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fruitbythefoote

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Hello!

My name is Natalie and I'm new to reefing and Mountain View! Recently, I've been working on a 10g nano reef. I understand it will likely be a difficult starter, but I didn't want to wait any longer and this is what I can do. I'd also like to think I'm being realistic with tank plans of "hardy" life.

I recently finished my cycle, and I'm moving into the stocking phase. I am currently the proud owner of a cleaner shrimp and a healthy diatom bloom - for which I'm hoping I'll be able to pick up some CUC this afternoon.

Other than that, any words of advice or encouragement are welcome! [emoji4]

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Welcome! The diatom blooms and algae blooms are part of any new tank, whether it be 10g or 100g. The big thing is to make sure you don't get impatient and try to do things too quickly. :).

What are you using for equipment? One of the best investments you can make is an automatic top off.

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tygunn said:
Welcome! The diatom blooms and algae blooms are part of any new tank, whether it be 10g or 100g. The big thing is to make sure you don't get impatient and try to do things too quickly. :).

What are you using for equipment? One of the best investments you can make is an automatic top off.

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Thanks!

As far as equipment goes, I'm running a penguin 200 powerfilter w/purigen and chemipure elite, current USA orbit LED fixture, a basic Powerhead and heater, and a DIY gravity powered ATO (aka the fanciest way I know of saying an upside water bottle). I have 10 lbs of live sand and 11 lbs of live rock

I noticed a lot of evap throughout the cycle, so I added a glass top in the hopes of keeping that loss and subsequent swings a little more manageable.



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Well I don't have a whole lot of experience with nanos, but some words of advice.

1: Don't overstock your tank, whether it's fish or invertebrates, while many can get behind not putting too many fish in a tank, people very often overdo their clean up crew and there really isn't that much food to eat in there. I would recommend at most 2 snails ("turban" variety) and leave it at that.

2: Clean off all the diatoms off the glass that you can, let your filters catch all that stuff when it gets into the water, if you have a turkey baster and see it on your rocks and what not feel free to try to blow it off

3: There's one big issue with mechanical filtration, it's fine that you have it, it's just that it's really easy to get lazy about cleaning them, then they tend to do the opposite of being helpful. Now I'm not familiar with the penguin filter, if you have some sort of sponge filtration in there, clean it out once a week at a minimum.

4: There's lots more stuff out there and things can seem overwhelming at times, enjoy your tank, the great thing about a small tank is that if you screw something up it's relatively easy to fix it.
 
welcome to bar Natalie!

I guess I should add Welcome to the Bay Area too, sounds like you're a new resident of mountain view area.
 
Welcome to the club and the neighborhood. My wife and I just moved to Mountain View this time last year.

It sounds like you've got a good plan for your nano, best of luck. If you need any help with water tests or want to check our tank out, feel free to drop us a line.

It's always a great time starting a new tank when you get to see things start coming to life, even if a lot of it is algae or dinos :)
 
Welcome Natalie. Is this your first aquarium?

You might want to reconsider the glass cover. SW tanks like lots of exposed water surface.
 
aqua-nut said:
Welcome Natalie. Is this your first aquarium?

You might want to reconsider the glass cover. SW tanks like lots of exposed water surface.
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Thank you all for the warm welcome and advice!

This is my first SW but I've been keeping fish for about 7 years, about 3 years ago having moved into planteds.

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fruitbythefoote said:
Thanks!

As far as equipment goes, I'm running a penguin 200 powerfilter w/purigen and chemipure elite, current USA orbit LED fixture, a basic Powerhead and heater, and a DIY gravity powered ATO (aka the fanciest way I know of saying an upside water bottle). I have 10 lbs of live sand and 11 lbs of live rock

I noticed a lot of evap throughout the cycle, so I added a glass top in the hopes of keeping that loss and subsequent swings a little more manageable.

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Click to expand...

Sounds like a reasonable setup to get running with. I don't think you'll have too much trouble with a partial cover. My 37g had a partial cover until just recently, and it never caused problems. REALLY cut down on evap.
 
Also wanted to welcome you to the club! I also moved here from planted tanks (still have one set up) and I really like this hobby!
 
tygunn said:
Lol, on a side note I must be going backwards. I've got a reef tank and just started up a small 10g planted tank for my daughter :)
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Lol, I just picked up a MrAqua low iron 7.5g cube for me daughter. She wants to do a planted tank for her betta.


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Vhuang168 said:
Lol, I just picked up a MrAqua low iron 7.5g cube for me daughter. She wants to do a planted tank for her betta.
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Check out Neptune Aquatics if you need any help figuring things out. The staff there was great; they pointed me towards reasonable lights and starter plants to get my daughter's little tank up and running.
 
Vhuang168 said:
Lol, I just picked up a MrAqua low iron 7.5g cube for me daughter. She wants to do a planted tank for her betta.


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Neptune's is a great resource and planteds are lots of fun. Are you thinking high or low tech? Either way, it should be a walk in the park compared to a reef :)

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I'm thinking low tech. But we'll see.

She was mentioning she wanted carpeting plants so we may have to do CO2.

I'll be giving her my AI Prime to use so lighting is not going to be an issue.

Either going to pick up a small canister filter or use an Aquaclear 30, undecided yet.


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Vhuang168 said:
I'm thinking low tech. But we'll see.

She was mentioning she wanted carpeting plants so we may have to do CO2.

I'll be giving her my AI Prime to use so lighting is not going to be an issue.

Either going to pick up a small canister filter or use an Aquaclear 30, undecided yet.


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I went low tech and lower light. I don't need any more equipment to take care of on top of the reef tank. Lol.

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I thought I would update this thread with some info...I've been riding the struggle bus hard.

Let's see where we left off I had been struggling with a diatom Bloom. That has been defeated! ... only to be immediately followed up with what I now believe are dinoflagellates.

At first I (mistakenly) approached them with a 50% water change. This lead to a full scale outbreak and a dead clownfish. However I've taken a new approach. I removed the vast majority of the visable algea and have gone dark (planning for 3 days). Additionally I've begun h2o2 treatment 1 ml/10g and increased pH so we'll see where this goes.

Any insight would be helpful!

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