Nancy's Nano

[NMC]

5/15/12

Added 2 cleaner shrimp (Liveaquaria). They are much bigger than I'd pictured! Very bold and greedy. Stole shrimp right out of the mouth of my Duncan Coral.

Also got a green apple cap (montipora)

My candy cane, which wasn't secured as I was still trying to find it's best place, was knocked down by the shrimp and fell. It wasn't happy, not at all.

I'm noticing a little GHA here and there, but the snails seem to be taking care of it.

The firefish is more bold now, swimming in the open, doesn't mind the shrimp.

 

[NMC]

5/18/12

Added a few more pieces of live rock...a bridge and a ledge. Gave my way too big finger leather away to someone from RC.

5/19/12
Got a torch coral from Liveaquaria that looked pretty pukey. Over several days it didn't improve so I sent them pictures and they gave me my money back!

I glued and epoxied my other corals in place.

5/21/12
I thought one of my shrimp died. He'd just molted and his shell was up against the MP10

5/22/12
I got a blue spotted jawfish! Expensive sucker! He's in the new 10 gallon QT. I have a tupperware in there with sand and shells and rubble and some stone beads.

 

[NMC]

5/23/12

My expensive fish isn't happy. Not eating, hiding behind a piece of PVC, hasn't been interested in the sand I put in there. I dumped the sand out of the tupperware.

 

[NMC]

5/28/12

My QT intentions again fell short. I lasted longer than last time, 5 whole days this time. My intention was 4 weeks! He just didn't seem happy in there and the frequent water changes were getting to me. This tank wasn't cycled at all. So I was lugging around 5 gallon buckets daily and trying to keep up with making new salt water for the QT and my DT as well. Next fish, I swear to keep in the QT a reasonable amount of time.

My blue spotted jawfish went right for his condo I'd built. He seems much more comfortable there and is eating better. I lowered the temp on my tank some for him. I'd had it between 78-80, now it's 77-79. Not a big change, but hey.

See those shells? I gotta take more pics and show what he did with them

 

[NMC]

There. All up to date.

Today I added another, different colored candycane and a different colored ricordia. I'm having an increasing amount of brownish algae on my rocks (none on the sand). I don't know if it's a problem or not, but decided to try the 3 days lights out and see if it makes any difference. I'll take more pictures after that.

 

[ilyad]

Thanks for the pointers! I need all I can get. My tank is about 2 months further along than this thread. I just wanted a "from the beginning," thing. So it has since cycled.

That holder thing for the MP10....don't you ever want to move the MP10? I'm still trying to decide where it should go. Once decided, do you leave it or move it on occassion, say to the other side?

Well yeah, you can move the pump around, but if you look up their manual they have an explanation for where the pump is most effective, hence you should put it in that area. Furthermore, those sticky pads and zip ties are cheap ($6 for 12 on their site I believe) I have several on my tank on the top of the rim to run the cable through, on both sides... they are not too bad, theyre cheap, and they protect your dry side from damage (especially if you have hard floors, like you do) I think $6 is worth to protect several hundred dollars.

 

[NMC]

OK, thanks.

 

[NMC]

Major problem

Major problem

My tank just started leaking! Help and bother!

Still under warranty and JBJ warehouse is about a 45 minute drive from here (1.5 hrs with stupid traffic). So, I drove over there, got a new tank and spent the rest of the day transferring all my rock/sand, critters, and equipment form the old tank to the new. It's a big mess, my rocks are all willy nilly, my fish are alive and well, but discombobulated, and I can't even see if my corals are OK as there is quite a sand storm in there. Tomorrow I'm going to have to spend quite a bit more time straightening everything out. In the meantime, my protein skimmer has gone quite mad.

 

[NMC]

Right now I am so over this damned tank. It was just perfect, now it's a sorry mess. I have such fine sand that I can only see to place a rock or two, then I can't see any more. With my rocks, I need to place 3 or 4 to make them sturdy, so they fall over. And my ATO broke. All day yesterday, all day today, and my tank is nowhere near looking as nice as it did.

 

[jmvaldes80]

Dont get discourged, we all have had bad things happen to us. Take my experience buying a protein skimmer. I too bought the aquamax skimmer but when I went to put it in, my light fixture was getting in the way of the intake pipe. So back that went, next I bought the tunze nano skimmer. I guess Marine Depot got a bad shipment because they sent me one that had a european electrical plug. I went all over town looking for an adaptor, and when I found one, the darn thing wasn't getting enough juice to run properly. Back it went, and now I finally settled with the hydro nano slim skim (not perfect, but works). Mind you I had to build new sump for each one, so now I have 2 ten gallons lying around collecting dust. Moral of the story is don't give up. Even if you have to tear the tank down and re-do it from scratch, do it, you spent entirely too much money on you tank to give up. Whats spending a little more going to hurt.

 

[NMC]

Thanks for the pep talk . Had to buy a new ATO. Protein skimmer is OK, it just goes bats from time to time. Otherwise, it's just a lot of time this is taking up and the end result isn't going to be just so. And, I still have to clean and ship back the leaky tank . Enjoying my pity party for another hour or two, then I'll be finished.

 

[jmvaldes80]

IME, the first 4 months are the worst when setting up a tank. All the little issue are really frustrating, but its worth it in the end. Sucks about the leaky tank and your ATO. I also have a jbj and aqualifter, and its work great. Only thing is you have to keep the ro water and your drip line the same height or higher. I put mine gallon jug on my dresser, and the is drip line is clipped on to my cpr overflow. Cute dog by the way.

 

[NMC]

Thanks. I figured that out the hard way....the drip line needing to be higher. When I removed the ATO from the leaky tank, the thing that clips on to the edge of the tank broke so I had no way to hang it, so I left it on the floor. That's how I broke it....flooded with water, blah, blah, blah. If anyone else is reading this....learn from my errors!

 

[NMC]

I'm wondering how my critters are doing. Can't see any corals due to the sand storm. I know my jawfish is alive and well and has deserted his PVC condo . The firefish made it to the bucket and back to the new tank, but haven't seem him since due to the sand. Hoping he's OK. Got a glimpse of the duncan this morning, lost my birdsnest somewhere, others still MIA.

 

[jmvaldes80]

Are you try to do a dsb? From what I understand, dsb only works on larger tanks with large surface areas.

 

[NMC]

The dog is Cedric, my partner in crime.

Not necessarily trying to do a deep sand bed in the usual sense of the term, but I have a jawfish who needs a fairly deep sand bed and the finer sand with rubble to mix. I'm also planning a goby/pistol shrimp pair in the future and the shrimp needs to dig and build. The sand is fine for the minor sand storm the fishes cause, but a major disruption like this, well, it takes a while to settle down. He was using his PVC house I'd made for almost 2 weeks and I'd planned to remove some of the sand if he stayed there, and maybe he might have if I hadn't had to switch tanks. My sand bed is stirred up by me, by snails, by my jawfish, so it's not acting like a deep sand bed in terms of filtration.

 

[sjnovakovich]

This tank is lidded and evaporation is not huge, but I still wanted an ATO so I didn't have to fret about that aspect. I opted for the JBJ ATO with a Tom's aqualifter. Not the best, or most expensive (I think maybe the Tunze Osmolator might win in most expensive), but works fine for me.

The challenge came in finding a container for the RO/DI water. I wanted something that fit in the stand. The stand is skinny. Most containers skinny enough were also pretty short and didn't hold enough water to make them practical. A time consuming internet search yielded nothing. Back to home depot. I found the perfect thing! I think it hold 3 or 4 gallons and fits perfectly!

I had the exact same experience last weekend! I'll be getting it all together this Saturday.

 

[sjnovakovich]

5/10/12:
I got my first fish (a purple firefish) and corals.
I have discovered I'm no good at taking tank pictures and will have to rectify that.

The fish went into the cycled 6 gallon QT. I dipped the corals in Coral Rx, just followed the directions, and put them in the DT

The corals I got were:
1. 5 headed Kryptonite candy cane
2. A yellow finger leather that was way to big for my tank
3. 2 stylophora frags, one green, one a dark rose
4. A ricordia
5. A freebee teeny tiny ricordia and teeny tiny green birdsnest
6. A 2 headed duncan

The leather, duncan, and stylophora were from Liveaquaria and the others from a nice fish store I found about 30 minutes away.

The finger leather is ugly just sitting there like that, but it was pretty later when the yellow polyps came out. Still too danged big though.

You're going to love the Duncan. It has become one of my favorites.

 

[NMC]

I gave away the leather to someone on this board. It was too dang huge for my tank. The duncan is awesome and the ricordia has done well. The stylophoras were both looking good prior to this crash. I don't know if they or the candycanes will survive this tank mess up.

Both my fish are alive and well!

 

[NMC]

Slowly coming back together. I think my green and my rose stylophora are toast, but I'm just going to keep them in there and cross my fingers for a miracle recovery. The candy cane came dislogded from it's rock and is now sitting on the sand bed. It doesn't like moving around, but hopefully will get over it. The duncan and ricordias look OK. I think I'm missing one of my 2 cleaner shrimp, but the tank is still very cloudy so hard to say for sure. My protein skimmer is still going crazy as I try to re-arrange my rocks...using epoxy and glue which makes my skimmer have seizures.

Almost done messing with the rocks then I can leave it alone and let the sand settle. Geez, day 3 with this stuff.

Protein skimmer run amuk:

Cloudy tank: