12G Nano ReefCube

[joe faria]

Hi,

This is my first post, and I'm glad that I can show you what I'm planning... I should say as well I got no experience on keeping marines, but only 15 years with FW and 4 years with nano planted tanks and FW invertebrates.

This tank will be a 40x40x30 cm (48L) with a built in sump/fuge. It will house some small frags or colonies of soft corals and a pair of firefish Nemateleotris magnifica or Nemateleotris decora.
I made a sketch of it.

A - overflow box
B - Chaetomorpha fuge
C - heater and midia place (activated carbon, chemipure if needed)
D - return pump

After some DIY, I've done a cube... first some leaks at the base and after being sorted, this is the result.

After some delay with the acrylic, I've finished the built in sump/fuge

Already got:
11 pounds of LR waiting in a container,
11 pounds of crushed coral sand ,
Hydor Pico pump 200 gal/h (adjustable flow)
2x T5 8w (14000k) luminaire

Need to buy:
Luminaire 24w PC actinic
Refractometer


One of the good things in Portugal, it's you can colect your own natural sea water, wich I will alternate with homemade seawater every week.
This is the spot where I'm colecting the natural sea water and an excuse to take my son to the beach.

Tomorrow will try to finish the pump connection and it will be ready for action.

Got a question... What you think on this guys Lysmata debelius aka Blood Shrimp? What's is your opinion about them in a 10G tank?

Regards,

Joe Faria

 

[matts125]

very nice!!!
can you collect live rock and fish there too??

 

[soyadrink]

I'm looking forward to this one! Welcome to RF! Hope you like it.
I've been to Portugal a couple of times. It's beautiful, I love it.

 

[joe faria]

very nice!!!
can you collect live rock and fish there too??

I wish... our water it's too cold for reefs...
Rock it's too heavy and not porous, but we can have beautiful biotopes tanks with our native species.

I'm looking forward to this one! Welcome to RF! Hope you like it.
I've been to Portugal a couple of times. It's beautiful, I love it.

Glad you like it... it's indeed a beautiful place to live

Regards,

Joe Faria

 

[Sascha D]

Welcome to RF

Because you are using inhabitants not native to your waters, I would avoid using natural SW unless you are going to run it through an RO/DI like they do at the Seattle Aquarium. If you use it straight, everytime you do a water change you're going to add potentially bad organisms to your controlled environment.

Also they say you should collect your water at least 10 meters from shore to avoid contamination.

Good luck with the tank! It looks good so far

 

[joe faria]

Hi,
Today I finished all the DIY stuff... time to fill the tank and enjoy a new tank:razz:

Now I need to wait the tank it's fully matured and start to add livestock.

Regards,

Joe Faria

 

[joe faria]

Hi,
It's been a while since my first visit to this place, so it's time for an update...

A few weeks back, I started to add the first inhabitants of this nano.

Coral's:
Zoanthus sp.
Sinularia's sp.
Sarcophyton sp.
Actinodiscus sp.? need help to ID this one (it's the one in the 2nd pic under the zoa's)

A fellow reefer gave me two majano anemones :evil:... honestly I loved their look, but imagined the risks, despite been warned.

The majano have been removed after a cople of days in the tank... I've noticed both during their time looking for a place to stay, they touched in a few coral's.... after that the same coral's looked burned. That hapenned to my sarcophyton coral and two sinularia corals. Result: lost of corals. :crying:

I added as well aLysmata wurdemanni or peppermint shrimp, because I noticed a small colony of aiptasias in a small piece of rock. Result: aiptasias are gone :clapping:

Finally, I added a pair of clownfish Amphiprion ocellaris.

With this recent aditions, my intentions in having a pair of firefish and Lysmata debelius, were discarded.

Some pics:

small colony of zoanthus sp.

more zoa's

sorry for the blurry pics of my clownfish