Office 20gal Reef

[tomo_garf]

Hey hey, managed to convince the boss to go marine with our 30" x 12" x 18" freshwater tank!

A few rocks from my old reef, a second hand deltec and 150w metal halide later....



I popped a little hermit in as he was a little pet in an 18" before his furniture was yanked out and into the 20gal. he shed his skin overnight poor buggar! He's fine now though;

i hope to add a hardy fish or two over the comming weeks but for now i will be testing for ammonia/nitrite/nitrate and ph until all are satisfactory. Also need to look at the temp as the halides (15cm above water level) heat the tank to around 28deg C.

Any tips? i know its pretty much a nano but as I sit next to it the whole day I think it should be ok. I hope to house some stoney sps and maybe even a clam or 2. fish would probably include a moderately sized colourful tang (no bigger than 4") a wrasse, goby, serpent star and the usual clean up crew. If the tang is too big then i'll substitute it for a dwarf angel but arent these a bit dodge with polyp nibbling?

I have a blue tube above as well as the mh, both of which i hope to have on from 9-5 every day- is this too much?


More pics as and when new stock arrives.

Ta
Tom

 

[Gankutsuou]

I plan to keep a 20 gallon nano myself. keep updating! I'd like to hear more!

 

[PaulasPets]

Nice job on the rockwork! I'd say running your lights from 9 to 5 is a little short, day/night should take 12 hours each.

Paula

 

[tomo_garf]

One week on and the tank is going through the algae bloom stage! Lots of hair algae on the rocks/glass and sand. Also got some reddish/brown slimey alge starting to cover the sand, is this diatom algae?

tested the water and my PH is 8.5 and with no ammonia present, skimmer is working ok and im getting small amounts of watery brown smelly liquid which is a good sign. therefore it was time to introduce some more clean up crew and off i trotted to Sevenoaks Tropical Marine and purchased 6 hermits (bringing the total to 7) for the bargain price of £16 and 6 Turbo snails for £9.99. The quality of their live goods are unmatched ad they also do delivery anywhere in the UK- check them out Here

rigt click and select view image if the photos below are too big to fit on the screen- would love to know how to reduce the size of an image!

Heres the tank at just over a week old-still quite excited

The new arrivals having a bundle in the middle of all the skank growing on the sand

 

[tomo_garf]

well the algae has exploded in my tank and it looks like a swamp!

The hermits and snails were overwhelmed so i went out and bought an algae blenny. I see him eating but my goodness its overgrown!

Should I add some phosphates or something?

 

[Neal]

Nice tank, well it started off nice. That's bloody crazy! I don't know anything about marine so I can't give you an answer, but what about some snails to help clean up? Or maybe some cleaner shrimp or feather dusters?
I know nothing about them, I just like the look of them and *think* they eat algae.

Neal

 

[RadaR]

Deffinetly dont add phosphate. That will give you more algae. That all i can help you with. I dont know much at all about marine.

 

[Gankutsuou]

Your pictures are tooooo laaarge! Can you make them smaller?

Maybe you should use a bigger cleanup crew?