtration. I just picked up a new BRS RODI unit which should help with the issue. I typically run between 5-10ppm for nitrates and will start dosing for phosphates as I introduce a couple new frags this week!

I'll do an update on my thread in the next few days. Happy Thanksgiving man!

Thanks man! All is looking good after yesterday’s cleanup cyano hasn’t come back yet (fingers crossed) and it was popping up within a day of water changes before so that is a good sign. Haven’t been home today but from what I can see from the camera on the tank it still looks good!


I think key for me is too get more fish as all I got is 2 clowns atm and that’s why I’ve had to dose for nitrates and phosphates which I hope to change soon.


If all goes well next few days I’ll be grabbing a captive breed mandarin (they are on a strict dry feed and frozen mysis diet) and then I’ll start looking for some sort of blenny to round out my tank!

Happy thanksgiving to you and your family as well!

 

[Nick Steele]

Dino’s are starting to creep back but so is some green algae so I’m hoping it will out compete the Dino’s soon. I have been able to stop dosing and keep my nutrients at .03 phos and 2-3 nitrate so I believe this will help with the Dino’s as well. Might try and up my phos a little more to around .08ish and see how that works out.

My euphyllia still aren’t to happy and I see some algae/bacteria growth on both of their skeletons so this might be the cause. And will hopefully correct itself once the Dino’s go away.

I did happen to pick up a small sunset monti frag today from my lfs though and added that to the tank on its own separate rock. I love the color contrast so hopefully it will survive my Dino battle.

I need to plan on something to do with my gsp rock in the front of the tank I have successfully started to grow some on the back wall so I will ditch the rock soon to free up some space.

Other than that not much change still chugging along and waiting to get super motivated to grab some more sps when I get these Dino’s done with!

 

[Nick Steele]

Still keeping up with my nutrients and Dino’s are not popping up as much as before but still have a few spots where I can always see them. Going to keep doing water changes and siphoning them out and keep my nutrients up and hope they are gone in the next month or two so I can add some more sps to the tank.

During my water change today I snapped my monti spongodes off and was left with an encrusted section and a stick so I just superglued the stick behind the encrusted portion in hopes they will one day meet back up together.

Also I’m starting to think that my euphyllia are acting up because of a mix of things like higher flow and the Dino’s. Neither one has lost any more flesh (hammer hasn’t lost any) but they are never opened up much. Hammer is actually more opened at night then during the day (leading me to think Dino’s) frog is opened up the same day and night so this one might be flow.

Everything else seems to be doing better. Blastos open up better till right before my water change so I might start doing one every 5-6 days instead of every 7 days. Acans/gsp/Xenia are all growing beautifully. Zoas are hit or miss on being open but they do get covered in Dino’s and I blast them with a turkey baster once a day at least so nothing melting yet. Sps are doing okay but they were hit hard during my blackout.

Here’s the spongodes I broke today
Top down look

From the front

 

[Nick Steele]

Sorry mis post

 

[SliceGolfer]

Spongodes is practically bullet proof. They’ll grow back into one soon.

 

[Nick Steele]

Spongodes is practically bullet proof. They’ll grow back into one soon.

Thanks! Yeah mine took awhile to settle in but has grown that base in no time it started as a stick in a hole lol.