1.5gal SPS micro-reef

[Eastone]

system running on AIO-Biopellets dosed with Zeobak.
Equipment wise it's got a closed loop system incorporating most of the lilypipes and a 5 gallon sump, which houses the DIY biopellet reactor, a DIY Algal scrubber and a Bubble Magus Nac5e, all of this is controlled by an old Aquatronica I repaired, and a dosing pump dosing diluted cal/alk and a diluted trace element solution with a spare tank for a 5 litre ATO.

I dose the red sea color package with pohl's xtra, sponge power, CV, coral snow, a mixture of trace elements (I forget the brand) and salifert amino acids. I occasionally dose tiny amounts of easy life nitro, for some extra nitrates as I don't have fish and feed often. I've since started to dose 1ml of concentrated live phytoplankton daily, I need to get something like this for feeding the tank constantly

 

[tehachappi32]

so the DT is 1.5 gallons but the sump is 5 Gallons? Does that make your system 6+ gallon ? Still very small and very hard to keep SPS with that tiny amount of water...Good job! How long have you been running this system?

 

[tom obrecht]

That's awesome! I love nanos with personality and yours has it! Well done!

 

[Eastone]

Yeah the total system volume including sump (and skimmer body, it's external) is 6.3 gallons or so. Most of my daily dosages are in fractions of a millilitre. It's amazing the speed at which calcium is sucked out of the water, At the moment I dose the equivalent of 4ppm of calcium a day and it's still dropping pretty fast

 

[ReefCowboy]

Sweet!!!

 

[Eastone]

Accidentally dosed 20x my daily dose of calcium, so I had to change ±20L from the sump. Seems that everythings doing well, if not better than pre-massive-panic-induced waterchange, even if my carbonates spiked from 6.5 to 11.8, it'll allow me to stabilise the system at about 8dkh.

I just want the colours I have top-down to extend all way down my colonies!

 

[Fishy 1]

All I can say is WOW, just WOW. I'd love to know more about this tank, what lighting are you running, care routine etc etc.

 

[Eastone]

Thanks for the kind words!

Lighting wise it's all pretty much DIY, I have a Par38 LED and two 10w DIY multi-chip spotlights. I've attached those to spare Intel CPU heatsink-fan systems for cooling as they're overdriven to 18w. I'm adding another 20w LED with a wider lens angle for the mangrove this week.

my maintenance routine is handled pretty effectively from an Aquatronica controlling my ATO and a dosing pump giving me heavily-diluted cal/alk/mag. I use a chart to calculate dilution ratios because I dilute the Red Sea reef foundation system down to fractions of millilitres so I can add the 0.5ml daily raw dose over several doses during the day with higher accuracy and minimal impact, I like to see my parameters move by less than 0.02 DKH and 0.5ppm calcium an hour. Here's a screenshot (non blurry full size here)

(when I work out the bugs I'll release it on here, it makes dosing and diluting far easier)

Other than that, I do a water change of 5 litres once a week or so, wipe down the tank daily when I manually dose my more strict elements (fe, halogens, iodine, potassium and a few kz supplements) and the tank gets fed 1ml of concentrated live phytoplankton as well as 1ml of red sea reef energy, a drop of Phol's Coral Vitaliser and a few pellets and mysis shrimp every second day.

I believe the sump and skimmer are able to remove almost all of what I feed before re-cycling water back up to the display so the display turns over only once every hour and a half, with the sump water passing through the skimmer around 100 times an hour. This allows me to feed very, very heavily and not experience many side effects. I believe strong feeding regimes are key to maintaining SPS in low-nutrient closed environments

 

[SPS Galore]

That's awesome! I wanted to make a sps build with a 10 fusion. It didn't happen. Lol

 

[Eastone]

Added some corals and swapped a 10W for a 20W LED chip/power supply for the mangrove as well as some blue light. I changed the scape and added another small acro (it's nice and brown, I'm excited to watch it colour up as the pocillopora and millepora have done)

 

[Eastone]

Not a huge amount of change, pinks are pinker and the brown acro is getting some light-pink/purple tips.

 

[k4ndyk1ng]

This is looking sick p, any updates on the mangrove?

 

[Eastone]

Some additions. My cleaner shrimp died when my dosing pump started a siphon from my KH container and spiked KH to 12 from 6.5 and pH up 0.55.

http://i.imgur.com/VW0GTB5.png

 

[Eastone]

It's hard to photograph now because of the LEDs, I need to get photoshop back onto my macbook, I had to edit this in iPhoto and it didn't come out 100% accurate but here's a current FTS

 

[coral102]

Hahaha..Cool design, I like mangrove filtration....

 

[gdemos]

Great job. Awesome micro reef. What made you go deeper on the sand?

 

[Eastone]

Thanks!

I really really enjoy the mangrove, it purifies the water so much more than I'd expected!

I just think a deep sand bed gives more of a stable environment for microfauna, and I think that a slope is more natural looking when it comes to aquascaping personally

 

[Eastone]

I really am very proud, I didn't think the tank would ever get to the stage that it is!
I decided to spoil myself today, got a Gen2 Radion, was a display model over at Charterhouse at a price I couldn't turn down, when I connected it to EcoSmartLive I noticed it was actually a gen2 not a gen1 as they'd thought, but I don't know what the difference is! It's actually less bright and intense than my old DIY job, but I feel that was burning the corals. I've got it set to give me 4 hours of 100% light during the day and a lot more mellow otherwise.

Apologies if the photo links don't work, a lot are from my puush private album (it lets you take screenshots and automatically uploads it to their servers and your private album, really handy) but I think they might cut links that get too much activity or something.
I don't run it this color, but I adjusted it to best take a photo, I think it'll need a bit more tweaking but I need to get a longer USB cable so I can manage it

I'm going to write a comprehensive guide on the steps and reasons behind setting up this tank, doing it for my best friend because he wants to set up a tiny tank while he's at med school

 

[Eastone]

I forgot to upload photos

Normally I only upload photos after a clean, but I've been slacking

 

[toothman]

love it