Three nano tanks at work

[jjcool]

Hi all,
Recently at work the three network admins (including myself) got a new office with cubicles. We decided since we all love reef tanks that we'd all setup nano tanks on our desks. Pete is the only one of us that's actually had a reef tank before, so he's leading the way. We all are doing our tanks a little differently so it should be interesting to see how it all turns out. Hopefully we'll be able to keep posting as time goes by and provide for an interesting thread to watch these three diverse tanks progress.

Josh

 

[shramj]

please continue to update this post with your progress.

 

[Jadams]

How big are your tanks going to be?? I have a 1g on my desk, and absoulty love it. You guys should find a way to plumb all 3 tanks together with one main sump system!!...hahaha...just my $0.02

send some pics for us!

 

[jjcool]

I'll get things started. I decided to puchase a cadlights tank. I really liked the size of the 9 gallon, but they were out of lighting. I ended up ordering the tank with the built-in filtration and no lighting for a discounted price. I'm mostly happy with the tank. From all the good stuff I've heard about cadlights I thought the tank was going to be perfect. The rim of the tank had two small chips, the adhesive backing was cut too small so it doesn't completely cover the corners, and the plastic trim in the back was cut with whatever tool they used for cutting the adhesive backing. I was very frustrated after spending so much money on a 9 gallon tank. Once I put water in the tank and plugged in the pump I quickly forgot about the small flaws in the tank. the tank looks beautiful. The flow of the pump is perfect. In fact if I adjust the pump all the way up it's too much flow and water will spill out of the front of the tank.

Next came the sand. I was going to order live sand from Tampa Bay Saltwater since I plan on getting my live rock from them. However I found out I was going to the outer banks on business so I decided to get my own live sand. I know it's probably not as good, but it looks good to me and it should serve the same purpose. I also got a few mole crabs by accident. I threw them in the tank, but I'm pretty sure they won't make it.

Below is a picture of my tank where it currently stands.

The orange tip is my automatic water top off system. It's a Kent Marine Aquadose. It just has a manual adjustment and works similar to an IV drip system. I have it showing because I'm working on fine tuning the rate. Once I get it calibrated correctly I'll stick it inside the overflow box.
We plan on ordering the live rock next week. I sent Richard at TBS an email about the rock and he said they have some killer pieces for Nano's. James and I are going to split a shipment since Pete already has his live rock. I'll be sure to post some pics once the rock comes in. With everything I've heard about TBS, I'm pretty excited.

Josh

 

[jjcool]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9860627#post9860627 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Jadams
How big are your tanks going to be?? I have a 1g on my desk, and absoulty love it. You guys should find a way to plumb all 3 tanks together with one main sump system!!...hahaha...just my $0.02

send some pics for us!

mine is 9 gallons, Pete's is 10, and James' is a 5 gallon with an Eheim canister, making it about 6. We talked about plumbing them together but it was more a joke than anything. Our desks are too far away to make it feasible. Plus we need some redundancy in case one of our tanks isn't doing so well we can move the corals/fish to another tank.

Josh

 

[jjcool]

This is the light that I bought for my tank. It's a 150w 14000k HQI MH pendant. I was planning on just hanging the reflector by itself above the tank, but when I hang it 6-12" above the tank I get lots of reflection and light scattering all over my desk. I have to hang the light about 2-3" from the water to get rid of that, but I know that will get way too hot. At this point I'm thinking I can get some sort of housing from a home improvement store to mount the reflector in. Hopefully that will work. I'm hoping with the high flow pump and the 150w MH I should be able to keep most things that I want to keep.

Josh

 

[dblase]

sounds cool

 

[pledosophy]

150w for a 9g can keep anything, except things that need to be more shielded from light. IMO you might be happier long term with a 70w MH the the 150 for light issues with the coral and with heat issues. JMO

 

[jjcool]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9865559#post9865559 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by pledosophy
150w for a 9g can keep anything, except things that need to be more shielded from light. IMO you might be happier long term with a 70w MH the the 150 for light issues with the coral and with heat issues. JMO

Well, you're probably right, but if I can figure out a way to put the light and reflector in a housing and direct the light directly down, then I can hang it as high as I want and it won't be a big deal. Plus, I can build some rock overhangs or clifs to shade the corals that don't need so much light. I think it will probably work out ok. I hope it does because I've already spent a lot of money on the light and I don't want to buy a 70w MH in addition to what I have now in the 150w.

Speaking of the housing to help direct the light downward, any ideas on how I might accomplish that? you can see in the picture that when the light leaves the reflector it goes out in a very wide angle. I need something that will help to direct the light straight down.

Josh

 

[JargonMan]

My First Salt Tank

My First Salt Tank

<img src="http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/507/149104OfficeTank20070419.jpg" />


This is a pic of my tank. I've plumbed the bottom and connected it to an eheim ecco 2236. I added an eheim hobby pump for additional flow, but I can't get the plumbing right, so I'm a little unhappy with it right now.

I'm using 2 T5's in my cubicle hood for lighting. On is a 10k and one is an actinic. The substrate is from the beaches where I grew up in Cambria. I know I'm going to get some grief over it, but it's beautiful.

When I hooked just the ecco up, the tank temp stayed around 76-78. When I added the hobby pump the temp now is 79-82. This is all without a heater. I'm a little nervous about it. I'm not sure what is more important, more flow, or lower temp.

James

 

[Str8baller]

as long as the temp stays constant the corals really dont mind. Its much more stressful on the livestock to have it go from 79 (at nights) to 82 during the day. And you want flow, for your 5g go with a Maxi-Jet model 400 (106gph) your going to want about 90-110 gph. Back to the temperature as long as your below 84 degrees your fine. Ideal reef tank temperature is 80 degrees. But i had a huge heat problem in my 12g (it was 85.3 degrees) and nothing died. So overall when it comes to heat you just want consistency Finally Good luck, its a great hobby!

 

[nanokeeper]

10 gallon nano at work

10 gallon nano at work

Hello everyone,

I guess it's about time I posted too. I set this tank up about 2 months ago using a standard 10 gal aga. Since the tank sits on my desk at work my goal was for it to need very little maintenance. I plan to keep simple softies and lps. So far the only upkeep I've done is perform is a 1 gal water change per week . That keeps things in check and replenishes all depleted trace elements. I have kept the equipment to the bare minimum. I installed a piece of black acrylic in the back left of the tank to work as small overflow/refugium/equipment hiding place. There is a single 450 gph pump with a hydor rotating wavemaker connected. The lighting is a coralife 96 watt quad power compact that came with another tank that I have at home. It is definitely not my first choice in lighting (due to it's inefficiency) but I was not using it, it will provide enough light for what I plan on keeping, and it fits perfectly. There is also a small Jager heater in the overflow and a refugium light hidden behind the tank. This tank is skimmerless and sumpless. I have gone very slow with this tank and so far it has worked out very well. I did recently add a small fan to the tank since it was running at 84 degrees. Since adding the fan the temp doesn't go above 82 now.

The few corals that are in the tank are flurishing. There was never a cycle and there has been no bad algae to speak of. I don't have fish in the tank yet, but I will probably add a small goby in the future. I'm currently housing a few corals for Josh and James since their tanks are not running yet. That pretty much sums it up. Thanks for reading and hope you all enjoy the progress of our Nano tanks.

Oh ya. Sorry about the quality of the pictures. After cropping them to the correct size they look terrible. But it gives you an idea.

<img src="http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/507/15974100_0653.jpg" alt="10 Gallon Nano at Work" />

<img src="http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/507/15974100_0654.jpg"alt="10 Gallon Nano at Work" />

 

[jmmicioni]

hi everyone
im really new to this also. i bought a 12g aquapod from a fellow employee at work in jan for 200.00. it came with all the test kits, lr, sand, and other supplies i needed. no fish. he was frustrated. had major algae problems among other things. he couldnt get the parameters right. ultimately he couldnt afford to keep his tank at work and his 110g at home. well needless to say 4 mos later and not knowing anything i now have 12 pounds lr, some snails and hermits, 1 xenia, 1 green bubble tip anenome(spelled wrong im sure), 1 3in frag of zoo's i bought while in san francisco last month, 3 green mushrooms, a 5 in group of green star polyps, a mated pair of true percs and i coral banded shrimp. i have this tank on my desk at work. and all is doing well. im working my way up to a 45 gallon for home. i learned alot from reef central and my son who is clayspst on rc. he has been constructing his own 110 gallon tank for his home.
i need to figure out how do pictures on here. when i do ill post them.

 

[jjcool]

So as of a couple of days ago I was prepared to order our TBS live rock this Thursday so we could receive it on Friday. I was talking with James and got the feeling that it was going to be a lot of time and effort to coordinate picking up the rock from the airport. Although it's covered with crazy life, it didn't look like they had very interesting shapes either. James and I talked it over and since he had roughly $70 in store credit to a lfs, he decided to get some rock there and I would try to find some locally as well. I'm sure we'll regret it later as we continue to see beautiful pictures of rock filled with life from TBS. Hopefully James will be posting a picture of his tank now that it has the rock in it, and I should be picking up some rock either this week or the next. It depends on what the LFS has in stock. Stay tuned for more pics soon.

 

[Dwarf Seahorses]

You won't be disappointed with TBS liverock. The life on it is second to none. He may not get very interesting shapes but they are still very functional and even pleasing to the eye.

 

[jjcool]

well, I went to the best LFS in the area yesterday because they had just received a shipment of live rock. I ended up purchasing one new piece and one piece that had been at the store a while. The new piece has lots of crazy colors and life on it. Problem is it smells bad and all that stuff is dying. I'll just try to do really frequent water changes and hopefully some of it will live. I added some carbon as well. I got the older piece because I really liked it's shape. I also realized that now that I have living things in my tank that need light I should put my MH on there, even if it's just temporary. We'll, this is going to be really temporary. I put two metal rulers across the top of the tank and put the light on that. Sure it's too close to the tank and will heat it up, but I can just run it for a little while and turn it off before it gets the tank too hot. I have to say, I'm really pleased with the way the rock looks under the light. Hopefully I can figure out some permanent solution to make it look this nice. Here's some pics.

(you'll have to excuse the quality of the pictures. I took them with the camera on my phone. That's the easiest/quickest way to post pics here at work)

 

[JargonMan]

Office Tank With Rock

Office Tank With Rock

<img src="http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/149104Office_Tank_20070507.jpg">


So,

As Josh mentioned, I got some live rock from a LFS. I had almost $70 in store credit because I had bred some Kribensis and traded them in for credit.

I was sort of bummed but also happy. I really like the shape of the rock and the life it had on it, but I didn't like that it wasn't aquacultured. I had been going for minimal impact. So much for ideals.

The rock went in nicely once I figured out how to position it. It has some chicken livers on it and some pretty coralline. It also had tube worms and bristle worms. One of the bristles died, and it looks like all the tube worms died. I'm not sure why. I tested my water today and it had no ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates.

When I set this tank up (almost a month ago) I had some organic trash in the filter, so I think that helped it cycle. After having the rock in it for a week with still no ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates I think that says the water quality is doing good.

I did have some pretty pink coralline start to bleach. The store had the rock under basically no lighting, but my tank has ~42 watts of T5 lighting, so I think that's what caused the bleaching. I didn't know I needed to slowly acclimate to the more intense lighting or else my coralline would possible bleach.

Anyhow, enough writing. I still have some more plumbing things to do (I'll send a pick of that mess later).

James

 

[jjcool]

So when I got my sand from the Outer Banks, I intentionally tried to not get any of the mole crabs that were digging in the sand because I knew they wouldnt make it in my tank. Or so I thought. When I got the sand home I found four of them in there. I went ahead and threw them in the tank knowing they would die soon.

One of the bigger ones did die. I think it's because when I added my first two pieces of rock I had a huge ammonia swing and hit 5ppm. Now it's down to 0.5ppm since I added some more cured rock. It looks like there are three of these guys living in the tank and doing their thing. I had no idea this is how they ate, but apparently they use these two feather-like filters that they stick up in the air and filter out organic matter. It's a lot of fun to watch. Occasionally the flow will uncover one and he'll swim around the tank really fast and then dig back in.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xj6Do70_sxE

(I really wanted to embed the video, but it looks like that's been disabled. So I guess you'll have to go to youtube to watch it.)

 

[jjcool]

Wow, it's been a long time since we posted on here. Starting up a reef tank definitely takes patience. So I built a stand to hold my light above the tank. That way I can get rid of the metal rulers. The stand is made out of pvc pipe that I spray painted black. I'll eventually build some kind of box for the light to go in so I can add some fans and a moon light of some sort. The tank still heats up, but I have a little desk fan pointed toward it that really helps out. If the tank gets hot I run it for about 5 minutes and it brings everything back to normal. I don't run it all the time because it's way too loud. Below are some more poor quality pics from my cell phone. Since my parameters seem to be in check I went ahead and added my xenia that Pete had been keeping for me. It seems ok, but the flow is too high for it so it doesn't pulse. That's a bummer because that's one of the main reasons I like the xenia. Also, it's shrunk like crazy compared to the size it was in Pete's tank. I'm hoping after I leave it alone for a few days it will get bigger again. I also got a orange cap montipora frag but don't have any pics to post. Hopefully can post some in the future as long as it survives.

The camera phone is really killing me. I'm going to have to start bringing in my digital camera from home once a week or something. My apologies for the crappy pictures.

 

[Middleton5]

I have a 12 gallon nanocube on my cubicle desk at work. I love it. So much fun to look over at it and see what is going on. I think my coworkers enjoy it too as they frequently stop by to watch the action. Good luck with all of yours!

Jeri