Matt Rogers' Neo Nano Aquarium

Actually this is wrong - my original intuition was right - the few fingers are alive and I fragged it last night. Pretty crazy. You guys have me convinced I had nudis munching the rest of my montipora though. I took the rest out as much as I could and made a pod pile in my sump last night when I did a water change.

UPDATE

• I just got a piece of that sweet black/green bird's nest from new 3reef sponsor Coralcollection.net. Man is that nice. It was shiny even in the dark. Can't wait to see it tonight when I get home.
  
• My Wet thumbs order is coming next week - a few more acros!
  
• I am going retro and getting back to me old school kent marine aquadose bucket/float combo for ATO and kalk. This close to constant drip method worked extremely well for me in the past. I've been whining about not having it since for years. Ordered this week.
  
• My current acros have responded well to the new aquamedic light setup. I see a lot of new buds. Even on the Aussies. Very cool.

 

Congrats on the new adds and hopefully a successful frag of the Monti. Glad to hear no nudis. You know we are going to want lots of pics.;D

 

Looking great. Glad everything seems to be heading in the right direction.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

hows the bubble magus skimmer running? any issues with it at all?

 

I never said there were no nudis. Not sure if any remain or were there. I just think everyone's hunch may have been correct.
PICS! I will have GOOD pics end of next week with new corals.

Thanks! Every tank is different and I have had my bumps with this one but I think it's getting there now too.

I love this skimmer. I used to have issues with the pump not restarting a few months ago - but interestingly it has behaved, since I moved. I leveled my stand at the new place and wonder if that had something to do with it. Not sure. Perhaps the new meshwheel just had to break in. Beyond this - it cranks. I have filled that giant collection cup more than once with dark goo.

 

Update

Just a quick update - better one with pics to follow next week --

My tank is doing 'ok' - noting coral growth in all corals with one exception.

My recentKent Marine Float Mag Mod is working out great - I am really blown away by the simpleness of this kent marine float switch gravity fed ATO. It's accurate and working out great to drip kalk just as I remembered from a tank setup I had in the early 90's.

The kalk drip has really helped. After my kid was born, the kalk dosing prior went out the window for a while. I stopped dosing ESV. My tank suffered. The rocks lost the purples and whites and starting going brown. Coral growth really slowed. Both are turning around now.

That said, the kalk only (no dosing) experiment for the last couple months or so I've been doing is doing 'ok' with my SPS tank.

I rate it at 'ok' as some corals like my Bird's Nest and Stylo continue to maintain decent growth rates, but my acros have slowed quite a bit. They are not dying - but this is taking 'Go slow, let it grow.' to the edge as many are only growing a couple mm a month I estimate.

It's a little unfair to draw a lot of conclusions only being a couple months into the kalk only experiment, but I am developing hunches and getting an itchy trigger finger.

I haven't done a water test in a while, but just from looks I can tell my magnesium is low for one. Coraline on the glass is only here and there. Not the fast pace it was prior. Not that I enjoy scraping it, but it is a nice indicator of water conditions.

I have been trying to maintain water changes with Coral Pro salt every 2 weeks, but for the last couple it has been about a 3 week turnaround. I do 10 gallons, about 1/3 water change on my tank.

As the kalk continues to drip and restore my tank, my hunch is that with the 2 week water changes, I could have a decent looking tank (rocks and all) in about a month or so, but the acro coral growth rates would continue to be pretty slow.

So I bought a Bubble Magus doser and I am hooking it up next week. When I was doing a cap a day of part 1 and 2 I had good growth prior. I just hated the manual daily dosing. I will do some water tests within the next week. See where I am at and probably start with 30ml and go from there.

Install pics and more soon... this is my rambling update! FWIW..

matt

 

Matt your going to love a doser. Are you going to use bulk dry CA, ALK, and MG or prepared retail products?

J

 

Yeah J I am looking forward to having it going.
Right now I have some 1 gallon ESV to burn through. Then I will give the BRS stuff a try.

 

congrats on the doser - as Jason implied above
it really makes a massive difference in terms of convienience and more importantly
stability is much easier to achieve when you can break down the daily demand into multiple portions of equal amounts

if you need any help with the set up let me know Matt

the instructions are pretty basic , and in my case they where pretty basic Chinese
but once you have the hang of it, its really easy

Steve

 

I love mine and know you will love yours. I found using sodium bicarbonate produces less precipitation on equipment than using sodium carbonate, FWIW. It will also make dosing easier since you will need more solution to keep up with usage and thus make the doser more accurate. I read that the pump needs to run at least 10 seconds to get a consistent amount of solution dosed.