Pictures of my 10g nano.

Been up and runnign for about 3 years now. Thsi is a 10 gallon tank with a HOB filter that I run carbon and sometimes Phosphate remover in. I have 2 small powerheads and the following creatures:

- 2 Turbo Snails
- 2+ red leg hermits
- 1 Brittle star
- 1 Sear urchin
- Mushroom coral
- Zoos
- Xenia
- Trumpet coral
- Leather
- Bubble coral

Looking to sell the Xenia locally if anybody is interested. I live in King of Prussia, PA 19406.

Let me know if you like the tank. I have done some pruning and selling since the picture was taken but it gives you the overall idea.

 

Things looks really healthy for such a small tank - nice job! 8)
Would you please describe your maintenance routine?
What kind of lights do you have?

 

You are not goign to like to hear my routine but I will share anyway... I am a beleive in the theory that "doign less is more". I do little to nothing in terms of maintenance. In the past 6 months I have done maybe 3 water changes.... I basically jsut change out my carbon or carbon/phosphate filter every few weeks. Things have been fine....

However on that note I decided that I needed to do a major water change jsut to rejuvinate the tank and clean out some of the old water... So I did about a 40-50% water change this weekend and man the coral is loving it. I want things to grow a little faster so I will be doign anotehr large water change within the next 2 weeks. After that I will probably let it go again for a while.....

The lights are a PC 96W powerquad from coralife. So I have almost 10W per gallon but they are a full 10K. I have some 50/50 bulbs but I am goign to leave the 10K in for a while longer... It is a lot of light but it does not force the corals to display their full colors in order to protect themselves.... I think if I had a MH the corals would look mroe colorful..... The atnics will help but they will hinder growth....

 

Interesting. Well I think your coral choice was key. I tried to keep SPS in my 20 long and that proved to be extremely difficult.

I am not sure I would mess with success too much if I were you.

 

NICE TANK! you say its been up for 3 years, then your the man I need to talk to!
I have a 10 Gallon that has been up since July, its nowhere close to as nice as this
but its getting there. Nice choice in coral's, I especially like the carpet of Zoa's.

Interesting maintenance routine, it goes against what everyone says is needed.
I might have to re-think mine a little bit. What are you feeding, are you using any
supplements

I am running 80 watts of light so I am not far from you but I am running 1-Dual
Daylight and 1-Dual Actinic, If I change them both to full 10k bulbs will it help
stimulate growth in my tank?

 

Hey!
It looks great! Karma from me ...

 

Not sure if goign to 10K will help you or not. They do say the atnics add color by inhibit growth to some degree. I have used both but never paid attention to the growth rate...

I do add calcium but it is not on a set routine and I stopped testign for it a while ago. The tank was always a little low so I had a few drops ro a small squeeze of the bottle whenever I think of it.. After that I have some purple up that I add on occassion.

I feed the tank some of these algae tablets that are for FW bottom feeders. The crabs/snails like them and the bubble and brittle star will eat them as well. I used to feed the bubble small pieces of raw shrimp.... Other than that I add flake food on occasion for the 1 damsel that is in the tank.

It did take a while for the zoos to carpet the tank and for the leather to get big.... Let me find some of my original pictures to share. If oyu need help let me knwo and I can offer advice from my experiences.

 

Great looking tank.

Keep those xenia isolated on single rock, or they will spread out of control.

 

Here are some old pictures when I started:

 

Oh and here is the very very start:



When I started I had bad algae issues that I had to correct:



When I fixed things by correcting water quality and adding 2 turbo snails I got to this: