gastone

Missed my window to edit the last post: I've also picked up 10 Avicennia germinans, black mangroves, for the Caribean biotope that will go into the 28g lowboy. I've got half of them placed in the back compartment of the 30 and the other half planted in soil. I suspect the ones planted in soil will take off quite a bit quicker, and then I'll have to re-acclimate them to salt water before adding them to the lowboy.

Not a tremendous amount of change on the 30L. I was able to replace the IM skimmer with an IOAIO nano skimmer. The company was offering free skimmers (they asked they you post a review on Amazon) over on reef2reef and I was able to score one. It's quite finicky to dial in, and the collection cup is tiny (does have an overflow), but it's been pulling some nasty stuff once up and running. I'm loathe to use the overflow capability as if it gets twisted even slightly the bubble composition will immediate change to a watery froth and it could quickly drain the back compartments. Especially given that it's in my classroom and someone from the cleaning crew could accidentally bump it at night. The little entamacea quadricolor has settled in nicely. Small guy, may 3" or so in diameter. The clowns haven't found it yet, which again, given the fact that it's not a natural host for them isn't surprising. They are partial to the corner of the tank nearest my desk. She especially gets excited every time I stand up. I feed them often, though not a lot. This to make up for the fact that they don't always get fed on weekends, though I do try to make it up on Saturdays to feed them once. Currently they are getting a mix of Marin S and some Thera A pellets. I also spot feed the bta once or twice per week with some frozen mysis. In addition, I've been culturing phyto at home, currently Chlorella and Tetraselmis Chui. I bring in a 12oz bottle of each on Mondays and dose a few oz per day throughout the week. At home I've also setup a copepod culture. Right now it's a mixed culture, but eventually the apocyclops will outcompete the tigre and tigriopus. The plan going into next year is to start some school cultures with the students, both phyto and pods. I'm also considering rotifers if we are able to get into some clownfish rearing, but I'm probably getting a bit ahead of myself. To boot, while the students can keep up with rotifer cultures during the week, I don't know that I'm going to want to come into the building on every day off to attend to them. We'll see where we land. Speaking of next year we are making some positive headway planning wise. My co-teacher and have sat down a few time and put together a wish list for the school. We knew it would get kicked back, and it did, to the tune of a 75% reduction, but we are glad that we are getting some money for our venture. I've got tanks, overflows, skimmer and sump. Still going to need plumping, return pump, circulation, lighting, heaters, et al. And that's just the dry goods. Still looking at what else is out there to be had. I plan on building the stand soon and hope to get water into the system by the start of the school year.

I'm running 6 nanos at the moment. 4 have kessil a80 tuna blues, which seems quite underpowered to me (package deal), but do have a nice look. I'm also running dalua pixels over another tank which have good color and good punch, but are lacking in controllability. Just intensity, not spectrum. And on my 30 I've got the nicrew 150 that @epleeds references, and two more a80s. Bang for the buck, hard to beat the nicrew. I like it enough that I imagine it's what I'll go with in my next two school tanks, a 20 cube and a 28 lowboy. And you can daisy chain kessil (a80s at least) and nicrews from the same nicrew conroller. The last option that I'd entertain would be the noopsyche k7 mini. They are getting solid reviews at a inexpensive price point. I can't speak to "smart" integration as I don't have an aquarium controller. I used to enjoy the science of reef lighting, but LEDs have made it dummy proof what with they seemingly unlimited controllability. Trial and error is a simple as pressing a few buttons, unlike the old days when we had to study spectral plots and then make educated guesses on which bulb combination was best.

Not much has changed. I added an entamacea quadricolor (rainbow variant) and a large Caulastrea (neon candy cane) that I picked up from member @ChrisTran. For next year I'm planning on plumbing together a 20g Fiji cube and a 28 lowboy with a sump that I got from member @WheresTheReef. I'm thinking of doing a pseudo Caribbean mangrove biotope in the lowboy. I've got two pairs of clowns at home that are in grossly undersized nano tanks and definitely could use some more room. The clowns aren't native to the Caribbean obviously, hence pseudo. I'm in the planning stages and will get to work on the stand soon Thank you to the members who have supported the tank with either donation, or discounts. It's greatly appreciated.

Welcome, Jim. Post some pics of your setup. Garrett.

Commonly used in vermicomposting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenia_fetida No bug killer. Fed from our kitchen waste. They reside in a bin in our basement by the thousands. I usually pull about 5 pounds of worms out in the spring to seed the gardens.

Interesting Paul. We do vermicomposting and have quite the supply of red wigglers. I've thought about feeding them to my tanks. Will try to do some more reading about it now and see where it gets me.

Excellent documentation. Enjoyed the read.

I shouldn't have put that together using my phone. Especially given there is not edit option. I managed to upgrade the lights a bit. I went with a Nicrew 150 and the associated controller. I get that the 150 is overkill on a 30g tank, but I wanted a bit more spread and I plan to just run them at like 40% or less. I'd read on another forum that the Kessil controller (which is quite similar to the Nicrew controller), would work on Nicrew lights. As luck would have it, the Nicrew controller also works on Kessil lights. (Bonus, it was only $44 or so on Amazon) So I've got the Nicrew situated in the middle of the tank, flanked by two Kessil A80s, all daisy chained to the Nicrew controller. This means I can get the other A80 and the Kessil controller over to my house and onto my nano setups. Tank: IM 30L Nuvo Fusion Pro AIO Lighting: 1 Nicrew 150w and 2 Kessil A80s controlled via a Nicrew controller Mechanical Filtration: Two filter baskets, with IM 3 stage media - mechanical sponge, carbon sponge, and phosphate sponge Skimmer: NuvoSkim DC AIO Protein Skimmer (Desktop) Biological Filtration: Probably about 20lbs of live rock including some branch rock. I believe the previous owner told me that it's Marco Rock or the like. 40-50lbs of CaribSea live sand. Also a number of Bio Blocks. Heater: Two Eheims - 150w and a 50w backup. I've got 5 Inkbirds that should be arriving today so I can get the 4 nanos at home and the school tank set up with better monitoring. ATO: Auqa Gadget 5 Gallon Hydrofill Reservoir with a Prism ATO. I can bring in a 5 gallon bucket of RO/DI from home as needed to refill the reservoir. Circulation: MightyJet 538 GPH Return Pump through the two return nozzles is currently the only water movement! I've got a Jebao SCP-70M wavemaker on order. We'll see how it does. Livestock: Pair of Black Storm clownfish and an orchid dottyback. Skunk cleaner. Emerald crab (there was a wee bit of bubble algae on the rock. Not horrible, but I don't want it to get horrible either). Nassarius and a few hermits. Maybe a cerith or two or three. There's also two neon green cabbage corals, a neon nepthea and a few green mushrooms. None of those corals move me or speak to me, but they are fine for now. Short term plans: The tank doesn't jump out to me as being loaded with biodiversity. I'll probably do an order of plankton and pods (copepods and amphipods) to up the diversity quotient. I'd like to get an anemone to host the clowns. Entacmaea aren't the natural host, but I'm not interested in attempting a Heteractis or Stichodactyla at work, so BTA it is. Longer term: acquire some corals to frag so we can talk about asexual propagation with the students. I'm thinks zoas and LPS, though I remember @SteveOutlaw and his debacle with palythoas many years ago so perhaps even in a controlled environment, that wouldn't be a great idea. Next year: I'm hoping to get in another tank. I'd like to explore the idea of raising fry. Not sure how feasible it is in a classroom setting, given how much care and consideration a hatch needs, especially before meta. At the very least I'd like to get a few cultures going. That would provide a good opportunity to discuss food hierarchies as well as grabbing the Bio teacher from downstairs to study the different cultures under a scope. We also have access to 2-3D printers. We've already started using them by printing off a variable flow nozzle. I need to grab it out of the maker space, get it cleaned up and see how it works.

I've been away from the hobby since late 2008 or so when I got married and bought a house. My wife okayed a new tank so I picked up a Waterbox 15 peninsula for the house. My kids 11&9 have gotten excited and I started shopping for more and started thinking about getting a tank into the building where I've taught hs math for the past 22 years. I've had a couple of members generously offer to donate systems, but given the large size of them, I couldn't get it past the higher ups. Last week I stumbled upon a guy liquidating. He had a very unique setup to include twin IM concept pro 2|20 aio encores and an IM 30L. The encores weren't what I was after, but I thought it was a cool setup so I went for it. The setup included three pair of clownfish: black storms, black extreme snowflakes, and black and white ocellaris. The black storms are in the 30 with an orchid dottyback, a skunk cleaner and cuc and some softies (not my thing, but they are okay). The salinity in the 30 was quite low (1.020) and I think he was using tap water treated with prime in lieu of ro/di so I've been doing daily 4-5 gallon water changes to slowly up the salinity and deal with nutrients export. I ordered a nicrew 150 as at the very least I needed an a80 at home. I still need to up the flow (only the return pump currently), and I'd like to get an anemone for the clowns. That's the short term. Longer term: The Phoenix Center houses the alt ed program for Stafford County. We have two disciplinary based programs (I worked in the HS program for 14 years), a GED program, a high school completion program for students that just need an alternative setting to finish their grad requirements (Turning Point - this is my 8th year there) and an evening program to again offer another avenue for students. I'm thinking about adding an earth science endorsement to my license to explore the option of teaching oceanography. In the meantime, the one science teacher in the building helped me pick up the 30. We've got some ideas and access to 2 3D printers in our maker's space. There's a new technology academy opening next door to us that a good friend is overseeing and I've thought about touching base to look into some controller programming and the like. That's where we are. I'll get some pics and more equipment details shortly. Garrett.

Thanks, Tom. Sorry I didn’t say hello Saturday.

Welcome guys. Just set up a nano with pixels from dalua. Wish I would have known you guys were dealers.

I'm watching it now!

Nicole, I've been away from reef keepingfor about 15 years. Was surfing around WAMAS and came across this thread. I'm absolutely fascinated by your work. Kudos and I look forward to chatting. Garrett.

Well 4 years late, but I'm officially getting back in. Picked up a waterbox 15g aio peninsula. Ro/do arrives today. Hope to get water in it tomorrow. I see many old timers have drifted away as I did (Dave, looking at you hanging out in New Mexico). Looking forward to meeting people on Saturday.