20 Gal Nano Reef Build thread!

[ryanb69]

the clean up crew has entered the tank! I got my water tested at bayside corals and everything is good so I picked up a cleanup crew. It has:
1 Narcerius Snail (they only had one)
5 Blue legged Hermits
4 Astrea Snails

Its awesome to finally see something moving in the tank! Next week I hope to maybe add my first fish. It will be a clown fish, but I am still trying to decide what species I would like! I want to have a mated pair, so I will be buying 2!

Heres some snaily photos





Narcerius Snail burrowed in



The shrimp after one night with the snails! They picked it apart



A very popular rock

[NastayNatron]

Looking good man! Lookin forward to seeing some fish in there!

[ryanb69]

The fish are officially in the tank. I got an orange ocellaris and a black ocellaris. I acclimated them with airling tubing, tying 2 knots in it to get a proper drip. I added some carbon (2 tbsp) to the back to help with keeping the water clear. here are some pics


aclimating

the clowns

Marlin

Bagheera

the two hangin

[ryanb69]

Wow! how far the tank has come in 2 short weeks amazed me. The coraline algae has spread all over and now all my rock is turning purple I picked up my first coral and shrimp today, so that was also very exciting! I bought some green zoanthids, and a duncan. The shrimp is a skunk cleaner. I dipped both my coral in Coral RX, and I drip acclimated my Shrimp for 1 hour and 15 minutes. I bought frozen mysis shrimp and fed my clowns their first frozen food (in my tank anyways) and they absolutely loved it. I have been Feeding new life spectrum pellets to them, so the mysis is definatly a great treat. The shrimp is nameless as of now, but I will update as soon as he gets an official name! Here are some pictures of my reef-in-the-making

Acclimation



Zooanthids



in tank



placement



opening



fully open

duncan



in tank



begininning to open



currently open to this



shrimp in tank



coral rx



mysis



side view of zoas, and duncan in the distance

[Nano]

looks great buddy I bet your glad to finally have life in there

[ryanb69]

absolutley! cant wait to add my next fish, a bangaii cardinal

[ryanb69]

what a crazy past day it has been. So its been a while since my last post, But the tank WAS coming along great. everything was awesome, until yesterday evening around 5pm I heard water running in my house. I checked the tap and everything was fine, untill I noticed water on the floor. Lots of water. I immediatly ran to my tank, and couldnt see any leaks what so ever, but 1/4 of the tank wate was gone. Then, I opened the bottom of my stand. A river was flowing out of my tank and directly onto my new hardwood floor 5g total of water spewed onto the floor. I caught the rest of the water in 5gallon pails and had an insane evening trying to keep my fish/shrimp alive. I will get into more details with my next post, but in general I sped to petsmart and got a new 20g tank, and the ALL THE FISH AND SHRIMP ARE IN THEIR NEW HOME ALIVE. The cause of the problem? The bottom of my old tank had a massive crack in the BOTTOM PANE. I found this extremely odd as my stand was completely level. I will post pics and any more details next post.

[Myka]

Crappy to hear about the busted tank! That sucks, just be thankful it wasn't a bigger tank!

Originally Posted by ryanb69

Wow! how far the tank has come in 2 short weeks amazed me. The coraline algae has spread all over and now all my rock is turning purple

Sorry to say that is not coralline, it is cyanobacteria. Coralline doesn't grow that fast, plus the bubbles in it are a telltale sign. The dead shrimp you started with was rather large for the size of the tank, so there is likely to be an abundance on nutrients in the water now. A couple fairly large waterchanges (25-50%) should help fix that for you.

Are you on SaskReef? If so, what's your name over there? I haven't noticed a build thread over there.

[ryanb69]

Originally Posted by Myka

Sorry to say that is not coralline, it is cyanobacteria.

Thanks for the tip!

Well today I will finally post some pictures and details of my tank disaster. I was sitting on my couch watching tv when I heard water running in my house. I looked at my sink to check if it was on, but it wasn't. Then I looked at my tank to see that it was only 3/4 full. I stood up and noticed water all over the floor. When I opened cupboard doors to my stand there was a river of water pouring out. I took my water change buckets and started catching the water. I caught one pail, then dumped that water in the toilet and switched out pails. I filled one pail up with my liverock, and then set it under the stand to fill up with the tanks water. Then I netted my fish, shrimp, and crabbed my corals/which snails i could see and put them in a water pitcher with water from the tank. Then with my final 5gal pail I put the remaining live rock, my sand, and caught the rest of the water from the tank. I drove to petsmart and purchased a new 20gal tank with the same dimensions as mine so the light would fit. Before i put it on my stand i checked it again with a level and it was perfect so I set the tank on the stand, and started to aquascape my liverock.


after my first pail was in I dumped the water from the pail in and added a heater to the main tank. The water in my pitcher with the fish was down to 73 degrees, so i added a very small heater to that.

Now that i had a pail free I mixed some new salt water and started heating it. Then I took my final pail of liverock and added to the aquascape, dumped in the water, and dumped in the sand.



I forgot about the heater in my pitcher (rookie mistake) and it managed to heat up to 79 way faster then it should have. I removed the heater and added it to the main tank along with the pail of new mixed salt water. The rest of the evening consisted of switching my small heater bewteen big tank and pitcher every 5 to 10 mins to attempt to keep the pitcher at a constant heat. Finally in about 1.5 hours the main tank was the same tamp as the pitcher so i added the livestock. I then added a powerhead, but the tank was not full enough to run my skimmer.



I mixed one more pail of salt water but it was 1:00 am and I didn't have time to wait for it to heat up (I had a university midterm the next morning at 8:30) so I left it heat over night and i called it a day. The next morning i added the new water and plugged all my electronics back in.





Since then the tank has become crystal clear and everything seems completely happy. I really like my new aquascape, so that is a bonus. A big thanks to my brother Nathan (nastaynatron) who called my during the chaos and gave me the right info on how to save my fish

--my house in chaos







---the crack

[NastayNatron]

Well done man! I'm glad too see you lost nothing! It was a chaotic evening thats for sure. The new tank is looking good already! Keep up the good work man.