Arnav’s 12 Gallon Canister Kingdom

[arnav263]

new to the community! starting this journal as i see its quite important lol. Im a college student who started this 12 gallon UNS tank with a canister filter which was supposed to be a low budget softie tank, which over the past six months turned into a mixed reef with Acros such as sunset Millepora and PC rainbow, Torches including a Holy Grail and a Hellfire. I aim to work on this setup a lot, by getting a custom 30 gallon tank to maximize the stand i made and drilling it to have a sump below.

Equipment:
- Tank - UNS 45T 12 Gallon ultra clear rimless
- Filter - Old Eheim Canister with full stack of ceramic rings and bag of carbon
- Heater - Inline Hydor heater
- Light - AI Prime 16 HD Reef
- Wavemakers - 2 Hygger wavemakers - 951 and 222

Feeding/Dosing
- Fish food - Hikari Frozen Mysis
- Dosing - About to start All for Reef and Aminos

Livestock
- Two Clownfish, one midnight, one platinum
- One Pink Streak Wrasse
- One McCoskers Flasher Wrasse
- One Cleaner Shrimp
- 2 scarlet hermits
- 2 nassarius, trochus, and cerith snails

 

[Darkxerox]

Good start, same size I had in college too. You can get RO water from the labs like I did to help not having a unit in my dorm.

Highly recommend rehoming the flasher wrasse since they need much more room. If not then think of getting a lid. I've seen them jump like crazy.

 

[arnav263]

Good start, same size I had in college too. You can get RO water from the labs like I did to help not having a unit in my dorm.

Highly recommend rehoming the flasher wrasse since they need much more room. If not then think of getting a lid. I've seen them jump like crazy.

hey! thanks for the insight, i still live at home with my parents and commute to college, and my dad has been in the hobby for years, so luckily i have a 6 stage rodi at home, as for the flasher wrasse, this one is a tiny full grown, and is maximum 2.25 inches, as for now it is doing great, but i am setting up a 75 gallon soon so i will consider rehoming it.

 

[MolaMola]

Welcome! I love your island - I really like seeing some sandbed in a tank instead of all rock. Do you find having the tank near the window increases algae growth or is it not an issue and just additional light?

 

[arnav263]

Welcome! I love your island - I really like seeing some sandbed in a tank instead of all rock. Do you find having the tank near the window increases algae growth or is it not an issue and just additional light?

luckily for me, with advice from my dad and youtube, i’ve ran this tank as a high import high export tank since the very start, maintaining low nutrients, so having the window near my tank has never caused an algae issue, and just serves as extra light. though i have had some bouts of cyano as of recent, but that’s due to my nutrients falling lower than they should be and not the window.

 

[arnav263]

Got my dads old Growtech Tec iii NG parastalic dosing pumps, so going to set that up to start dosing Tropic Marin All for Reef soon as my SPS have started to use almost half a DKH of alkalinity per day. Got a filter kit today so got some cool photos in blue light.

 

[arnav263]

Got the doser setup today, it was a PITA to get it calibrated considering this unit is almost as old as me, but its a good stepping stone until i get the hydros unit for this tank, got it setup on 4 mL of All for reef per day, need to bring my alk back up, and then ill have it at a stable 3 mL per day until my acros start using more. hopefully ill see more consistency with my alkalinity despite the drastic usage from my sps and lps. i want to see more fluff in my torches and their flesh, and better more consistent growth and coloring on my acros.