Fishman011's 12g Nanocube DX Adventure

[pazos011]

Hi all i have been lurking on these forums for a while know and wanted to say thanks to all the help and abundence of information provided in these forums. This is my second attempt at starting up this tank the last time i went way to fast an didnt take my time and within a few weeks the tank crashed. Also i just moved to singapore and figured now would be the time to try again. So here it goes. The tank is a 12g nanocube DX stock lighting with 12lbs of "cured" LR and 15-20lbs of live "cured" sand.

Filtration

Chamber 1

Filter floss (chane out weekly)

Chamber 2

Empty at the moment

Chamber 3

Maxi-jet 1200

It has been up and running for 3 weeks here are my params

Temp 78-80 F

Salinity: 1.023-1.024

Ammonia: 0ppm

Nitrite: 0ppm

Nitrate: 5ppm

The cycle completed in 2 weeks so this is the first week after the cycle w/ a clean up crew of 5x snails and 5x hermits and 1x skunk cleaner shrimp. The diatom is almost all gone there is still some left on the sand which you can see from the pics, but i cant seem to get these nitrates to 0ppm. I did a 50% water change at the end of the cycle and i am doin 20% water change weekly. I dont want to make the same mistake i made last time and rush things, before i put anything in this tank. Any ideas as to how to get these nitrates down? Also i am currently useing marin aquaria as my lfs and am very pleased so far with their service and the quality of what i have gotten from them so far. But i have not been able to find an lfs that sells chaeto so if anyone is willing to give some away or sell it i will be more than willing to pay please PM me with info. Also i am looking for some coral frags for this tank, do the lfs have frags or will i have to get them from my fellow reefers?

Thanks alot and all comments/ criticism welcome

Fishman011

[mansiz]

Do you plan to create a sump or refugium? For a nano tank, bringing nitrate down is much more difficult than larger tank, because due to small amount of water capacity, you can't possibly change too much water at a time, and NO3 will thus built up faster compared to larger tank. I would suggest you to create a refugium or a sump tank, in which you can hold numerous algaes undisturbed by any herbivore fishes/invert, but bear in mind that since your tank is already carrying the weight of your skimmer, plus if you add a hang on refugium, this could cause the tank to crack. You have to make sure evrything is going in the right way. How thick is your tank glass? If you were to add a sump, you will need an external overflow box, which would tank up too much space from your main tank. So I would suggest a small refugium with 24/7 of lighting, of course with plants/algaes (fern caulerpa, grape plants,chaeto etc) in it, you will be surprise by the amount of NO3 and PO4 it can take up. Btw for chaeto, you can go to the buy/sell forum to browse, it's quite often that some bros will have chaeto for sale during their harvest period.