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Unread 09/18/2017, 07:57 PM   #1
Ramracer32
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Join Date: Aug 2011
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The 20 gallon nano SPS Tank journal

Hello, After 15 years away from salt water and keeping big freshwater tanks im back to salt After years of looking at this forum I have come to conclusion that keeping things as simple as possible is going to be a great fit for me. The current tank is a 20 gallon shallow Innovative marine fresh water aquarium that i drilled. My sump is a converted 10 gallon tank with sump kit purchased online. Skimmer is an octopus classic 110. the return pump is an Octopus Varios 2 DC pump (pretty amazing how Quiet it runs). For the power head im using a jebao tw-10, and lighting is a radion xr15w pro 4th gen. There is about 8lbs of rock and used coarse live sand. I will eventually get a 3 head dosing system and will be using the brs 2 part system.

So far the tank has been cycling for 3 weeks on a fish less method dosing ammonia. I finally got the bacteria to bring my ammonia from 3+ to under.25 and my nitrates just jumped so everything doing what i want. Hopefully only a few weeks left or less for fish.

My plan is to do a dominated sps tank with 2 clown fish and a few crabs/snails.

I have a few friends with very successful aquariums and they attribute their success to forum communities like this so making a journal like this showing my ups and downs with all of your great input im hoping to keep this going for many years. If anyone has a suggestion, Question, Or anything that seems weird please chime in

LET THE FUN BEGIN!!!!


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Unread 09/18/2017, 08:02 PM   #2
Ramracer32
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Not sure why the images came out sideways, if you click twice they go upright.


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Unread 09/18/2017, 09:00 PM   #3
kalan850
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Very cool tank. How do you like the jebao?


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Unread 09/19/2017, 04:11 PM   #4
Ramracer32
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Thank you kalan, I love the jebao so far. Pretty crazy what you get for the price point and the thing is crazy powerful (too much flow on high setting for this tank). I will probably get a second one for the other side of the tank and get more of a wave action.


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Unread 09/20/2017, 08:01 AM   #5
James404
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Great looking tank! Looking forward to seeing this grow


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Unread 10/11/2017, 05:35 PM   #6
Ramracer32
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A little update. got a pair of clowns in the tank and made a netting topper to prevent any jumping. I have been having some hard times with my octo protein skimmer and might try something else. Other than that everything is staying stable will probably wait a few more weeks before trying coral


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Unread 11/03/2017, 02:56 PM   #7
Ramracer32
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we got coral!!!!! I had tested the system with a green birdsnest and has done very well so i pulled the trigger on 4 different frags and an orange plate coral. Unfortunately my phones camera does not do the colors justice at all and will have to get a better camera.

my alk is 7.8
CA 425
Mag 1500
salinity 1.025
Temp 80.1F

The place i purchased the corals from I matched their parameters so will see how everything goes.

All my numbers have been very stable except for my alkalinity i constantly have to dose daily to keep stable. I read that the bacteria might be feeding on it so will have to figure out a better way of nutrient export. I feel like the small pellet food im feeding my clowns is messy and the problem so might try something else. Im not a big fan of running chemical filtration along with water changes, but might have to do that.


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Unread 11/09/2017, 10:53 PM   #8
snyder415
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great looking tank


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Unread 12/28/2017, 11:41 PM   #9
Ramracer32
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A little update. I changed pretty much everything. A while back i added a anemone to the tank and thought i covered my power head pump good enough, but 3 days in the anemone found a way past the cover pad and got chopped up pretty much causing the everything to die except the birds nest and the plate coral and clownfish. I wanted to change stuff up and this was the time to do it. I got new reef saver rock to make a better scape and changed the sand to a more fine sand so the cleanup crew could move around a lot better also to stop the gunk from getting caught up in the sand. I also added chaeto to the sump with a light and that stuff has grown crazy while keeping the nutrient lvls low which i like. I was hand dosing my alk and ca and can say that was a big problem. the tank was constantly swinging fighting to keep my lvls normal so i bought the jaebo 2 dosing pump and sure glad i did. Im able now to keep ph 8.3 alk 8.7 and ca 440. I also am doing more of a lps tank with a few sps frags which has made the tank pop more.

because my sand was dry and rock dry i went ahead and asked the local reef store to scrape off some coraline algae so i could seed my tank and hopefully can start to see that stuff grow.

Ive been doing a lot of reading and with a nano tank trying to keep everything stable i am going to try something a little different. I wont be doing any water changes. every time i did my alk and ca would be a bit off then i would have to fix it back to where i want so no more swings for me. the chaeto in the sump along with my protein skimmer is my nutrient export and working a little too well and have been adding aqua vitro fuel to help get the trace elements back into the water keeping coral bright happy. very happy with how things are going now and each month really learning a lot about keeping a reef.

For whatever reason the pictures never turn out how bright the corals are and im always catching too much blue light also they are sometimes sideways if anyone has a cure for better pictures im all ears.


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