12 glorious gallons (lotta pix)

[Anonymous]

nanocube rocks me
one for every reefer
fun and easy, yo!

the ricordia pic down the page really turned out

The whole shebang. Some of you may notice the absence of leather toadstool. I also rearranged the rocks to form 3 terraced ledges, but preserved the open under area that I can see into from all sides.

My favorite crab.

Little blue guy. He's kinda dumb, I always see him getting stuck.

I like the yellow front grill.

Blastomussa wellsii? It's leet.

This thing may get large.

Crappy shot, but this shroom had wicked color. It is a loner that I transplanted from another tank.

Is this not the bomb?

My LFS threw in a tiny 1" chunk of some kind of hard coral for free. It's been a few weeks and it's slowly adding structure. The polyps are out every day. I didn't kill it!

This thing doesn't pump much. WTF? It's otherwise healthy though.

Wandering anemone finally settled down in an awesome spot.

 

[Juck]

Bastard.

How many watts did you finally cram in there?

 

[Anonymous]

actually it's still just 32w! i have tried 3 times to fit another 32w bulb in there but I just can't do it. Good thing though, I'm already having some temperature issues. If I stop being lazy, I'll order an 13w or something and toss that in there. I think I need to add some cooling fans when I do. Shouldn't be tough.

 

[tazdevil]

Which LFS do you go to?

 

[watto102]

Hwarang,
You're my nano hero!
That nano of yours is awesome! The setup, the aqua scaping, the corals, the xenia, the crab... Everything dude, what can I say!!!
Really, really cool!!! Congratulations! And thanks again for all the input and posts in the past.

 

[Anonymous]

taz, that was "something fishy" that i got almost all of that from. i've decided that store is good.

 

[Anonymous]

That mystery hard coral looks like a green M. digitata to me. Good luck with it. It looks like you have it in the right spot.

 

[Anonymous]

thx matt!

 

[crod75]

Hwarang,

The quality of your pictures is excellent. What kind of camera do you use and do you have any suggestions on how to take such great pictures? By the way I agree that Something Fishy is a great store. Wet World in Eagan is also pretty good but kind of spendy.

Craig

 

[tazdevil]

Eagen? DIdn't know they had a store. But then again, between eagen and woodbury, that's like the gold coast in MN with the prices of those homes! (ummm, the new cakeeaters maybe).

Where in Eagen is this store located for the non locals?

 

[brandon4291]

Well what can I say Hwarang, excellent setup for sure. That particular Blastomussa would cost $170 down here. Really good aquascaping!

 

[Anonymous]

Hwarang,

The quality of your pictures is excellent. What kind of camera do you use and do you have any suggestions on how to take such great pictures? By the way I agree that Something Fishy is a great store. Wet World in Eagan is also pretty good but kind of spendy.

Craig

Yeah, a few people have told me that wet world is really good. Unfortunately, Eagan is on the other side of the Metro area ... I plan to check them out one of these days.

I'm sure that people here could give you all kinds of suggestions on the photo forum, but this is what I generally do to to get good pix out of my Nikon Coolpix 4300:

1. Turn off all lights, draw the blinds etc (I usually wait until night). I even turn off the lights on the aquariums I'm not photographing. The idea is that the aquarium you're taking pix of be the most luminous thing

2. Clean the glass

3. No flash. the strobing light dwarfs whatever you have to light the reef with. However some have posted "flash / no flash" comparisons of thier pix before ... it does alter the color a little.

4. Macro shots (close up) needs a tripod. You will never get a nice picture of something very small if you hold it in your hand.

5. Try not to compose a shot through the glass at an oblique angle. You want the light rays to go straight through, with as little distortion as possible.

....

Well what can I say Hwarang, excellent setup for sure. That particular Blastomussa would cost $170 down here. Really good aquascaping!

Wow that's a butt ton of money! I thought $60 was expensive (that's what I paid)


Thanks for the compliments!!

 

[crod75]

Thanks for the info Hwarang and that's an awesome anemone crab by the way. For Taz, Wet World's address is 3390 Coachman Rd Eagan. The best way to get there is to get on 494 then take 35E south and travel about a mile then exit Yankee Doodle Rd. Go west on Yankee Doodle to about the third stoplight and the store is in the Fox Ridge center on your right. I hope this helps.

 

[crod75]

Thanks for the info Hwarang and that's an awesome anemone crab by the way. For Taz, Wet World's address is 3390 Coachman Rd Eagan. The best way to get there is to get on 494 then take 35E south and travel about a mile then exit Yankee Doodle Rd. Go west on Yankee Doodle to about the third stoplight and the store is in the Fox Ridge center on your right. I hope this helps.

 

[tazdevil]

Yeah, thx. That'll be a road trip and a half from here LOL. Still can't believe I get DSL where I'm at. Looks like I'm already goin to SF tommorrow eh Hwarang.

 

[Anonymous]

sweet. i'm probably going to head down there after mah belt test, around 2 or 3pm ish. see you if i see you!

 

[Anonymous]

Hwarang..gonna start a 10 AGA myself for my living room, any pointers???lighting, skimmer, ect...i plan on doing seahorses, small ones...actually i might even get sh*t for trying to keep seahorses in a small aquarium...shhh....

 

[Anonymous]

i don't know if i should be giving pointers on seahorses in a nano, man. this is only my 2nd salty aquarium. i personally don't like demanding specimenz, so ... there's my tip.

one thing i was thinking about in those 10g standard tanks, that i really want to try some day when i move out of my apartment ... i have one of those wrought iron stands that holds two 10g AGA standard tanks, stacked. one is down near the floor and one is up by your eyes. it's like they intended for it to be a 10g nano w/ a 10g sump. only problem is, i'd have to know more about plumbing. (and right now i basically can't set anything up that's going to get jacked by semi-frequent power outages, so i'm staying away from sumps. i can't risk a siphoning incident.) but anyhow, do you know which stands i'm talking about? it could be a sweet sweet nano setup and the bonus is your volume would actually be 20g.

also, the hoods are SUPER easy to upgrade for those. go to any respectable LFS and get the flat glass thing instead of the molded plastic canopy. you know what i mean? it's two flat strips of glass that are connected in the middle with a flexi plastic strip. i just tried looking online but couldn't find it. didn't try that hard ... anyhow, this lets much more light through, looks a little less cheesy and a little more "art deco" and stuff.

then upgrade the light. keep the plastic fixture housing from the light housing that is meant to go with the plastic canopy. you can fit a 32w smartlite retrofit kit in there in about .0000002 seconds ... it comes w/ a 10k half and a blue actinic half.

so that should do your lighting proper.


i was looking at my jbj nanocube just now too and thought how you could copy the filter area in the back - get yourself one of those CPR hang on refugiums and hang it off the back. then fill it with rubble rock! BAMF!! HOUDINI!! i think that would work purty swell, don't you?

ok so i guess i was able to ramble for a while. that's what happens when i check on the intenet right when i wake up.

 

[Juck]

Hwarang,

I had two 10g tanks setup as a reef & sump,,, worked great with no siphon worries.

These were $8.99 Walmart 10g tanks,, I put them side by side so the toprims were touching each other.

I got a cheap HOT filter,,, the intake tube was in the reef tank but the outflow went into the fuge tank.

I also had a 'U' shaped piece of .75" (i think) PVC pipe straddling the 2 tanks,, this kept
the water level equal and enabled pods to reach the reef tank without getting munched in the HOT filter's powerhead.

The flow through the U tube is the same as the output of the HOT filter.

A siphon break is nearly impossible with this setup if the U tube
reaches deep into both tanks.

Did that make sense? I can draw a picture, lol.

 

[Anonymous]

I'll keep that in mind - but for now I've sworn off anything that has a chance to overflow all over my floor... my apartment or maybe my city block has crummy wiring and the power goes out all the time while I'm at work. I can just hear my landlord yelling now ... hehe.



I think I would like to try your idea and modify it a bit... if you could chain a few tanks together that way, you could have a common volume of water and use each tank to house some kind of species setup. Sweet!