have a successful nano reef tank

Our tank’s been up an running for 5 months with no major hiccups yet. It looks great, and our clownfish have officially paired up (after the female decided the male was beaten up enough – it’s ok, this is a normal clownfish thing they go thru). I encourage anyone interested in this to give it a try, but be prepared to spend a bit (or find a club that can hook you up with used gear) to do it properly. It is beautiful living art and a little mini-ecosystem in your home!

but it’s very worth it. So beautiful.
AO

It’s alive 2 months later.
Attached is a pic that you can barely see…
sps coral
a clown fish
the legs of the shrimp
the shell of a blue leg hermit crab
:)

They are showing signs of pairing, one clown’s doing the shaky dance pretty regularly, and they definitely know when we are around. They surf the currents and generally provide good entertainment. They also eat voraciously.

Our corals are growing, and overall things look good. we lost a snail to the stinging soft coral. but we have had several hermit crab molts, and everything else is very healthy. Now to maintain it that way…

We got a pair of true perculas, clown fish as you’d say. They are pretty cool. Just hanging out riding the current so far. Hopefully they’ll find themselves at home in the tank, and enjoy what we’ve got setup. So far they haven’t moved around much.
Here’s a pic in case you wanted to check em out.
http://static.flickr.com/9/86609948_315578a05e.jpg
lofi since it’s a web cam snap.
AO

Got some corals this weekend. JJ gave us some softies, no ideas the names, and at yesterdays Noob reef meeting we were hooked up w/ some Sweet SPS. We shared the love and gave JJ a nice frag of sps, we’ve still got a few. The tank certainly has more inhabantans now, off to check the specs now.
AO

WVC11B is what I think we might get so that we can have a web cam on the tank. How cool would that be? be able to check out our fish by firefox…
AO

The tank is comming along nicely. Snails are doing well, feather dusters are still alive. Not sure where we are in the cycle, but hopefully soon we can add some more aquatic life soon. I’ve enjoyed spending time just looking at the tank trying to find new life, or watching what the various things are doing. Next up, is to determine what’s next with the tank…
AO

day 1 we put in the saltwater & live rock (along with powerheads, filter, heater)
The live rock had many feather dusters and one snail we found later; we’d also gotten three snails to sort of see how the cycling was going
day 2 I think we left it alone but looked at it a lot
day 3 we added sand which made everything dusty for 24 hrs or so
day 4 I rinsed the powerhead filters due to silt covering the intakes pretty well; we also discovered a very large large fireworm in one of our lr – and it ate a few of our small featherdusters – we do have a few smaller bristles but much much smaller and they do not appear to be eating anything other than debris
day 5 – took live rock with the large worm out
day 6 – exchanged live rock at store for a different and larger piece
day 7 – just watching everything

We have a small diatom bloom going on, and our ammonia is defintely increased (seems to be about .3ish now) with no nitrites yet… the snails seem fine, the feathers are still out but not as perked up as they were in the fresh saltwater. I’d like to not lose them if it’s possible. We’ll be watching this closely in the next few days. At the right time I will probably add some live bacteria but I’m holding out for a bit on that…

Very exciting to see it all come together.

he’s been saying he wanted a tank for a long time and yet it was something he was unlikely to get going himself – I used to fishkeep a long time ago so I was interested in helping out. Since our good friend who passed away had several tanks, I’d decided after his passing this should be what we did for our tank. Talking to his twin bro, who is also our friend, we found out they were into reef tanks so, here we are.

The tank looks awesome and it’s basically bare right now. We got what I believe is a good set up. We just have the water and the live rock – we have a lot to learn before critterizing but this is very exciting. We have been looking at all kinds of pictures of what we might be able to put in the tank including fish.

oh, yeah, ... this is my husband’s gift so I have to try and not to take it over, but I am pretty excited about it too… sigh.