Krazie's Nano Paradise

Hey everyone! I have been putting this off for a while but A little pressure from a friend has now got me posting my Tank build thread.

To Start I need to go back a little in history. I have had aquariums since I was old enough to convince my mom that I could take care of one. I didn’t get started into Saltwater until a few years after I got married. That was just over 25 years ago. I was quickly hooked and had many FOWLR tanks for 11 years. After doing FO for that long I started getting into reef keeping. It was hook line and sinker from that point on. Within a year of starting my first reef, I also started a basement LFS and aquarium maintenance service. I build that business for 9 years. Some in the Kaysville area may remember my store front on 200 south just east of the freeway called Prestige Aquatics. That phase quickly passed and I sold the entire business off as well as my own tanks.

I thought that I was done with anything fish related. Hahaha. I stayed away completely for 3 years. Then a good friend and neighbor bought a JBJ 28g Nano cube. She quickly realized she was in way over her head and somehow the information about my previous fish life slipped out. She immediately began picking my brain and having me over almost every night to help her get things under control. Long story short, we were able to get her nano setup, stabilized, running well, and growing like crazy. Once she saw what reefing was about she was completely hooked and started buying bigger tanks. About 5 tanks later she settled on a huge 220g all glass with sapphire front. In the mean time I was happily tinkering with the little nano. This went on for another year. Then her and my awesome wife, who tolerates my strange ways, decide to work out a deal and for Christmas of 2012 I became the owner of the nano that I had been tending to.

The tank was starting to look pretty good after 2 years of working on it at her place. Then came move day to its new home a couple of blocks away. We thought the biggest issue was going to be the cold temps in October (yes Christmas isn’t until December but that’s another story). Little did we know the temps wouldn’t even come into play. So, we carefully packed all the rock and corals and fish into Styrofoam boxes with the tank water for the trip. The mistake I made was in not removing the sand and either replacing it or at least rinsing it. During the drive over the sand got a pretty good stirring and all the areas that were packed and full of Hydrogen Sulfide were disturbed and stirred in with the rest of the sand. Apparently, the tank sat long enough outside while we were prepping its location in the house, that the sulfur smell dissipated enough that I did not notice it as we set the tank back up. Things actually seemed fairly normal for the first couple of days but then that changed in a major way. Due to all that Hydrogen Sulfide being released the tank went through a cycle like I have never seen before. The Ammonia spike was so high that the water clouded and every bit of Coraline algae in the tank went from a nice dark purple color to the brightest hot pink you have ever seen! All the coral and fish started dying off adding to the crash and making me wonder why in the world I got back into this.

After tearing the whole tank down and rinsing the sand for a full day, setting it all back up and doing about 15 – 100% water changes, to try and save anything in the tank, that cycle finally ended. The casualty list had 3 fish, the entire CUC, 5 out of 7 Zoa colonies, all the Pulsating Xenia colonies (3 of them), and all the Coraline in the tank on it. The survivor list consisted of  a small colony of Honey Digitata, a small encrusting of M. Spongodes(sp), one tip of a 5” green birdnest colony, 3 heads of a radioactive green hammer with 12 heads, and two small colonies of Zoa’s  (Green bay packers, unnamed peach center with green fringe that I still get huge compliments/comments on).

So, then the work began. My wife was convinced that because this was an AIO tank that it would be “inexpensive” to keep. We all know how that belief turned out. So in order to keep the costs down I started buying very small frags of things to replace the lost items and to add a few that I wanted in. The items that survived took off and grew like crazy!. The digi grew from about a 2” colony, to over 5 inches in all directions. The Spongodes encusted the entire rock it was on and then started growing fingers along the top edge. About 10 fingers approximately 2” tall. The two Zoa colonies completely covered the huge rock they were on. All the frags I had added where settling in nicely and starting to grow.

The calm before the storm arrived. Things were doing well and there was a rhythm finally starting. Somewhere  (still honestly don’t know where) I inadvertently picked up a pest. I was pretty proud of my husbandry skills and was taking every possible precaution I could with new items. I was dipping every frag I was inspecting every plug with a magnifying glass. I was checking in between every polyp for hitch hikers. Still I somehow ended up with a Monti eating Nudibranch. Now, the Six line wrasse was one of the casualties of the move so my defense system was a little lite. The Nudibranches took off and before I had figured out what was happening (or noticing the small white nudi’s on the glass in the middle of the night) they had completely destroyed the Spongodes, stripped the entire bottom of the Digitata, killed the green birdnest, and reduced a completely encrusted Superman Monti plug into a ¼” piece right in the middle of the plug. After dipping and scrubbing everything in the tank and adding two new wrasses, that problem was solved.

We are now caught up to where the tank stands today ( well with the passing of about 3 months). I think it has recovered very nicely and I am making the final choices as to what species I will be putting in to complete the coral selection. I currently have approximately 35 different Zoa’s, 5 different Paly’s , 5 SPS, 2 softies, 1 RBTA, 3 fish, very diverse CUC, and 1 Coral banded shrimp.

The Tank is a JBJ 28 gallon LED Pro so space it at a premium and I will be forever pruning to maintain the corals from this point on. I added a powerhead and run a GFO reactor in the stand and have just recently added some DIY LED’s to the stock LED Setup. Other than that it is stock. It runs without a skimmer. I plan to drill it and add a sump and skimmer in the future.

I will post pictures and describe some of my DIY stuff a bit later. I want to try and find some of the pictures I took during the “fun” times with the tank.

Thanks go out to a few people on the forum and off for helping me get back to where I am:

First is my wife

Pete Moss (lots of great Zoa’s and a place to send my extras)

Bill (Saltwater Paradise for great prices and DIY parts for LED systems)

Ann_A(for her 3 watt laser to rid me of the last few Majanos in the tank)

Erikts(for all his spare parts and acrylic)

Dmower(for taking my problematic dottyback when no one else would and trying to make it work in his system)

All the forum members who have traded, swapped, or given frags to help with my tank. You know who you are and forget my own name.