Firstly, I would like to thank the team very much for putting my humble little Edge up for TOTM! I am quite lost for words, which is a rare thing for me, but I’ll crack on and tell you a little bit about the history of this little set up with pleasure
I was given this tank as a ‘so glad you’re getting better’ present after a stressful bout of heart problems and procedures a couple of years ago by my saintly better half and if I am honest, I can’t say it’s kept my heart rate calm and me peaceful as it has progressed!
It’s definitely a love-hate-love again relationship I’ve had with this tank and at one stage I shut it down as it just drove me to distraction.
The tank was set up at the beginning of June ’09 after my operation because the OH had actually listened to my mutterings mid
LFS wander one day about ‘really fancying one of those new Edge things to set up as a small marine project’. While I was having a chin wag with one of the staff in the marine section, he was off at the counter buying one for me totally unprompted. Bless him!
So one happy me was faced with an empty tank and a plan started forming in the guise of a sexy shrimptopia with zoas and mushies galore and a swarm of sexies wagging their tushies all over the place. Maybe the odd little goby in there to add a different dimension, but that would be it.
It was a special tank right from the start - not many people had set one up as a marine nano and it also had not one but two QA cats to inspect it prior to filling
I wanted to keep the tank nice and simple, so while it was empty of life I monitored everything thoroughly to see how stable the tank would be, how often I’d need to top up, temperature levels and if the small halogen bulbs that came with it would heat the water up too much while on.
The HOB filter on the tank proved to be very good at maintaining O2 levels and bi-daily top ups were seemingly enough to keep the salinity good, but the Newattino Plus preset heater couldn’t maintain overnight temperatures, so I bought a little Hagen Elite 25W and that proved to be perfect. The HOB contained just Seachem Purigen and Seagel with a little floss changed regularly. I placed a slab of filter sponge in the outlet of the HOB to prevent the build up of bubbles under the glass surface which did the trick nicely.
The livestock idea progressed to adding pom pom crabs purely because my
LFS couldn’t get hold of any more than one sexy shrimp at the time that didn’t cost more than a month’s mortgage payment, but the idea actually worked rather well and the pom poms settled into their new home well. Zoa frags grew OK under the halogens but the colours really didn’t ‘pop’ enough for my liking so I started looking into lighting replacements.
I came up with a sealed led unit for use on boats which was cool white and a rating of 7000K. I attached that to the inside of the lid, removing the stock lighting arm in the process. It worked well and gave great light and coverage but ran warm so I had to lift the lid to allow air to circulate sufficiently to prevent overheating.
Once the lighting was sorted out, the next addition was a small barnacle blenny. He had his own apartment block of giant barnacle clusters and spent many an hour sitting in them watching life go by outside the tank. He fed well and didn’t bother anyone else in the tank and life was good.
As a matter of an emergency I then had to briefly add a scooter blenny to the tank and he was happy as anything hopping round the rockwork chewing down on pods etc. and was a right fatty to boot. Small snails started to breed like mad and I was delighted with the life blossoming from the small amount of rock. I was still on the hunt for sexy shrimp, but the pom poms and other critters I added seemed happy enough.
At the same time as someone gave me some ‘nice beadlet anemones for your Osaka tank’ (which I decided to put in the Edge instead), I had a big disaster with the tank. I went away overnight and came home to a murky tank and two tiny bodies lying on the sand. The HOB filter impeller had been jammed by a lone small snail which had somehow got in through the outlet section of the filter. I had a sponge on the inlet so it didn’t get in that way so that’s the only explanation I could come up with.
Sadly, I lost my pom poms and the lone sexy shrimp too, as well as various hermits and other cuc. I was close to shutting the tank down, but decided to devote the tank to the beadlets instead. I had read they were most likely native to our coastal waters so I took the heater out, removed the various corals barring one or two mushrooms and left them to it.
They must have been happy…they multiplied from 5 to 25+ in a matter of weeks, but the tank looked great and it was SO easy to look after. I kept the lights off during the day and fed them frozen foods while the lights were out which made them open up well. It’s fascinating to watch them open like flowers when they sense food about!
After a while, the lack of access started to grate on my nerves. No amount of cleaning seemed to be able to prevent sediment build up and I found it a real annoyance trying to get into the tank to clean the glass properly. How many times I ended up flooding the cupboard top after forgetting to take a jug or two of water out of the tank before I went in I do not know!
So, I bought myself an AquaEl 25L bowl and the beadlets went in there and the edge was shut down for a while.
Me being me, it is complete torture to have a tank sitting empty and there's no way I can part with spare tanks as you never know when you're going to 'need' them again. I was still itching to have a
sexyshrimptopia and I loved the new must have mini maxi anemones and after a few enquiries it was deemed feasible to have a tank with a few of the nems in and that the sexy shrimp would actually be rather happy in with them and not get eaten.
I didn't want to chance any fish in with the nems - have you felt how sticky those things are? - so I thought I'd go for critters instead...
and so, the Edge came out again!
I managed to buy a great coral skeleton from Laura at Amwell Aquatics in Epping
sadly it was too big to get in the Edge complete, so I had to get Darren to take an angle grinder to it and we hacked it up into manageable pieces and I set about 'scaping' the tank
Then it was time to let it cycle so I started researching the sexies again and also thanks to Laura's suggestion, I looked at the various different anemone shrimp that have a symbiotic relationship with the mini maxis in the wild.
Once the tank was cycled I paid a visit to Laura who said she'd try and get me some nice nems and shrimp to go with them. I also managed to pick up my first nem on a big bit of branching rock from Cambridge Coral Tech and the tank started to take shape
A few weeks later and I came home with some more nems and matching shrimp and have just recently managed to add a troupe of sexy shrimp and some lovely zoas from Zoaphoria (they woke me up at 7am knocking on the door!)
So that's where I am now...a tank with no less than 5 beautiful mini maxi nems, 3 anemone shrimp, 7 sexy shrimp shaking their tushies everywhere, zoas, a ricordea, 2 sand conches, a few snails and a red leg hermit all living in harmony.
I keep it simple with a 2x24W T5 light unit above the tank (stunningly supported by tins of chopped tomatoes until I can get hold of a couple of brackets and a hanging kit) running a blue and fiji purple KZ set of bulbs. Bi-daily RO top ups and the HOB filter running with Seachem Purigen and Phos Guard and a weekly 10% water change using DD H2Ocean salt.
It still drives me nuts when trying to clean it but at least I remember to take water out before I get in!
to all of you for all the encouraging comments you give me about this and all my other tanks and for the enjoyment of being part of such a great forum! It wouldn't be so much fun without you all
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MY TANKS
Slowly, slowly, happy tanky!
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** September 2011 TOTM **
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