Nihoa
New member
Talofa! I am a Canuck living and working in American Samoa. I have missed reef keeping dearly while living down here and was recently able to purchase a tank from a local restaurant that no longer wanted it. This was a major score as shipping things to Am Sam is a huge pain and this tank is one of only three that I know of in the territory. Home in Canada, I often daydreamed of running a tank in a tropical setting where equipment and all the frigging around would be vastly reduced by having immediate access to the reef. I've come to find that hunting out and catching reef fish is as much fun (probably more) than actually keeping them and the addition of this aspect to the hobby has really amped the addiction. As if reefkeeping needed to be more addicting... Many of us are attracted to build threads with page upon page of photos of shiny gear and wiring and the like. This will be no such thread! I can, however, promise week after week of interesting critters found and caught on our reefs and a tank celebrating their awesomeness!
Livestock
I will be doing another post shortly detailing my wants for livestock. For now, it is enough to say that I am looking at making a mixed reef of reef safe(ish) fish, sps corals, clams, and maybe an anemone or two. Everything will be wild caught/collected from out front of my house or other areas around the island depending on what I'm looking for and where they are typically found. All my corals will be corals of opportunity, collected in the rubble zone where they have been broken off the reef by big swells and are tumble-weeding around. I may frag colonies of less common corals to grow out in the tank and then outplant again on the reef but I doubt this will make up much of my stock. There are lps and some soft coral here as well but you do not typically see these snapped off the reef so I doubt I will have the chance to collect any and wouldn't feel right breaking off a big head of brain to drag home. I should note that I work at the agency responsible for permitting in the territory so you can be sure I have my ducks in a row in that regard.
The nice thing about living so close to the source of livestock is the ability to treat a tank as a constantly evolving project. I will not attempt to keep anything with overly specialised requirements like cephalopods, obligate corallivores, etc. but proximity to the reef does mean that animals that do not acclimate well, show excessive aggression, or grow too large can be returned to the ocean readily. I don't think anything should go into a tank that can't be properly cared for but it is nice to have the reef out front which may allow for any mistakes to be mitigated.
The Tank
I have not picked the tank up yet and I am not super solid on all its details. The dimensions are ~ 1.5m wide x .7m high x .5m deep which puts me somewhere around the 525L (130g) mark but the tank is a reverse bowfront and I am unsure how this will reduce the volume. Suppose I will find out when I fill it! I would not have chosen a reverse bowfront, or a reg bowfront for that matter, but down here you take what you get and this tank is plenty big enough to do some cool things with so I'm happy. I plan to have the curved surface against the wall so I doubt once setup many will even notice it. I did notice some calcified stain on the glass when I checked it out so I imagine I will run it a week with tap water and vinegar.
Equipment
There is blissfully little. With easy access to fresh salt water I will be relying heavily on water changes and, as such, will not be running a skimmer, reactors, or much of anything else. At some point I may attempt a DIY auto top-off but for now it'll just be lights and pumps.
For lighting, I have two AI Hydra Twentysixes and before you head for the reply button to tell me I am woefully under lighting this tank I will confess I already know. I do not plan to be here on the island forever and when I eventually return to a mainland of some kind I would prefer to keep a tank in the 70g range. At any rate, these lights will provide areas in the tank where I will be able to keep just about anything I could want off the reef but means I will not get full coverage through the whole tank. If this comes to really bother me I may pick up another twentysix. I've started playing with the hydras through the director to get the hang of them but haven't settled on any settings as I will need to see the look on the tank. I've also not decided how high I will be mounting them.
For flow I have bought three Koralia 1500s and there is a large external pump that I haven't seen yet coming with that tank. If the flow isn't sufficient I may have to supplement with another Koralia or two.
The distance to the sea out front of my place is only 80m (slam -14.318164, -170.701881 into google earth and you will see my house) and that makes a pump system to transport seawater to my apt. very doable. However, anything not bolted to the earth with titanium seems to disappear quickly here in Samoa so leaving hose or a pump outside isn't an option. At the very least, I would like a pump I could use to fill water jugs from the back of my truck.
Rock, Substrate & Scaping
I take this very seriously! I have been collecting rock from across the reef for the last week or two and have it piled on the sand in a deeper pool. This has given me a chance to roughly play with my pieces and try to get some ideas for how I want to scape the tank. Hopefully I can get a pic of this soon.
So, yes, all the liverock is wild collected and fantastically full of hitchhikers. I've had blennies, micro-gobies, shrimp, decorator crabs, squat lobsters, worms, and all sorts of neato wildlife hop out of rock and for me all these little surprise critters really make a tank. It probably also means that unwanted crabs, mantises, worms, etc. will get into the tank but I will do my best to flush them out by leaving the rock to air a few minutes and discarding the jerks. Otherwise, I will have a wrasses and things to whittle down any trouble makers but ultimately this tank will be a little piece of the reef and that might just mean taking the bad with the good.
I will be putting in a sand bed of 8cm or so. This will be dry sand sourced from a beach nearby and I hope to acquire mostly coarse-grained sand as I find the sugar-sized grain sort of a pain.
A pic or two
To make up for the lack of photos in this post I will include a couple shots of where I will be doing most of my shopping
https://flic.kr/p/qyLUvo
https://flic.kr/p/reePDo
Goodluck bro!
