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MisterTang's JellyfishArt 2g Nano


MisterTang

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My jellyfish tank arrived yesterday!

 

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My wife is really excited - enough so that I get to put this tank in the kitchen/breakfast room area! Unfortunately, I'll have to wait until the end of today to start the cycle because we're getting new countertops installed.

 

When I saw it at the meeting, my first thought was how I could modify it to make it better, because that's just how reefers are, right?

 

Filtration

I'm probably going to add a small amount of porous reef rubble or something in the back to cultivate additional bacterial denitrification. I notice that Jellyfish Art has "marbles" in their bigger tanks which probably aim to do the same thing.

 

Electronics 

The light is "okay" - but I want the functionality Jon mentioned the new one will be coming out with, like the ability to have multiple lights that sync to music.

 

Fortunately, it will be really easy to add this functionality. The base is mostly hollow and lighting is provided by this light here:

 


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It plugs in to a simple two-prong socket in the base, which can be easily removed. 

 

I am considering a black piece of cardboard or plastic to put in the base vertically and divide it into a left/right portion so I can have two different LED colors.

 

So now I'm thinking of cool stuff that could go in the base, and initially considered a Raspberry Pi Zero W with two LEDs on it that would give me a left/right LED channel plus Wifi/Bluetooth and some semblance of an operating system so I could have a predefined schedule plus control it with my phone. Bruleyii mentioned this neat Arduino device which is pretty neat. AlanM already did a neat LED board with an Arduino gemma that I'm going to also look at as an implementation option.

Edited by MisterTang
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Sounds like it's going to be a fun project! Looking forward to it being finished.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, today should have been the day to order the jellies - but I noticed that the temperature is going to get down to the thirties tonight, so I'm putting it off for a day or two until it warms up. I actually called Jellyfish Art and they put me through to our esteemed WAMAS speaker Jon (DrReef on WAMAS) to answer my question without me even asking to speak to him, which was impressive. 

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Nice.  Mine has been up a week.  I'd take a pic of it, but it's a featureless black cylinder at the moment.  Waiting another week or two to order jellies.

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In other news, I added several scoops of SeaChem Matrix in the back for additional bio filtration, as well as a mini-bag of Purigen for additional filtration in addition to the little chemi-pure blue nano packet they include.

 

To Jon's credit, I have had zero water lost to evaporation per his claim in the two weeks mine has been set up. I will definitely be able to handle what little evaporation does occur by mixing it slightly fresher in my water change accordingly. 

 

Hacking of the base of my jelly tank has taken a back seat as I've been writing all new code for my Reef Angel and getting their RF module to properly control the Radion the way I want. 

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Hacking of the base of my jelly tank has taken a back seat as I've been writing all new code for my Reef Angel and getting their RF module to properly control the Radion the way I want. 

 

Interesting.  If you have new QD Vortechs or a Vectra and get it talking to them I'm interested in that too.

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They're here!

 

One of the benefits of the WAMAS deal was that JellyfishArt sends the jellies overnight free - it is two-day shipping normally. I'm glad they did this because I would have felt nervous with the jellies being in transit for two days during my first experience with them.

 

The bag water was about 1.026, whereas my tank was about 1.022, so the jellies sunk even after acclimating them for an hour. I raised the tank salinity to 1.023 and that made them perk up a bit. If I had to do it again, I'd mix the water a bit saltier and have some on standby to get it closer to what the bag water ended up being. The company recommends 1.020-1.023, so I'm going to bring the salinity down gradually over the next month.

 

After about 2 hours, the jellies were no longer at the bottom and were floating around. I had some baby brine shrimp going in the hatchery and they immediately perked up for that. 

 

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In other news, I added several scoops of SeaChem Matrix in the back for additional bio filtration, as well as a mini-bag of Purigen for additional filtration in addition to the little chemi-pure blue nano packet they include.

 

To Jon's credit, I have had zero water lost to evaporation per his claim in the two weeks mine has been set up. I will definitely be able to handle what little evaporation does occur by mixing it slightly fresher in my water change accordingly. 

 

Hacking of the base of my jelly tank has taken a back seat as I've been writing all new code for my Reef Angel and getting their RF module to properly control the Radion the way I want. 

No evaporation ever. Unless you are roasting chestnuts on an open fire.  :cool:

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Mine has been running for 3 weeks or so now (i haven't ordered the jellies yet), and I agree that there is nearly no evaporation.  I've gotten maybe an 1/8" of evaporation in that time.  It's very well sealed.  I think the clear plastic cover on top of the filtration portion must make a huge difference.

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Mine has been running for 3 weeks or so now (i haven't ordered the jellies yet), and I agree that there is nearly no evaporation.  I've gotten maybe an 1/8" of evaporation in that time.  It's very well sealed.  I think the clear plastic cover on top of the filtration portion must make a huge difference.

It does indeed for sure. Even if you took it off you wouldn't see much evaporation anyway. But let me know when you are ready for Jellies! Free Sipping! And Shipping! 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Realized I hadn't posted any photos in a while of this!

 

One of my jellies was acting a little off when I first got him, and a day or two later started "hula hooping" - where instead of one coordinated "pulse" where the jellyfish moves itself, it instead will sort of twitch one quarter of its body, then the next, then the next where it looks like it's, well, using a hula hoop. Unfortunately, this is indicative of nerve damage in the jelly, but fortunately, as Jon mentioned, jellies can pretty much regenerate anything, and the impacted jelly is already back to normal albeit noticeably smaller than the other two. 

 

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Some of the "dots" you see in their tentacles are the baby brine shrimp I feed them. I have skipped the included powdered food almost entirely and feed exclusively baby brine shrimp. I think it ends up being better for the tank, as there's functionally no uneaten food; the jellies are surprisingly good at capturing all the brine shrimp within 20 minutes or so. My usual routine is to make baby brine shrimp over the weekend and one batch tends to last my jellies for the week. I am probably going to try adding some copepods from my main tank into their diet a couple times a week.

 

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Water quality is a big deal with jellies because they can't handle any ammonia and the water volume in these tanks is pretty small. Additionally, bio filtration is limited, so to be on the safe side I end up doing water changes several times a week - I just scoop a cup of water out of the front and dump a cup of saltwater in the back. A water change takes me less than a minute. I have a bunch of pre-mixed water sitting in a large container so the water I'm adding is the same SG. Also, as mentioned before, there's really no evaporation to speak of, so no ATO and no need for freshwater. I haven't had any algae growth and my ammonia is at complete zero and I experience minimal nitrate. I also added some Seachem Matrix in the back to add to the biological filtration. 

 

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This is super neat. I'm sorry I missed the talk. Can you post pictures of the full setup and the mods that you've made? I'm curious about how one of these would do in the smalls space I have. 

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