My Nano...

[SaltyMist]

Well, it's been almost a month since I last posted about my nanos.

And......

I've changed quite a lot of things lately.

1. The 12 gallon eclipse tank was retired to a terrarium tank because I managed to put a big long scratch inside on the front pane and was unable to polish it out. But I did buy a 20 gallon high tank to switch it's inhabitants to. I added a dwarf lion fish to the 20 gallon but then got freaked out when I almost got stung by it becoming overly agressive, so I returned it to the LFS and opted to get 3 baby puffers that the store had aclimated to full salt water instead. It's going strong and everyone is healthy, the 20g tanks current inhabitants are a ceylon puffer, 2 green spotted puffers, 1 green serpent star, 1 chocolate chip starfish, 1 anenome hermit crab, 3 scarlet hermit crabs, 1 emerald crab (or so Im told that is it's name, it's green and quite content to eat the algae off of the liverock with it's claws and will shake it's claws up in the air when one of the puffers comes near it like a winner of a boxing match) and 1 margarita snail (I think 2 or 3 of the original margarita snails were eaten by the puffers and the rest were put in one of the nano cubes and are doing well).

2. The nano with the clown (Theodore) is doing well, and is quite sparkling clear most of the time. Small feather dusters are appearing on the liverock now and it's current inhabitants are, 1 clown (theodore), about 5 "algae" snails (thats what they were listed in the LFS as), 1 peppermint shrimp (there were two of them, but one died just the other day after about a month in the tank), and 1 scarlet hermit crab, and one large feather duster. All of them are doing well right now.

3. The other nano on the other side of the sofa had held my domino damsel, but he all of a sudden wasn't doing so well, so he became dwarf lion fish food before the dwarf was returned to the LFS. Then the tank sat vacant for about 2 weeks while I decided what I was going to do with it. Eventually I decided to ditch it (3 small tanks are just too much trouble to deal with, with maintenance and what not), and convert it into a small goldfish tank that now has 2 inhabitants (Richard and Hyacinth), my goldfish.

Heres some recent shots of them in the next couple replies.

[SaltyMist]

Heres theodores (the clownfish) tank, sorry for the out of focus shots, I'll have to try again some other time. All of the little white flecks that you see in the tank are some form of life (good life Im told) and only come out when the tank is unlit, and will disappear about an hour after the lights are turned on in the morning. I can't remember the name of them right now, but a few people told me that they are beneficial to the tanks bio system.

[SaltyMist]

Heres the converted nano cube to the goldfish tank, which underwent a serious brown algae bloom, when the tank was a barebottom tank, then I finally came to grips with it, and added purple gravel substrate so they would have something to do during the day like scavenge for food. It's kinda cloudy right now but will clear up in a day or so.

[SaltyMist]

And heres the puffers tank, it is using a cascade 1000 canister filter, has about 25lbs of liverock thats getting some beautiful coraline algae going (but little else due to the puffers desire to chomp on anything that looks like it might be tasty), and has a seaclone 100 skimmer thats just skimming its little pump (maxijet 1200) off due to the puffers being such pigs of food and such dirty wastefull fish.

YES those plants are plastic plants. I added them to amuse the puffers since puffers seem to be quite inquisitive animals and really need something to inbestigate during the day. So by rearanging the rocks to where there is less line of sight from one end of the tank to the other and adding the plastic plants, it calmed down the ceylon puffer quite a bit and he hardly ever goes chasing his reflection anymore. Wherease prior to the plant additions he was either going to drive himself or myself insane by running up and down the tanks height on the glass all day long. The green spotted puffers are not exhibiting this behavior and I wonder if its purely because they are smaller and can explore more of the small caves in the tank. I'll have to check that theory out more later.

[jeepjon]

aren't those FW puffers? Just asking, cuz I thought they were

[SaltyMist]

There brackish water puffers when young like this, but eventually upon maturation they need to go full saltwater, lets just say that my LFS aclimated them early in life, but they are doing great in the full salt tank, and seem quite happy, telling by the white color of their bellys, and their desire to investigate anything and everything in the tank.

Right now the ceylon is obsessed with the heater, I dont know why, he was never obsessed with it before, but now he's constantly sitting in front of it looking at it for hours on end, then he seems to get bored and will come out front and look around for a while, then go back to heater watching.

[kwjones]

That's a GSP right? My wife and I have had one for about a year, he's in a 44 gallon tank with a pleco. How old do they have to be before you move them to salt? I kinda worry bout putting him in the 75 with all the snails and crabs...he loves snails and shrimp.

We started out with 4. About 2 months later, one by one three of them died, bellies turned grey, then white, then grey and finally black before they died. "Hunk" is the only one that never stressed. He's fun to watch...up and down the tank all day, takes a break on top of the powerhead and starts all over.

Kevin

[SaltyMist]

I dont know at what age they would naturally go salt water but as you can see mine are quite small, and thus assumed to be very juvinile fish, but they have adapted quite fine to the full saltwater environment so far. But they have only been in this take a little under a month, but both the gsp's have kept only a white belly, wherease the Ceylon puffer has a black belly most of the time (but he's leaving the tank in about 5 days from now to be traded in at the LFS for a figure 8 puffer that they are acclimating to their salt tanks for me.

So far the F8 puffer in the LFS is showing good signs of acclimation and keeping his belly white, so it might be that the gsp's and F8's are better candidates for full salt early on rather than the Ceylon is.

From what I've read the black belly is a sign of stress, and that something in the tank is stressing out the fish, but what that could be in my tank I dont know. About an hour after lights out, the Ceylon will mellow out and his belly will turn white again, but in the AM when lights go on, he'll shortly get his black belly again.

When I was down at the LFS today checking on the f8 puffer, I noticed that they had the other ceylon still in the brackish tank there and he also had a black belly, so it might just be the nature of the ceylon fish to do so in captivity.

These guys ate almost all the snails in my tank and were even terrorizing a redfooted moon snail that is almost the size of a golfball so much that the snail hard suctioned himself to the glass and didnt move for about 4 or 5 days, I then removed him to the nanocube tank with inhabitants that wont try to eat him.
They love snails, and will eat lots of things, I feed mainly raw shrimp, and scallops from the grocery store and they keep their beaks down by munching on the liverock daily.

In any event, the gsp's are doing well if you can judge them by their appetite, activity and white bellys in my tank.

[kwjones]

Yeah, our little Mr. Personality is doing great, so I wonder if it's not broke....

Thanks for the info.

[Clownfishman]

I have a Seachem Ammonia Alert as well, do you think they are accurate... mine always shows "safe"

Thing is it detects "free" ammonia which is harmful to fish, while standard test kits detect ammonia that isn't toxic to fish and well as the toxic kind..

[SaltyMist]

Nope, I dont think they are accurate at all, at least not the one I bought. It shows safe when though I know there was amonia in my tank (went through another mini cycle by moving liverock in and out of the tank and adding more livesand ontop of the existing sandbed), yet it still showed safe.

Mine is now sitting at the bottom of my tank (it fell off due to current and I couldnt be bothered at the moment to pull it out).

By the way, the nanos are no more. They have both now been converted to freshwater, one holds a beta fish and the other one holds 6 neon tetras. I consolidated all liverock and inhabitants into the 20gallon tank to save me time of changing water in 3 tanks. And Im much happier this way.

[SaltyMist]

Well, it's been a while since I've posted.

The 2 JBJ nanocubes are no more, they were drained and sit in the garage now. The eclipse still holds the two goldfish, and my 20 gallon tank is now my main tank.

We had to move the 20 gallon off of my Ikea desk because after 3 or 4 months with it and my 19" monitor and my huge officejet all in one printer the desk was starting to sag, and it meant I would have to keep 2 rooms air conditioned when it's hot out. So we moved the 20 gallon into the living room which also holds the goldfish tank in the same room to cut down on cooling costs during the summer.

When we moved it, I rearranged all the liverock, to give it more caves, and a back wall of rock effect. I'll be honest, it really doesnt photograph well for some reason, but in person the overall design of the liverock wall looks great.

It may not look sturdy, but I assure you it is, I've shaked the tank stand to see if anythign would tumble and it's pretty well just locked in place like a jigsaw puzzle.

This move from one room to another has given me more confidence for when we move in August of this year 2 1/2 hours away.

Theres lots of circulation going on in the tank, I had to experiment with it because the morning before we moved it to the other room I had a macro algae crash and cloud up the tank and what I found was that my circulation was pretty much all going from right to left in the photo, and that was causing the oil slick at the top of the tank to buildup on the left side of the tank.

So I put the cascade 1000 canister filter outlet on the left side of the tank, and a side sweeping powerhead with a surface skimmer on the right side of the tank blowing to the left.

There are also 2 rio 50 pumps behind the liverock in each bottom corner circulating water from behind the rock wall, as well as 1 rio 200 pump in the bottom middle of the tank circulating water out from behind the rock wall.

The rio 50 on the left bottom of the photo has been shut off now though because it blows too low in the tank and caused a hole in the livesand in front of the mushrooms like whats happening on the bottom right near the zoos.

I still need to move the flowerpot over more to the right since it's right in the stream of the middle powerhead, while it doesnt seem to dislike it as it usually fully extends it's arms, the ones that are right in the path look purple and slightly shrivled up when they are getting that hard of flow.


Anyway, heres is the 20 gallon today.

[ckreef]

Tank is looking nice --- but why did you drain the 2 cubes --- I always liked the idea of matching end tanks.

[SaltyMist]

It just got to be too much of a chore rather than a relaxing hobby for me. Having to do water changes on 4 tanks a week just didnt jive with me and my lifestyle, schedule etc.

Plus I really found that the JBJ nanos were not really designed well for reef tanks without modding them and I didnt have enough time or tools to do it properly.

Im planning on using one of them by breaking out the back plastic wall and using it as a refuge for the 20 gallon once we move, and the other one will probably be setup for a hospital tank at some point in time, or maybe a quarantine tank, though since I dont plan on adding any more fish to this 20 gallon tank, then a quarantine tank might be pointless, whereas a hospital tank might be benificial.

Just yesterday when I got home from work, I found my larger clownfish on her side laying on a bulbous type of mushroom with her mouth wide open and gasping, she saw me and swam a bit but kept her mouth wide open, then returned to the flowerpot, then the mushroom again and I thought she was dying, but I threw in a cube of brine shrimp and she went insanely fast zipping around the tank to get it. After she ate most of the cube herself, she closed her mouth and has been fine since, but had I had a hospital tank setup, I probably would have pulled her out and put her in that for a while to observe her.

edit:
I also dont like that zoo med powerhead right there in plain view, but it seems the nature of the beast for my tank, because if I dont run the surface skimmer on it, then my surface water gets a nasty oily slick, I point the output of the canister filter (which has a lot of flow) towards the surface and all it does is push it to one side, leaving have the surface clear and the other half oily. I attempted to hook up the surface skimmer to the input of my canister filter, but then it sucked too much air and the tank was full of bubbles all day, so i guess until I come up with something else to cure this, it will have to stay there.

[SaltyMist]

Well, it's been a while again, so I've added some new photos and will tell you about the changes I have made to the tank.

First off I moved homes, a total of about 145 miles away, in a Uhaul truck with no air conditioning (didnt find out about that till it was loaded and I was on the highway) moving to the Palm Springs, Southern California desert area.

So while doing the move I decided to upgrade the tank slightly. I didnt like the floorspace that the 20 high tank provided so I bought a 20 long tank.

I moved without too much incident, I did manage to kill some mushrooms, a couple hermits and 2 snails a couple days after setting up the new tank. I also ditched my livesand bed because it was just really gross after draining the water down to only 1 inch on top of the sand bed, the water was a dark skimmate brown, so I dumped it into the oleander bushes in my new back yard and went bare bottom.

After about 4 days of being barebottom I decided I didnt like bare bottom so I bought 20lbs of tahitian moon sand (black sand), and I like the look of it so far.

I took my old 20 high tank and turned it into a sump under my new 20 long tank, and keep it about 3/4 full of water so that brings my water volume up to about 35 gallons give or take a couple gallons. I put all my equipment down in the sump which is what I set out to do with the sump, so now all that is in the tank is the overflow box and the return pvc line.

Let me know what you think of it now.