Rather then using glass have you tried the GFO chambers. I've had great results with it and it can be used on any size tank to bring Phosphates down to nothing
Update on my tank as of today. picked up some new stuff, moved some stuff, have 3 new fishes next door in the QT tank. as of now just my little boxfish "PACMAN" is loving his new home, and a fire scallop. awesome fish! sump is up aswell, will take some pics of that later tonight. Aswell as my aquastyles LED's
moved some things, sold some things. Changed the substrate and ditched the crushed coral. Going a different direction and going with higher end harder corals not just softies.
Added 10gal sump fuge with rubble and cheato. Using the stock Eheim LED for fuge light. JBJ Auto Top off. Went with a Titanium heater. BRS dual reactor GFO and Carbon, though the LFS didnt have GFO in stock yet. Need to clean up wires but im hooking up the ReefKeeper lite next week so that will get done. Also added the MP10 Wes and wired the controller to my desktop.
Changed lights out once again to a LFS brand 12' LED fixture. swaped the glass top for a mesh top due to having the overflow being in the way of the glass top fitting.
Do you guys think I need more rock? Im going back and forth because I like being able to get the magfloat around to clean the glass but the rock is always preventing me from getting to these spots. What do you guys think?
i would definitely leave it the way it is. The rock work looks great. Small tanks always look better with small amounts of rock. You have a lot of spots you could easily add some sps and other corals. I can see you are starting to form a really nice collection of corals. Make sure you plan everything out so everything grows in nice.
Some suggestions-
Leave the higher parts of rocks for stony corals and leave the softies and everything else on the lower.
I would suggest removing both the long skirt yellow zoos and the mushrooms away from the direct rockwork. they will easily take over everything. i understand they are nice but they are best on the sandbed. small tanks get run over by fast growing and spreading corals.
I quickly learned to not just fill the tank up with cool looking stuff. On a smaller tank everything is 10X in size so I traded up and sold off and waiting for those 1 off pieces that will set the tank apart.
I see what your saying about everything taking over and even though I am new and wish for things to start encrusting and growing, I dont want an issue later on. So you think I should just put the yellow zoos and mushrooms on the sand bed on the frags they are on? will this prevent them from growing over the tank
I want my zoas to take to the rock and encrust, but should I put them all next to each other or do they need their space so the colors dont mix up? I would like a small colony of each type. not sure how to do this. I want to start gluing the frags because they keep falling.
also was thinking about cutting off my pulsing xenia and gluing it to my overflow box. bad idea? It looks cool now but I dont want xenia all over the place
yea sometimes space fillers can be a problem. those two corals are a perfect example of corals you do not want as space fillers because they will take over rather quickly. Other corals in that category - pipe organ, xenia, anthelia. and sometimes GSP. [especially in small tanks] i try to even keep gsp to a rock on the sand.
i would remove them to the sand bed if ur intent on keeping them. i would prob ditch the yellow polyps - they aren't that pretty [but thats totally up to you]. but would definitely keep the green shrooms - i love them and they seem to split pretty often and are great for trades.
You should leave some space in between zoo clusters so they have room to grow. they will encrust within a few months. i personally always glue or leave them on the sand bed till i figure out where they are going.
Whenever you decide to venture into sps i would always suggest gluing them down. sps start by growing at the base [encrust] so they can get a good structure and then they will start grow up and out. If they do not have a strong base and are moving around a lot and your levels arent spot on they will have trouble surviving/growing and will just be stressed.
upgraded my little 10gal sump/fuge to the Eshopps RS100 sump, PSK100-H skimmer, and added the BRS dual reactors. I did this to get everything ready for the upgrade next week. alot of LR in there right now but thats going to the new tank.
Do I take the award for most overkill filtration on a 9gal nano or WHAT!?