Bucko
New Member
After about 2 and a half years of reef keeping adventures and lurking these forums i've decided to make a build thread documenting my nano cube. The tank has survived one house move and is doing good so far though it did have some ups and downs.
This will be a pretty long post so apologies in advance for all the reading, i'll add some pictures to make it easier on the eyes
After a lot of reading on forums and watching youtube reefing videos I decided it was time to finally get my own saltwater tank.
Didn't have a lot of space in my house back then so decided to go for a nano reef (was also a much easier sell with my girlfriend).
Really wanted something with a sump for the added water volume and stability so ended up ordering a Waterbox marine X 35.1.
While waiting for the tank to arrive i loved nerding out and reading up on maintaining a reef aquarium every free moment i had, which hasn't really changed over the years
In addition to the tank i ordered the following equipment:
- Reefled 50
- Tunze 9004 skimmer
- Nyos Viper 2.0 return pump
- Eheim 150W heater
- Red Sea DIY jump screen
Later on i added an AI Nero 3 powerhead for flow and an Aqua Medic easy ATO for some much needed stability.
Here is the tank and sump after setting it up with some CaribSea life rock:
I have to admit my cable management could use some improvement which is still the case to this day
It took a lot of patience and self control but i really didn't want to add anything too soon so i let it cycle for 2 months while continuously checking parameters (which in hindsight wasn't very useful but it was nice to be able to follow up on the cycling process).
When i was convinced that it was safe to add corals i took a trip to the LFS for some corals and clean up crew. Later on I read a Reefbuilders article which mentioned there's no need to wait that long but it was still a useful time to practice water changes and cleaning habits.
My very first corals were some zoanthids, a duncan (which is still alive and kicking today) and a wall hammer. In addition to those i also got 2 turbo snails and a Leopard snail as cuc. After doing some research i found out that the Leopard snail was a carnivore so i regularly fed it some frozen clam meat, which it greedily accepted by popping up from under the sand and devouring said clam meat, pretty cool.
Also noticed my first pest on the glass which i figured was an acoel flatworm, since no corals were bothered (yet) i did't do anything about it and didn't see a population explosion. So no panic so far.
Having discovered some nice coral webshops i gradually started to add to my collection with some more "easy" zoanthids and some more euphyllia, also couldn't resist a riccordea and some nice clove polyps. The clove polyps took ages to grow, but they survived all the way and the last few months they're finally taking off although a bit hidden by other corals in the tank.
Looking back on these pictures really makes me realise the cost of learning, only the green and the pink frogspawn, clove polyps, riccordea and of course the duncan are currently still alive. Didn't seem to have much luck with zoanthids even though everyone told me they were great for beginners. Same story with the 2 wall hammers however i knew they were considered more difficult than the branching variety so wasn't totally surprised (but still dissapointed) when they didn't survive.
I noticed a lot of the aforementioned flatworms on one of the wall hammers at night when it was already on it's way out, however i doubt that they were to blame other than maybe adding some extra stress to an already stressed out coral.
I was very much ready to get some fish at this point, but i kept testing too high nitrates for my liking so i ended up waiting a bit. Seeing as how the bioload was nearly non existant (apart from feeding the leopard snail once a week), cycle was long over and bi-weekly 30% water changes were being done i now attribute this to a faulty test kit.
About 5 months after setting up the tank i switched to Salifert test kits which gave me 15ppm for Nitrates i decided it was time for the first fish.
It's a bit of a cliché but they are beautiful fish so of course i went for 2 clowns (percula).
Unfortunately both were infected with what i think was Brooklynella which i only noticed after they were in the tank for a few days. LFS sold me a cleaner shrimp in meanwhile claiming it might help with the brook, had my doubts about this after reading forums but i very much wanted to have a shrimp anyway so went for it.
My LFS gave me some medicine to add to the clowns food but this didn't seem to help much. In the mean time i accquired a seriatopora caliendrum which was to be my first foray into sps and a blue legged hermit which was a beautiful critter but also a really annoying coral bulldozer.
I was quite excited when i noticed there was a little symbiosis crab inside the caliendrum. After some research i determined it was probably a red trapezia crab, still alive today it luckily survived the house move and now resides in my stylophora.
The caliendrum was waaay to bushy for my limited flow and didn't survive in the long run, another lesson learned.
Unfortunately after about a week both clown fish perished and i decided to play it safe and go fallow for 3 months.
To compensate i went on another coral shopping spree of course.
By this point i was getting quite pleased with the look of the aquarium getting a bit more full. As you can see i kept the first wall hammer skeleton as a reminder. By now it has moved to the sump as another piece of filtration rock
Cats were also quite interested. One of them tried to jump on top one day but got her feet wet, never saw her run away so fast Ever since then they only watch but never touch.
One night i noticed some worms in the blue kenya tree, asked some local reefers about it but no one had any idea what they were. I was advised probably benign, just enjoy the symbiosis.
a few months later the kenya tree randomly melted away and perished, not sure if due to the worms or other issues, other corals seemed to do fine and parameters were in check.
By now the tank had been running for a bit more than a year and it was time for a new return pump. The Nyos Viper 2.0 did it's job without any problems (still use it to mix new salt water) but i wanted something i could control a bit better, on the viper you could only control the pump by closing or opening a valve on the pump output. Ended up getting an Aqua Medic DC runner 2.3 which i'm quite happy with. Runs very quiet and so far very reliable.
It also looked legit to add a pump controller unit to the sump cabinet.
Here you can see the Nyos "control" valve and the aqua medic controller added to the cabinet:
By now it had been almost 3 months since the clown fish had perished and i couldn't wait to see some fish in the tank again.
Not wanting to repeat the clown fish disaster i bought a 40 gal freshwater tank to set up as a quarantaine tank.
Added some bio balls to my main system sump for about a month to use as a biological filter in the quarantaine tank, after that i went and got myself a firefish and quarantained it for a month.
Needless to say i was very happy the day i could finally add it to the display tank, and i like to think the firefish was also quite happy moving in to the display.
I also got some GSP from my LFS because i really wanted a nice green back wall.
Cat approved of the firefish:
In the meantime i started the quarantaine process of 2 new clown fish, luckily this time without any disease issues.
Also got me a tiny goniopora frag and my first red monti cap frag.
The goniopora frag took ages to grow and teetered on the brink of oblivion for a while but it pulled through like a champ in the end.
As you can see i was also starting to have a nice big collection of aiptasia (which i eventually got rid of by adding 6 Berghia).
By now we had bought a new house and a tank move was coming up so decided not to add anything new as the move was going to be difficult enough as it was.
Here are some of the last pics before the move (also discovered sunglasses are a decent blue light filter for my phone):
The plan was to take as much water with me as i could and only leave the nasty detritus filled bottom quarter of the display and sump behind. So the day before the tank move i went to the new house to mix some new salt water to compensate for the water i didn't bring.
It was quite an interesting day but everything went fairly smooth, unfortunately no pictures of the actual move as my main concern was to move everything as fast and smooth as possible.
Started of with catching the fish snails and shrimp and put them in a bucket of water with a heater while i tore down the rest of the tank.
Gathered the easy to gather corals and moved the rest into buckets while still attached to the rocks. I had some new sand ready in the new house so threw the old sand away with the dirty water.
The gsp i just left attached to the back wall to see if it was really as indestructibly as people claimed. (yes it is)
After syphoning off all the good water got the equipment out of the sump and disassembled everything. Carefully loaded it all up in the car with my dad and drove everything to the new place.
The fish and critters i kept in an empty salt bucket with a perforated lid on, without heater this time since the trip was only about 40 minutes.
After arriving at the new house i immediately set up a (new and unused of course) concrete mixing bucket with some old tank water and a heater and flow pump, to this i added all the corals, fish and cuc.
With the fish and corals safe i could take my time to set up the tank and thoroughly clean the equipment as well.
Then filled it up and added everything, the aquascape changed a bit while building up again into something i preferred.
Didn't really take any pictures because a lot of other stuff still had to be done in the new house so was a bit preoccupied, but here is the tank a little while after the move, got hit with a mini cycle as expected and some cyano:
By now i started to dabble some more into the easier sps corals having purchased a montipora digitata as well and a purple (milka?) stylo. Also accidentally made my first frag by bumping into the red monti cap and glued it to the aquascape in the front to see if it would take.
At this stage i wanted to take my reefkeeping to the next level and started to look into dosing.
Working shifts and not wanting to set myself up for failure by going for a system that was too complicated for a noob reefer such as myself i decided a kamoer dosing pump with TM all for reef was the way to go. Also invested in a Hanna alkalinity checker to properly set the all for reef dose.
Also added a small samsung tablet to the sump cabinet in order to have all the control apps in one place.
The first 2 weeks i measured alkalinity every morning before lights on and adjusted the all for reef dosage accordingly until stability was achieved.
Nothing incredibly spectacular happened the next few months just tried to stay the course and shoot for stability
Bought a new phone with a macro function which was nice to play around with though obviously not the same as a real macro camera.
As you can see the little goni frag started to do quite well!
By now i was starting to be quite pleased again with the way the tank looked and how it had survived the move.
Also quarantained and added a royal gramma. Unfortunately my firefish randomly died, still wondering why. So back down to 3 fish: the two clowns and the gramma.
Now another challenge was about to present itself, some drywalling had to be done.
I was very much dreading this but couldn't postpone any longer so i started to think about how best to protect the tank from all the dust without tearing everything down again.
In the end i settled for using a winter greenhouse for outdoor plants which i conveniently found in just the right size.
In addition to this i sectioned off the part of the room where the tank was with plastic sheets and taped everything as airtight as possible. I also added a mobile AC unit to control the temperature in this little plastic box i made for the tank. The plan was also to only close off the final bit when the actual work started in order to not mess up the gas exchange too much.
It all worked out quite well, some dust got past the first barrier and landed on top of the greenhouse but it seemed the tank survived and looked happy!
Now we are finally getting to the end of this thread (for now)
Have been dosing all for reef for about 10 months now gradually having to increase the dose as there's more and more alkalinity uptake.
Most things look like they are really taking off and i'm becoming carefully optimistic (but never overconfident).
Alkalinity i measure weekly now unless i change the all for reef dose then it's back to daily measuring until stable.
At the moment i'm doing 25% water changes every other week and i measure parameters once a month as long as nothing seems off.
So far the main parameters seem stable: Nitrates hover around 5-7ppm, Phoshate levels 0.03ppm, salinity i keep at 1.025 SG, alkalinity i keep at 8 dkh, Calcium at 450ppm and Mg at 1370-80.
I've added my first acros last month, one rainbow mille and a bali tricolor (installed a frag rock on the window for these), the mille seems to be doing great, the bali tricolor is showing polyps but the base has turned quite pale so i've moved it a bit lower off the frag rack.
A couple days ago a nearby LFS store had a sale on tridacna maximas and since i've wanted one since i started this beautiful hobby i decided to pull the trigger after giving it some thought.
I had to move my forest fire digitata to make room for the clam (nano reef problems) but i really hope this beautiful creature will thrive as it's really the cherry on top of my little reef.
Seeing as i'm running out of room for corals i've started to look at getting a bigger tank, currently planning to get at least a 180 gallon.
Last week my first son was born so at the moment i will have to adjust a bit to this new lifestyle and evaluate how it goes with keeping up with tank maintenance but again i'm cautiously optimistic and loving every second of it!
Hopefully in the not too distant future i'll make a new build thread for the big one, and maybe update it more regularly this time rather than everything in one massive post
This will be a pretty long post so apologies in advance for all the reading, i'll add some pictures to make it easier on the eyes
After a lot of reading on forums and watching youtube reefing videos I decided it was time to finally get my own saltwater tank.
Didn't have a lot of space in my house back then so decided to go for a nano reef (was also a much easier sell with my girlfriend).
Really wanted something with a sump for the added water volume and stability so ended up ordering a Waterbox marine X 35.1.
While waiting for the tank to arrive i loved nerding out and reading up on maintaining a reef aquarium every free moment i had, which hasn't really changed over the years
In addition to the tank i ordered the following equipment:
- Reefled 50
- Tunze 9004 skimmer
- Nyos Viper 2.0 return pump
- Eheim 150W heater
- Red Sea DIY jump screen
Later on i added an AI Nero 3 powerhead for flow and an Aqua Medic easy ATO for some much needed stability.
Here is the tank and sump after setting it up with some CaribSea life rock:
I have to admit my cable management could use some improvement which is still the case to this day
It took a lot of patience and self control but i really didn't want to add anything too soon so i let it cycle for 2 months while continuously checking parameters (which in hindsight wasn't very useful but it was nice to be able to follow up on the cycling process).
When i was convinced that it was safe to add corals i took a trip to the LFS for some corals and clean up crew. Later on I read a Reefbuilders article which mentioned there's no need to wait that long but it was still a useful time to practice water changes and cleaning habits.
My very first corals were some zoanthids, a duncan (which is still alive and kicking today) and a wall hammer. In addition to those i also got 2 turbo snails and a Leopard snail as cuc. After doing some research i found out that the Leopard snail was a carnivore so i regularly fed it some frozen clam meat, which it greedily accepted by popping up from under the sand and devouring said clam meat, pretty cool.
Also noticed my first pest on the glass which i figured was an acoel flatworm, since no corals were bothered (yet) i did't do anything about it and didn't see a population explosion. So no panic so far.
Having discovered some nice coral webshops i gradually started to add to my collection with some more "easy" zoanthids and some more euphyllia, also couldn't resist a riccordea and some nice clove polyps. The clove polyps took ages to grow, but they survived all the way and the last few months they're finally taking off although a bit hidden by other corals in the tank.
Looking back on these pictures really makes me realise the cost of learning, only the green and the pink frogspawn, clove polyps, riccordea and of course the duncan are currently still alive. Didn't seem to have much luck with zoanthids even though everyone told me they were great for beginners. Same story with the 2 wall hammers however i knew they were considered more difficult than the branching variety so wasn't totally surprised (but still dissapointed) when they didn't survive.
I noticed a lot of the aforementioned flatworms on one of the wall hammers at night when it was already on it's way out, however i doubt that they were to blame other than maybe adding some extra stress to an already stressed out coral.
I was very much ready to get some fish at this point, but i kept testing too high nitrates for my liking so i ended up waiting a bit. Seeing as how the bioload was nearly non existant (apart from feeding the leopard snail once a week), cycle was long over and bi-weekly 30% water changes were being done i now attribute this to a faulty test kit.
About 5 months after setting up the tank i switched to Salifert test kits which gave me 15ppm for Nitrates i decided it was time for the first fish.
It's a bit of a cliché but they are beautiful fish so of course i went for 2 clowns (percula).
Unfortunately both were infected with what i think was Brooklynella which i only noticed after they were in the tank for a few days. LFS sold me a cleaner shrimp in meanwhile claiming it might help with the brook, had my doubts about this after reading forums but i very much wanted to have a shrimp anyway so went for it.
My LFS gave me some medicine to add to the clowns food but this didn't seem to help much. In the mean time i accquired a seriatopora caliendrum which was to be my first foray into sps and a blue legged hermit which was a beautiful critter but also a really annoying coral bulldozer.
I was quite excited when i noticed there was a little symbiosis crab inside the caliendrum. After some research i determined it was probably a red trapezia crab, still alive today it luckily survived the house move and now resides in my stylophora.
The caliendrum was waaay to bushy for my limited flow and didn't survive in the long run, another lesson learned.
Unfortunately after about a week both clown fish perished and i decided to play it safe and go fallow for 3 months.
To compensate i went on another coral shopping spree of course.
By this point i was getting quite pleased with the look of the aquarium getting a bit more full. As you can see i kept the first wall hammer skeleton as a reminder. By now it has moved to the sump as another piece of filtration rock
Cats were also quite interested. One of them tried to jump on top one day but got her feet wet, never saw her run away so fast
Ever since then they only watch but never touch.One night i noticed some worms in the blue kenya tree, asked some local reefers about it but no one had any idea what they were. I was advised probably benign, just enjoy the symbiosis.
a few months later the kenya tree randomly melted away and perished, not sure if due to the worms or other issues, other corals seemed to do fine and parameters were in check.
By now the tank had been running for a bit more than a year and it was time for a new return pump. The Nyos Viper 2.0 did it's job without any problems (still use it to mix new salt water) but i wanted something i could control a bit better, on the viper you could only control the pump by closing or opening a valve on the pump output. Ended up getting an Aqua Medic DC runner 2.3 which i'm quite happy with. Runs very quiet and so far very reliable.
It also looked legit to add a pump controller unit to the sump cabinet.
Here you can see the Nyos "control" valve and the aqua medic controller added to the cabinet:
By now it had been almost 3 months since the clown fish had perished and i couldn't wait to see some fish in the tank again.
Not wanting to repeat the clown fish disaster i bought a 40 gal freshwater tank to set up as a quarantaine tank.
Added some bio balls to my main system sump for about a month to use as a biological filter in the quarantaine tank, after that i went and got myself a firefish and quarantained it for a month.
Needless to say i was very happy the day i could finally add it to the display tank, and i like to think the firefish was also quite happy moving in to the display.
I also got some GSP from my LFS because i really wanted a nice green back wall.
Cat approved of the firefish:
In the meantime i started the quarantaine process of 2 new clown fish, luckily this time without any disease issues.
Also got me a tiny goniopora frag and my first red monti cap frag.
The goniopora frag took ages to grow and teetered on the brink of oblivion for a while but it pulled through like a champ in the end.
As you can see i was also starting to have a nice big collection of aiptasia (which i eventually got rid of by adding 6 Berghia).
By now we had bought a new house and a tank move was coming up so decided not to add anything new as the move was going to be difficult enough as it was.
Here are some of the last pics before the move (also discovered sunglasses are a decent blue light filter for my phone):
The plan was to take as much water with me as i could and only leave the nasty detritus filled bottom quarter of the display and sump behind. So the day before the tank move i went to the new house to mix some new salt water to compensate for the water i didn't bring.
It was quite an interesting day but everything went fairly smooth, unfortunately no pictures of the actual move as my main concern was to move everything as fast and smooth as possible.
Started of with catching the fish snails and shrimp and put them in a bucket of water with a heater while i tore down the rest of the tank.
Gathered the easy to gather corals and moved the rest into buckets while still attached to the rocks. I had some new sand ready in the new house so threw the old sand away with the dirty water.
The gsp i just left attached to the back wall to see if it was really as indestructibly as people claimed. (yes it is)
After syphoning off all the good water got the equipment out of the sump and disassembled everything. Carefully loaded it all up in the car with my dad and drove everything to the new place.
The fish and critters i kept in an empty salt bucket with a perforated lid on, without heater this time since the trip was only about 40 minutes.
After arriving at the new house i immediately set up a (new and unused of course) concrete mixing bucket with some old tank water and a heater and flow pump, to this i added all the corals, fish and cuc.
With the fish and corals safe i could take my time to set up the tank and thoroughly clean the equipment as well.
Then filled it up and added everything, the aquascape changed a bit while building up again into something i preferred.
Didn't really take any pictures because a lot of other stuff still had to be done in the new house so was a bit preoccupied, but here is the tank a little while after the move, got hit with a mini cycle as expected and some cyano:
By now i started to dabble some more into the easier sps corals having purchased a montipora digitata as well and a purple (milka?) stylo. Also accidentally made my first frag by bumping into the red monti cap and glued it to the aquascape in the front to see if it would take.
At this stage i wanted to take my reefkeeping to the next level and started to look into dosing.
Working shifts and not wanting to set myself up for failure by going for a system that was too complicated for a noob reefer such as myself i decided a kamoer dosing pump with TM all for reef was the way to go. Also invested in a Hanna alkalinity checker to properly set the all for reef dose.
Also added a small samsung tablet to the sump cabinet in order to have all the control apps in one place.
The first 2 weeks i measured alkalinity every morning before lights on and adjusted the all for reef dosage accordingly until stability was achieved.
Nothing incredibly spectacular happened the next few months just tried to stay the course and shoot for stability
Bought a new phone with a macro function which was nice to play around with though obviously not the same as a real macro camera.
As you can see the little goni frag started to do quite well!
By now i was starting to be quite pleased again with the way the tank looked and how it had survived the move.
Also quarantained and added a royal gramma. Unfortunately my firefish randomly died, still wondering why. So back down to 3 fish: the two clowns and the gramma.
Now another challenge was about to present itself, some drywalling had to be done.
I was very much dreading this but couldn't postpone any longer so i started to think about how best to protect the tank from all the dust without tearing everything down again.
In the end i settled for using a winter greenhouse for outdoor plants which i conveniently found in just the right size.
In addition to this i sectioned off the part of the room where the tank was with plastic sheets and taped everything as airtight as possible. I also added a mobile AC unit to control the temperature in this little plastic box i made for the tank. The plan was also to only close off the final bit when the actual work started in order to not mess up the gas exchange too much.
It all worked out quite well, some dust got past the first barrier and landed on top of the greenhouse but it seemed the tank survived and looked happy!
Now we are finally getting to the end of this thread (for now)
Have been dosing all for reef for about 10 months now gradually having to increase the dose as there's more and more alkalinity uptake.
Most things look like they are really taking off and i'm becoming carefully optimistic (but never overconfident).
Alkalinity i measure weekly now unless i change the all for reef dose then it's back to daily measuring until stable.
At the moment i'm doing 25% water changes every other week and i measure parameters once a month as long as nothing seems off.
So far the main parameters seem stable: Nitrates hover around 5-7ppm, Phoshate levels 0.03ppm, salinity i keep at 1.025 SG, alkalinity i keep at 8 dkh, Calcium at 450ppm and Mg at 1370-80.
I've added my first acros last month, one rainbow mille and a bali tricolor (installed a frag rock on the window for these), the mille seems to be doing great, the bali tricolor is showing polyps but the base has turned quite pale so i've moved it a bit lower off the frag rack.
A couple days ago a nearby LFS store had a sale on tridacna maximas and since i've wanted one since i started this beautiful hobby i decided to pull the trigger after giving it some thought.
I had to move my forest fire digitata to make room for the clam (nano reef problems) but i really hope this beautiful creature will thrive as it's really the cherry on top of my little reef.
Seeing as i'm running out of room for corals i've started to look at getting a bigger tank, currently planning to get at least a 180 gallon.
Last week my first son was born so at the moment i will have to adjust a bit to this new lifestyle and evaluate how it goes with keeping up with tank maintenance but again i'm cautiously optimistic and loving every second of it!
Hopefully in the not too distant future i'll make a new build thread for the big one, and maybe update it more regularly this time rather than everything in one massive post
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