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Justin’s 10g nano - first time reefer


justin88
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Had a high tech FW tank for almost a year, been wanting to try SW for a few months and decided to take the plunge after finally securing approval from the wife.

 

My FW went through a few iterations:

 

Obsession with growing a Monte Carlo carpet

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Obsession with red alternantera reineckii

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Rescape after a friend gave me his trimmings

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Current state, reset after months of neglect due to work

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Enjoyed my FW time, but it’s time for a new challenge so decided to convert a spare 10g tank and give SW a try. I have a habit of getting bored with hobbies after awhile, so even if the IM nuvo tanks are really attractive I decided to have some self restraint, reuse what I have and see how it goes

 

 

 

 

 

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Bought a Caribsea live rock, salt and prodibio bacteria today. Don’t have a RODI unit so gonna get some distilled water from fp/redmart .

 

 

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Closer pic of rock...guess I didn’t clean the glass properly

 

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Forgot to mention, looking to build a mix reef with softies/ lps. Will also get a proper marine light, probably an Ai prime. Just using the FW light for photo lighting now

 

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Welcome to the salty world of reef keeping! Flow is important so suggest you figure out the type of corals (sorties, LPS or SPS) you intend to have and equip yourself accordingly. That said the main equipment you need is knowledge, so feel free to pick our brains and go from there. All the best.

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Welcome to the salty world of reef keeping! Flow is important so suggest you figure out the type of corals (sorties, LPS or SPS) you intend to have and equip yourself accordingly. That said the main equipment you need is knowledge, so feel free to pick our brains and go from there. All the best.

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Thanks for the welcome! I definitely have much to learn, it feels like learning how to keep fish all over again.

Yeah I realized while the tidal 55 can provide some flow its only 1 direction and I should get some small wave makers to cover the dead spots and break up the flow a bit.

As for corals I’m planning to take it easy and just start with some softies and LPS. GSP, pulsing Xenia, torch, hammer, frogspawn are on my list.


Bought a second hand refractometer today. Still need to buy a light, skimmer, additives, test kit, chiller....gonna eat grass for awhile liao.

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Off to a good start with the refractometer, keeping salinity stable is important. Noticed you are not running a sump, but rather hang on equipment. If that is the case I would personally forego a skimmer and just place a wooden air stone in the tank on a timer. The bubbles in the tank will act as a sudo-skimmer and lift some waste. Then just do weekly water changes. Honestly water changes mean you can get away without loads of gear. The Tidal is fine as you can place a bag of carbon, or a bag of chemi-pure. The biggest problem I find on smaller tanks is keeping the temperature stable. You may want to check out Aaron's Aquarium on youtube as he just started a new series of setting up a simple reef system.


Good luck.

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Thanks for the advice and the woodblock skimmer tip @ROB . I'll check out the youtube vid you linked, personally I've been following Inappropriate Reefer's $146 build.

My plan to keep the temp stable is to get a AL60 TEC chiller. Don't have space for a full fledged Hailea and I'm pretty sure that will be overkill for 10 gallons lol . I'm using a XD20 (rated for 20l) for my 19l FW tank and it can keep the water stable at 26-27c easily, max temp delta i achieved was -4c below ambient. Since the AL60 is rated for 60l i think it should be fine on the 10g/40l tank. 

About weekly water changes, I'm aware you can rely on that for nutrient export on nano tanks but I'd prefer to buy some leeway with a skimmer and hob refugium in case life gets too busy. Hard to predict with a 2.5 y.o. kid sometimes. Seems like 3 sides of the tank might end up with some sort of HOB equipment hahaha. Let's see how it goes. 

Anyway, today I was thinking hard about which 2nd hand light to get,  AI Prime / Kessil A80 / Spectra Aqua Knight. Each one is almost double the price, the price difference can buy a lot of other stuff. Personally I really like the Kessil shimmer, but the value of the Aqua Knight is hard to beat. 30W and the light quality seems decent and a lot of positive reviews. 

@equiox - Trying to keep it under 1k, so far I've spent $80 for salt, rock, bacteria and refractometer. 

 

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So quite a lot has happened since my last update...

 

While buying an eshopps skimmer the seller asked if I wanted to take over his nuvo 10 and livestock since he was upgrading. It was at a good price and I said yes.

 

My first time transferring a running tank, but luckily I prepared well and everything was quite smooth.

 

Livestock:

Percula clown

Watchman goby

 

Coral:

Green torch

Purple torch

Purple torch frag

Pink frogspawn

Acan

Acanthophylia / meat / prata coral

Pearl bubble

Alveopora

 

Equipment

Nuvo 10g tank

Eshopps nano skimmer

Aquaknight light

Sicce syncra 0.5 return pump

Sicce syncra nano chiller pump

Chemipure elite

Marinepure blocks

 

Adding the water back into the tank at my place:

 

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After everything was set up...quite a lot of hair algae coz the seller was on holiday right before I took over

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My little set up

 

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After a few days sadly the percula clown passed. All parameters were ok and there was no physical wounds to be seen.

My MIL said she saw it swimming happily at 6 pm, but when I checked the tank at 9pm it was motionless at the bottom.

Very strange as it did not exhibit any abnormal behavior before that. Some people who I asked said it could be because of the moving stress.

RIP

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One day I realized my chiller temp probe was a bit off coz i dipped my hand into my FW and SW tanks and realized my SW tank was a lot colder even if both chillers were at 26c.

After digging out my old thermometers and buying batteries, realized my chilller probe was calibrated a whopping 2.2c hotter. So when it said 26c it was actually 24. Luckily it wasn’t the other way

Lesson learned...buying 2nd hand stuff doesn’t mean it has been calibrated before!



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Itchy hand wanted a real wavemaker to create turbulent flow instead of the laminar flow I was getting with my nano voyager, so I bought a jebao slw10.

 

Looks very nice!

 

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FTS, also I realized I could use my Oakley lens as a filter

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While the min flow rate of the slw 10 is not stated (max flow is stated at 4000lph), it seems the lowest setting is around 1000+ lph. Can’t say for sure, but it seems a bit more powerful than my 1000lph sicce nano voyager. Also, the flow pattern seems to be wider.

 

Spent a lot of time positioning the slw10 to get a nice turbulent flow pattern. Very hard coz the tank small zzz

 

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Decided to put the acanthophylia / donut / meat / prata coral in a breeder box coz the shrimp always steals all its reef roids dinner 🤬

Hope to grow it big

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I guess this is now a 2 br flat? Tank upgrade syndrome is kicking in hard. Now can understand why people have a display tank and a frag tank. The breeder box is totally ruining the vibe! Oh well. Grow before show I guess.

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Astrea snail mission impossible?

The poor snail was fidgeting to get the hitchhiker away without success.

Tried separating them to no avail. Eventually when the one sucking on to the fan went to the glass the hitchhiker quickly went to the glass and went his own way. One can only imagine what the hell was going on in their heads

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