Hey everyone. Back in the hobby after a 5-6 year hiatus due to life and grad school. I’ve been a member here for a little while but decided to jump back in after permission from the fiancé to set up a new tank! Today marks 2 weeks since this tank has been set up. Went with the Red Sea max nano due to size requirements of my current apartment. I’ve always done nano tanks, was hoping to go a little bigger for this build but I’ve got to work with what’s allowed in my lease, and I figured I wouldn’t be able to get away with the Red Sea peninsula 26 gallon (15 gallon max for this apartment). It’s advertised as a 16.5 gallon display and 3.5 gallon rear compartment. I went with Caribsea Fiji pink live sand as well as “semi cycled” rock from my local LFS in Southern California. Last time I set up a tank, real live rock was readily available, so it’s interesting to see what’s changed in the hobby in the last 6 years, from how we approach keeping and cycling tanks to what we have to work with from a live rock standpoint. Everything is stock Red Sea, I added a Hygger mini wavemaker which I’ve been very happy with over the last couple of weeks. I partly cycled the old school way with a piece of raw fish in the tank, as well as with microbacter 7 as well as Dr. Tim’s. A generous neighbor of mine has a tank and set me up with a frag of pulsing Xenia as a tester piece of coral which has been happy so far. I’ve always bought components separate in the past, so I really like the AIO approach of the Red Sea system, plus it looks very sleek and is very quiet, which has the fiancé’s seal of approval . I’ll update this thread as time goes on, it’s good to be back!
