New Nano Tank Build

[ttugrad95]

Hello I just got back into the hobby after taking a 10+ year break. In my last years of college and first year or so after I had a 58 gallon fish only SW tank which housed a lionfish, yellow tang, clown, parrot fish and panther grouper. I loved that lion but I always wanted a reef tank and since these are about the poorest years of a person's life it was out of the question. I recently purchased a used 24g JBJ Nano and it has been going for about 2 months. Most of the rock was purchased from individuals who had it in established tanks so my cycle time was minimum to none. The pump has been upgaded to a MJ1200 and I have a Koralia Nano for additional circulation. Attached is the most recent pic I have. I have since added a firefish goby, 6 line wrasse, some kenya trees and green with purple tip frogspawn. The red slime algae is also a little more under control.

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w301/dsonnamaker/HPIM0833.jpg

I'm still messing with the aquaculturing, I can't get it anywhere near where it looks good. I had a couple of huge pieces of rock that I tried to split and ended up with slightly smaller huge pieces of rock and a bunch of fragments. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

[1DeR9_3Hy]

The tank looks great!

My only suggestion is this, take a look at your LR. See how it looks like a rectangle, try and change that into a more random outline any way you can. It was the first thing the jumped out at me, right after i got done thinking how lucky you were to get all sorts of nice LR like that! I dont know how easy this suggestion will be since you already have some corals in there, and i have no experience moving LR with coral attached lol

[ttugrad95]

I see what your saying. I'm not sure how random I could get unless I break the rocks up more and I have already attempted that a couple times with less than optimal results. After you said that and looking at it I think I can rearrange the bottom flatter rocks, the ones without coral and turn them where they are lengthwise across the back of the tank and move that bigger one on the left to the bottom. It would give me a taller wall but more of a stair step look which is what I am looking for so I have more space to put coral other than on those top rocks.

[ttugrad95]

I moved things around a bit. A few of the corals haven't opened back up yet but I think everything survived. I think this is about as good as its going to get with the rock I have. It definitely makes it look like there is more free room for the fish and on the sand bed.

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w301/dsonnamaker/HPIM0834.jpg