chrisdamage's nano odyssey... beware dialup! ;-)

[chrisdamage]

almost 1 year in the making...

Specs:
-Oceanic BioCube 14g
-3" sandbed
-20 to 22lbs. of LR
-weekly waterchanges consisting of about 4 gallons
-daily feeding with a just a pinch of tiny pellet food and every 3 or 4 days I do a full feeding with Mysis, Cyclopeeze, Krill, and Prime Reef
-daily dosing of a 2 part solution
-bi-weekly dosing of iodine
-stock lighting
-I've made some simple modifications:
-took out the bio-balls and replaced them with LR rubble
-took out the tray in the first chamber and added more LR rubble and some chaeto. I scraped off the black vinyl on the back of the aquarium and placed a CoralLife 2 x 9w PC fixture to grow the macro algae.

Coral:
-2 species of Xenia
-Anchor Coral
-Fist sized Toadstool Leather
-Finger Leather
-various color morphs of Ricordia florida(green, blue, orange, and everything in between!)
-various Ricordia yuma(2 yellow and purple, 1 yellow and blue, 2 orange and purple, and 2 green and purple)
-shrooms galore(neon green, bright red, and a pretty bright blue one that I purchased from Wayne that is about 5" in diameter)
-too many types of zoos to count
-Open Brain
-Green Star Polyps

Livestock:
-1 True Percula Anemone Fish(George)
-1 Purple Firefish(Fred)
-1 Neon Goby(Lester)
-2 Featherduster Worms
-1 Blood Shrimp(Jacque... I know, I know... my gf named it haha)
-various snails(mostly turbos and a few Nassarius)
-various hermits
-a ton of little featherdusters everywhere and tons of pods


there are some ok macro shots and a few full tank shots... Hope you all like!


Front Tank Shot


Right side of tank...


Left side of tank...


one of my back filtration chambers converted to a refugium with lots of little feather dusters...


my open brain(about fist sized)


some Green Star Polyps that are growing like wildfire... they have started to grow on the back of the tank.


some Ricordia florida that I bought from Wayne and the very top of one of my yellow yumas(bottom right hand corner)...


a picture of some of my other Ricordia florida(they aren't too happy in this picture because I justs finished glueing them to a dead SPS skeleton) and some more of my yumas(just barely... I really need to get some good pictures of my yumas because I have some really nice ones)


a picture of a large zoa colony and the bottom of my anchor coral(top of picture)


my toadstool leather(he is about fist sized)

I hope you guys enjoy these and leave me some feedback!!!

[dobejazz]

Very Nice ! I have GSP covering the back of my nano and I love it

[VWD]

Nice pictures

[ReefNeck]

Looking very good Chris!

[Loverotties]

Very Nice!The left side pic shows LED lights in a reflection,is that the stock lighting?

[chrisdamage]

oh... no, I originally bought two LED desk-lamp fixtures from Office MAX for, I think, $25 bucks each... I originally used them to light my fuge, but after I bought the little 2 x 9W CoralLife fixture I just used them to add some supplemental lighting to some of my corals...

[DarthOcellaris]

If you don't mind me asking, where did you buy your tank and how much was it? I saw one at a LFS today for 199.99 and wondered if that's too much for that tank.

[chrisdamage]

do a search on Craig's List... I see them on there for around $100 bucks usually... but then again you really have almost no wayof telling how long the lights have been used for or anything like that. I would honestly just go buy it new. $200 new sounds fair to me. In fact, I think I paid something like $450 for mine about a year ago... I got ripped off

[DarthOcellaris]

Craig's list rules

[DarthOcellaris]

Thanks for the feedback. I think I might go buy that I just want something nice looking for my desk at work.

[DarthOcellaris]

btw, your's look awesome!

[hillaryworks]

Gorgeous! Really, quite inspiring.... makes me want to head to my LFS

[Fish Eat Fish]

I just bought one for $170 and I love it! Ive got 16lbs of live and 3 inch sand bed. Everything is still stock on mine and im still in the cycling but I hope to have my tank looking like this one some day! Did the conversion from the wet dry to the refuge seem to help alot?

[chrisdamage]

haha... funny thing about that... my nitrates for the first few months without the fuge hovered at around 40ppm(this is pretty darn high). I chalk this up to being a total noob and overfeeding, and only doing a small waterchange and not a 4 gallon water change. With the fuge they usually stay around 20ppm. to around 30ppm(still by no means good, but noticeably better). The mistake I made and teh subsequent reason my nitrates are so high is because I made my refugium in the wrong chamber. I put the refugium in the first chamber(the one that sucks the water in from the main display). In hindsight, I would have put the little fuge in the middle chamber because then I could put some filter floss or some other substance that I could easily clean every couple days or so in the first chamber. And another plus would be that there would be no light ovespill from the fuge into the main display. Before anyone interested does any modifying to their BC, PM me and I will be more than willing to help out with it and give advice. Learn from my mistakes! haha

I'm actually kind of bummed out a little that this aquarium will be coming down in a few months. I will be moving most of the contents into my 50Breeder tank. I think however that I am going to place all of the rics and yumas into a picotope aquarium for safe keeping. Going from stock BC14 lighting to 300W of MH will probably not be good for them.

[jenajet]

Tank looks great! Your rics should be fine even under mh. They are a higher light mushroom. I have mine at the top of my 90 with 500 watt mh and they love the light. The main thing is to start them at the bottom and adjust higher slowly.