12.5 gallon w/nanotuners PAR38 led

 

Tank:  12.5 gallon all-in-one from AquaEuro Usa, w/glass top.  Bought this for cheap from lfs, with no hood which was perfect for the leds.  The quality seems a little on the cheap side, but it looks nice and the price was right. Measures 13.5" H x 16.5" W x 15" D.  Ive also hooked up an ATO from autotopoff.com.  The stand was built by Exceljoe here on the board, super nice guy and the stand turned out great.

 

Filtration:  This is an all-in-one style cube, I plan on just running some filter floss and chemi-pure elite in the back.  I will also put some chaeto back there with a light.  Tank is too small to worry about a skimmer, ill just rely on water changes.  Ive got about 20-25 lbs and fiji live rock that was donated by a friend(thanks again Amy), I probably wont use it all.  Also 1" of fiji pink sand. 

 

Flow:  return pump w/hydor flo and a koralia nano.  Gives me about 36x turnover, I may upgrade the return pump for more flow in the near future. 

 

Lighting:   Nanotuners Par38 lamp, 20k with 60degree optics. The bulb is hung 14 inches over the water surface, which seems to have pretty good spread.  I should be able to keep most everthing with the lamp, as long as Im careful about placement.  For those who are curious, the par plots from this lamp are found in this thread- http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=221433.  So it looks like sps/lps in the middle, with softies and low light corals on the edges.  I may decide to add another lamp in the future but for now I will try it with one. 

Mounting the lamp was my biggest challenge, I looked around the net for ideas but never liked any that I found.  So I went to home depot and $8 later I have it mounted on an arm above the tank.  It still looks a bit ghetto to me, but for now it works and does the job.

 

Thats about it, not sure what livestock I want yet, the tank needs to cycle for a bit so I have time to decide.  Now a few pics.

 

TANK AND STAND

And we have light!

Rock and Sand go in, water still cloudy.

I'll get some more pics after I do my scape, to be continued...

Looks awesome so far Kevin!

 

Tank has been running a over a week now, did some tests yesterday.  Nitrates, nitrites and ammonia were all 0.  Im wondering if I will have much of a cycle, or maybe just a really soft cycle.   The live rock was taken from an established system, and was out of the water for 6 hrs, so I expected a bunch of die off.  It was then cycled in a bucket in my garage for 2.5 weeks before being placed in the tank.  I added 5 gallons of water from my 30g, and the sand was new sand with just a little bit of live sand placed on top to seed.   I havent seen any diatoms yet.

Do you think its ready to try some coral or should I wait it out another week? 

Tank is doing awesome, so far I am loving the led's!  The light is mounted far enough away from the tank that there is virtually no heat transfer to the tank from the lights , my temp is rock solid around the clock!  Also with the glass top there is hardly any evaporation , I only have to top off the tank once or twice a week tops, and even then is a very small amount of water.  I havent been using the ATO because right now its really not needed. 

All this = stability, which is something I was worried about with the small amount of water volume in the tank. CUC so far just consists of snails,  I have no fish yet but have added a the following corals:

-ora green birdnest

-orange monitpora digitata

-orange monti-cap

-pink acropora

-tri-color acro(was kinda bleached before hand, hoping it will color up)

-rainbow montipora

-blue candy cane

-6 head duncans

-pom pom xenia

-6-7 varietys of zoas

-4 varietys of acans

All corals look very happy and have kept there color. Pics coming soon I promise!