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*** august totm 2011 ***
** TOTM AUGUST 2011 - TROUT **
Well done to Trout for winning August's tank of the month........
First, I would like to express my sincere thanks to moderators and admin staff at Salty Box for giving me the opportunity to share my nano reef tank with the community.
When I started to keep my first reef tank about three years ago, I had no idea that one day this tank would be featured as Tank of the Month (TOTM) at one of the most popular reef forums in the UK. This recognition has given me a lot of encouragement and renewed sense of direction to do better at what I am doing in our wonderful hobby.
When I first started my nano tank, I wanted a strong sense of direction and a set of metrics with which I would measure my success. I then read an article written by Sandra Shoup entitled “The measure of Success” in which she provides different categories of aquarists and how they measure their success. In her article, Sandra Shoup states, "I have my own yardstick. I am a "maximum diversity and knowledge aquarist. I measure my success by the number of different species of critters living in my tank and how much I know about them."
I am also a diversity and knowledge aquarist. I aim to create a reef environment in which corals of contrasting requirements (within certain constraints) can live happily, healthily and in harmony. I measure my success by the degree to which I succeed to create such an environment and the amount of knowledge I have about each coral, fish and other invertebrates I keep in this environment.
To climb the stiff learning curve, I read a lot. I started to read six month before I had set up my nano tank. I then started to compile the details of each article, which I read, in a reading list, which proved popular so much so that it was made a "sticky" in a different UK marine forum.
FACT FILE
Water Parameters
Temperature: 27C
pH: 7.68-8.10
Salinity: 34.5-35.5 ppt
Ammonia: not measured
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 0.2 ppm
Phosphate: 0.008 ppm
Calcium: 420 ppm
Alkalinity: 8.4 dKH
Magnesium: 1350 ppm
Equipment
Skimmer: Tunze 9002
Pumps: Tunze 6055, Vortech MP10, Koralia Nano, NewJet 800 X 2 (back chamber)
Heaters: Visitherm 200W
Coolers: 4-way Azoo fan and Habistat Cool Control
Lights: Iwasaki PAR 36 20000K MH, Vossloh Schwabe 150W Electronic Ballast, IceCap Pendant
Top up: Tunze Osmolator Universal 3155
Dosing: Williamson 2 ml/minute peristaltic pump X 2
Monitor/Controller: Pinpoint pH Controller, Tunze 7095 Multicontroller
RO Unit: D-D RO 50 USG Unit (4 stage with DI resin)
Reactors: Phosban 150 (RowaPhos)
Miscellaneous
Salt brand: D-D H2Ocean Pro+
Dosing Scheme: Randy Holmes-Farley Two-part plus magnesium (Recipe 2)
Dosing Salts: Sodium Bicarbonate (FM), Calcium Carbonate Dihydrate (FM), Magnesium Chloride Heptahydrate (FM), Magnesium Sulphate Heptahydrate (FM)
Test Kits: KH (Salifert), Ca (Salifert), Mg (Salifert), N03 (Salifert), NO2 (Salifert), Phosphate (D-D Merc)
Tank Specifications
Tank Dimensions: Standard Interpet River Reef tank- 94 lt
Tank Volume: 75 litres (net after displacement of live rock, equipment and sand bed)
Live Rock: 9.8 kg from Indonesia
Sand Bed: 1-inch deep
Fishes
Gold-band Maroon Clown (Premnas biaculeatus), Orchid Dottyback (Pseudochromis fridmani), Chalk basslet (Serranus tortugarum)
Corals
Soft Corals: Green Star Polyps (Pachyclavularia spp), Discosoma sp,
LPS Corals: Duncanopsammia axifuga, Scolymia cubensis, Blastomussa wellsi, Fungia, Euphyllia ancora, Acanthastrea lordhowensis, Trachyphyllia spp. (red and green), Favia sp., Catalaphyllia jardinei, Lobophyllia sp.
SPS Corals: Purple plate coral (Montipora monaseriata), Orange plate coral (Montipora sp), Green Plate coral (Montipora capricornis), Montipora digitata (Orange, brown and green), Seriatopora pistillata (brown and pink), Seriatopora hystrix (Pink), Seriatopora gutttatus), Porites cylindrica, Acropora nana, Acropora horrida blue, Acropora sp (pink tip), Acropora sp (blue tip)
Snails, Crabs, Shrimps and Urchins
Blue tuxedo urchin (Mespilla globulus) X 2, Red leg hermit crab X 8, Blue leg hermit Crab X 2, Nassarius Vibex X 2, Trochus snail (black footed) X 6, Astraea Snail X 2, Emerald crab (Mithrax Sculptus), Pacific scarlet cleaner shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis)
Feather Duster Worms
Sabellastarte indica (?) X 2
Clams
Maxima Clam (Tridacna maxima)
Evolution of My Tank in Chronological Order
November 2008
I set up my tank at the end of November 2008. I used 9.8 kg of Indonesion live rock and Caribsea's Aragamax Select Aragonite sand.
The set up was rather simple. The most important addition was JAD/Boyu WD-301 protein skimmer, which did a good job considering its small size.
January-February 2009
My early efforts concentrated on keeping mainly soft corals.
February-June 2009
Having gained some experience in coral husbandry, my attention turned to keeping LPS corals as well as azooxanthellate sun coral.
July 2009-December 2009
In this period, I concentrated on SPS corals and their requirements. All the corals in this period were kept under 2 X 36W PC T5 tubes.
January 2010-September 2010
In this period, I started to make additions and modifications to my set up to improve coral colouration, water chemistry and nutrient control. Changes include removing the hood, increasing the light intensity by providing illumination with three 36W PC T5 tubes with individual reflectors, adding a HOB refugium containing mineral mud and caulerpa, and automated dosing of chemical solutions to maintain the balance between alkalinity and calcium. The said changes made significant improvement on not only coral colouration, but also growth rates. This encouraged me to start to keep a wider range of hard corals.
The picture of brown Pocillapora Damicornis shown above features in Reefworks' company web site. The picture won one of the runner-up prices in Reefworks' "Best coral picture competition" in another forum last year.
Moreover, during the same period, I was fortunate enough to be able to breed a pair of bangaii cardinals and raise their brood.
Have you noticed the bangaii cardinal babies in their dad's mouth?
October 2010-April 2011
In this last period, my set up reached its peak form in terms of coral colouration and growth rate. The biggest contributing factor was the 20000K 150W MH unit that replaced the PC T5 set up in October 2010. Furthermore, increased light intensity enabled me to experiment with Acroporids with some success.
Concluding Discussion and Reflections
Before I had embarked on my journey, I read that nano tanks are not for the novice since it is very difficult to maintain consistent water parameters, and a small change in small volume of water may have large impact on its inhabitants. Having kept my first ever nano reef tank for just over two years, I agree with this assertion. On one hand, certain changes do not show their impact immediately. Conversely, small changes in different parameters can have large and sudden impact on livestock. With experience gained over the past 30 months, I can categorically state that it is difficult to maintain a nano tank that houses thriving community of fish and corals. In a nano tank, balance between success and failure is on a knife-edge.
Many people who buy nano tanks upgrade soon after. On the contrary, I managed to hold onto my set up for 30 months before finally breaking it down on 7th May 2011. This long period gave me many opportunities to evaluate certain decisions I made on various aspects of my set up, and subsequently equipped me with knowledge and experience required in successful reef keeping. Impact of dosing kalkwasser as opposed to two-part balanced solutions, use of a HOB refugium, impact of different types of light and spectrums and keeping different types of corals are just a few to name.
As I demonstrated, despite its unique challenges, it is possible to have a thriving community of mixed corals with a carefully selected set of fish in a nano tank. Keeping a nano tank, however, requires extra vigilance, and possession of knowledge and experience to apply them at the right time should things go wrong. Fortunately, literature is populated with scientific and experience-based articles to help the novice.
Looking back, I can identify four issues that presented challenges to me, each of which also provided me with learning opportunities. I will discuss them next.
Low pH
The River Reef set up has two drawbacks, which encourage a low pH environment. First, its surface area is small. Second, it has a closed-hood design. These drawbacks often inhibit gaseous exchange, thus causing low pH. I tried several methods to address the problem, including:
In my opinion, method (2) does not help as long as the hood remains closed during the night. We need an efficient skimmer (I am not referring to Boyu/JAD W310 type of skimmer) to make a difference. If a skimmer is set so that it skims wet by pulling a lot of external air, then fluctuations in pH may be averted. In my present hoodless set up, I additionally had to resort to method (2) by installing a Koralia 1 pump (and then replacing it with a Tunze 6055 later) to agitate water surface. This made an instant difference.
- installing a protein skimmer that introduces external air
- increasing surface agitation by installing pumps directed at water surface
- leaving the hood either open or ajar during the night
- using baked bicarbonate of soda as part of an alkalinity maintenance scheme
- dosing kalkwasser as part of an alkalinity maintenance scheme
Nuisance Algae
I struggled with micro algae for a long time despite not having many fish. In the early days, nitrate levels reached up to 25 ppm and phosphate levels were off the chart (D-D’s Merc test kit). My latest nitrate reading was around 0.2 ppm and phosphate reading was between 0.015 ppm and 0.008 ppm, despite having up to six fishes.
I tackled the nitrate problem by increasing water turn over inside the tank. I purchased a Vortech MP10 pump. I ran it at 75% power in reef crest mode. There were large gaps between live rocks to facilitate passage of water. The highest turnover was 96 times per hour. This was achieved by
2 X New Jet (800 lt/h) in place of stock pumps
1 X Koralia nano behind LR
1 X Koralia 1 (later Tunze 6055) agitating water surface
1 X Vortech 10
The challenge with running so many pumps in a small space is to direct the flow in such a way that it creates lots of low velocity water movement. Moreover, I removed every trace of mechanical filtration. I did not attempt to trap detritus anymore. Accumulation of detritus in my tank did not cause any nitrate build up. Detritus was assumed to be consumed by many feather dusters and other critters living in the tank. I had two large coco-worms who lived happily without any phytoplankton addition to my tank for months. I believe that detritus actually helped with the nitrogen cycle. For more information on the role of detritus in reef aquaria, refer to Eric Borneman’s article. Finally, I increased the number of snails and hermit crabs to help with removal of uneaten food. I stocked about eight hermit crabs and eight trochus snails.
I tackled the phosphate problem by installing a phosphate reactor, which reduced phosphate levels very rapidly.
Finally, I installed a HOB refugium that housed miracle mud and chaeto macro algae. Eco-system filtration is an effective means of reducing both nitrates and phosphates. The flow rate within the refugium was quite high (60 times per hour) for maximum nutrient export. Those who keep their tank’s hood can still set up a refugium in one of the back chambers with immerse lighting. Growing macro algae means less micro algae.
On a slightly negative note, miracle mud is said to contain among other elements large amounts of iron, which benefits macro algae. Iron boosts the green colour of plants and corals too. I had a “yellow” Porrites cylindrica frag in my tank. I never managed to get yellow colouration from this coral. It is possible that my light intensity was not high enough, but there was also a possibility that iron may have also masked the yellow colour, thus turning my coral green instead.
Water Chemistry and Testing
Introduction of hard corals (be it LPS or SPS) to my tank presented an immediate challenge of maintaining correct levels of Ca, KH and Mg. I experimented with three schemes to address this challenge. These were using proprietary products (Seachem in my case), kalkwasser dosing and Randy Holmes-Farley’s two-part recipe.
The main disadvantage of scheme 1 is the ongoing cost of purchasing off the shelf products.
The second scheme relies largely on evaporation rate of tank water. In a closed-hood scenario, kalkwasser dosing is unlikely to meet the KH and Ca requirements of heavily stocked tank since evaporation amount is likely to be quite small. I had to cease to operate method 2 for this reason.
Randy Holmes-Farley’s two-part scheme was the most reliable for my tank. I used both recipe 1 and recipe 2. Recipe 1 caused biotic and abiotic precipitation in my tank, resulting in the seizure of my pump impellers and blockage of pipes, etc. Majority who used this particular recipe had suffered from precipitation problems. I have switched to Recipe 2 recently. This recipe works flawlessly. The main attraction of this recipe for me was that I could measure every chemical I dose in my tank and that I do not dose anything that I cannot quantitatively measure. Hence, I can be in control of my water parameters.
Coral Selection and Placement
I have about 9.8 kg of live rock in my nano tank.
As stated at the beginning, I began keeping soft corals, mainly leather types. These corals are filter feeders and do not use alkalinity and calcium to form their skeleton. Regular water changes with good quality salt is all needed, coupled with good light and circulation, to keep them healthy.
A quick search on another forum revealed that many nano owners mainly keep soft corals. I had two types of soft coral in my new tank, green star polyps and mushrooms. My biggest mistake was to purchase a green star polyp coral. I bought this coral before reading about its spreading behaviour. If it gets in contact with an LPS coral, it will cause bleaching. It killed one head of one of my Blastomussa Welsii corals and caused bleaching on a Scolymia cubensis coral. I tried to scrape it from rocks. However, it always bounced back.
Shortly after my first experience with soft corals, I wanted to raise the challenge to another level by introducing hard corals to my tank. Perceived challenges did not put me off as I regard a challenge as a learning opportunity. I started stocking my tank mainly with LPS corals. Then, I began to stock SPS corals, such as Montipora, Pocillapora and Stylaphora specifies. Finally, I recently started to stock Acroporids.
I experienced three major problems with LPS corals:
First, those non-photosynthetic ones, such as sun corals, placed huge feeding demand on me. Excessive feeding can in turn caused problems with water quality. My advice would be to keep non-photosynthetic corals in a species tank.
Second, I underestimated how large some of LPS corals can grow. In particular, my non-branching hammerhead coral (Euphyllia ancora) and Lobophyllia coral extended their skeleton beyond my expectations. As a result, they occupied twice as much space on LR as they did at the beginning. My advice would be not to be deceived by the small skeleton size of some LPS corals. Especially, exercise caution with the following LPS corals: Lobophyllia, Catalaphyllia, Euphyllia family (e.g. Hammer, Torch and Bubble) and Fox Corals.
Third, I overstocked my tank with LPS and SPS corals because I just wanted to create a nice looking coral garden. Overstocking has its disadvantages. A coral that looks peaceful can change its behaviour if another coral attempts to invade its space. This results in coral warfare. Over the past two years, I have had to intervene on several occasions to break up such warfare. I found that LPS corals always damage SPS corals. Among the LPS corals I had kept, I found Favite spp species, the most aggressive. I witnessed up to 4” long sweeping tentacles in the dark when one of my Montipora digitata colonies encroached towards it. The favite’s tentacles caused bleaching of one section of a Montipora Digitata colony. Similarly, Favia spp and Lobophyllia corals are aggressive. I found that Blastomussa coral was the most defenseless of all LPS corals I kept. I recorded my corals’ behaviour when they touched each other and compiled a coral compatibility table, which is shown below:
In this context, I would advise not to overstock a nano tank with many varieties of LPS corals and keep LPS corals well away from each other and other SPS corals.
As a diversity and knowledge aquarist, I have achieved to create a diverse reef environment, as stated at the beginning, in which corals of contrasting requirements lived happily, healthily and in harmony. From the knowledge perspective, I acquired sufficient knowledge on each coral, fish and invertebrates I kept in my set up. Furthermore, as my bibliography suggests over the past 30 months my knowledge in reef keeping in general has expanded greatly.
In reflection, I made quite a lot of mistakes along the way, some of which were described above. Despite the fact that I had a thriving community of corals in my nano tank, I lost the Pocillapora damicornis colony, which won Reefworks' Photo Competititon, one Trachyphyllia coral and one maxima clam (note that the photo of the clam does not belong to the clam that I lost).
Pocillapora damicornis died of Rapid Tissue Necrosis, which was caused by excessive dosing of alkalinity solution on two occasions and by excessive dosing of calcium chloride solution on one occasion. On all occasions, I made exactly the same mistake of not setting my digital timers that drive my peristaltic pumps correctly. I made the corrections on my timers the night before I went on vacation and without using my reading glasses. I was lucky that my other corals survived. I eventually learned the lesson that major changes to a system set up must not be done before vacations and at nighttime.
I partially blame my maroon clown fish on the demise of my Trachyphyllia coral. I saw him turning this particular coral face down on the sand bed on several occasions. Despite all my efforts to prevent this from happening, the maroon clown persisted on his behaviour. However, it could also be possible that the clown fish might not have been solely responsible for the death of this coral. Prior to its death, the Trachyphyllia’s health deterioted. I was never able to establish the cause. I cannot be sure if the fish sensed that the coral was about to die and therefore wanted to get rid of it. I will never know this.
Finally, a Clown Gobby fish nipped my maxima clam's mantle. As a result, he clam refused to anchor itself to live rock and eventually died. I learned the lesson that fish selection must be done judiciously.
In closing, I believe that every aquarist can achieve a thriving reef tank, providing that he/she has the commitment to do his/her best ("Quality only happens when you care enough to do your best") and is willing to learn by reading, from others' experience and from his/her own mistakes. I also believe that we cannot control those aspects of our reef environment (e.g. pH, alkalinity, iodine, potassium, trace elements, etc.) unless we can correctly measure them ("What you cannot measure you cannot control”). Hence, we need to learn how to test, how to use test kits properly and how to interpret the results correctly.
Happy reefing...
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge the following individuals from whom I learned a lot.
Clayton Smith @ Reefworks
“Maestro” (another UK forum)
Simon Garratt (another UK forum)
Stuart Bertram @ D-D
Tony @ D-D
“Wayne in Norway” (another UK forum)
Last but not least, I acknowledge Jeremy and Karl, both of whom are former owners of SAS in Sheffield before it closed down last year. They helped me a lot in the early days of my journey.
Bibliography
Trout's Recommended Reading List
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