Hello Sonny,
I know that you get a lot of this but thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience with the reefkeeping community. You have shown much patience by constantly answering the same questions...i just read this whole thread. Your tank is awesome and inspiring. This thread is the reason I joined RC.
Here is some background info on me and my tank: I have maintained fw tanks for most of my life. When my girlfriend and I moved into our 700 sqft condo last May, before we had furniture I was filling up my 55 gal. This didnt fly with her so she went out and got me a 26 bowfront. I decided to try nano-reefing as it has become so popular and "easy" due to technological advances.
Equipment:
26gal bowfront (24''Wx18''Hx15''deep at the widest point of the bow)
Octopus BH-1000 hob skimmer (rated for up to 90gal)
2x Current Nova Extreme 24'' 2x24w t5 (stock bulbs)
hydor koralia nano and hydor 1
sicce voyager 1 (607 gph) (total flow from powerheads= ~50x tank volume per hour)
Livestock:
~20-30 lbs high grade caribbean and fiji LR
~20 lbs Live sand substrate (about 1-1.5 in deep)
1 green mandarin
1 yellow headed prawn goby
1 pistol shrimp
1 peppermint shrimp
~8 assorted small hermits
~7 turbo snails
3 nassarius snails
tons of brittle stars, copepods, amphipods, bristleworms, non photo-synthetic clams
assorted zoanthids
orange and purple montipora digitata (branching)
orange plating montipora
2 acropora frags, unidentified
1 birdsnest frag
1 pink pocillopora
duncan
candy cane
spiny cup pectina
pink and high green frogspawn
rose coral
orange and teal acan
xenia and leather (will be gone in a week or two)
tridacna maxima
coco worm
I have recently decided to go sps/acan/zoas. Lets just say i finally found a source of head stash corals here in SC, and am now obsessed/addicted to sps! my tank has been up and running for around 9 months now. My mandarin is fat and happy and i have not really had any losses. i have just gotten most of my sps but have polyp extension and all that good stuff except in one acro. My tank usually runs with low nitrates, and phosphate= <.25 with kh=~9. I do weekly water changes and add calc 1.5 times a week and strontium and iod and reef fuel whenever it "feels right." I also dose zooplankton and phyto. water changes are either weekly or bi-weekly. i had to leave my system for a month around the holidays with only a friend topping off the tank twice and had no losses. My liverock is seriously "alive" and has tons of cucumbers and other critters in it. My tank has a bunch of coralline as well.
I started dosing 1 capful MB7 two days ago. i figured some good bacteria couldnt hurt. Now for the questions: Do you think a tank such as mine will benefit from your method of mb7 and vodka? i would like to take things very slow so i was going to only do 1 capful a day for the first week then cut back. what do you think about this? what type of regimen should i do with this and the vodka on such a small system? Is there going to be a huge amount of die-off in my tank? with my current t5 fixtures i plan on getting new bulbs (within a month) and was planning on:
front
blue+
fiji purp
blue +
aquablue special
What do you think about this? will it be sufficient for growing sps? will copepods die off and cause my mandarin to starve? and lastly, are the microbubbles from my hob skimmer a problem?
Thanks again for your time spent answering our questions, as well as sharing with us your rimless reef!
peace
hunter