Redfishsc's 11g Shoebox Reef, LEDs, and a live beer bottle!

This tank has been set up since early October 2011.



Specs:
Tank-- Green Leaf Aquariums, 36"X9"X9" (approx).
Water flow-- two Maxijets, powered by Red Sea Wavemaster Pro (which also provides alternating flow for my 45g planted tank).
Lighting-- 3 warm white Cree XPG, 3 neutral white XPG, and 12 royal blue Rebels and Cree XPE (mixture). 18 LEDs total, no optics. Custom build light hood and bookshelf stand (by me).

No carbon filtration, no skimmer, no mechanical filtration. Only occasional water changes (once every 2 months, 40%.). VERY LIGHTLY FED.

Fish:
One small perc, one sixline wrasse, one neon goby.

Corals: Mostly soft corals-- "one of each". Pics explain better than lists .

Full tank shot, 5/20/2012


Full tank shot as of 2-5-2012



Older shots, showing the stand and light canopy



Here's the beer bottle. Collected by a diver from, I think the LFS said, Vanuatu.... then shipped to Raleigh to a buddy with a reef. He apparently didn't want it, took it to the LFS and I bought it as "live rock" for about $4.




More pics to come soon!!!!

 

that's awesome, keep up the great work.

 

Zoa collection-- most of these are now mounted to the beer bottle:













Palythoa grandis:

 

Blue anthelia:

Snowflake (1/4" tall) Turf-type:


Blue anthelia, taller type (about 2" long), with small Tyree green toadstool frag to the right:


Pearly pink/blue anthelia-- This isn't normal anthelia, only grows about an inch long. Looks nuts under the LEDs. Can't wait for it to grow out some more.



Really long polyped "aussie" green stars. Notice the white base, I've never seen that before. Fast grower.



Pipe organ.



Brown photosynthetic gorgonian. I love this coral. May not be all that colorful, but has tons of action and character.

 

Camo-green-pearly-whatever. It's a Rhodactis indosinensis. Strangest color morph I've ever seen.


Green ricordia:


Frogspawn:


Fiji yellow leather:


Pearly blue/purple/brown finger leather:



Six-line wrasse. Man I wish I could have gotten a better focus on this pic!



Neon goby:

 

I am shocked at how clean the water is in this tank since it has no mechanical filtration.


I'm doing a bunch of things wrong in this tank and, by and large, it looks great. Just wanted to share a few observations.

You can run small tanks with no mechanical or chemical filtration, and even be a bit lazy on water changes, as long as you understand several important points.

• You cannot stock the tank heavily with things that need to be fed-- like fish or non-photosynthetic corals. The more organics you put in the tank, the more likely you will have alge problems.
• You cannot get lazy on the water top-off. I've lost a couple SPS because I let the water get up to 1.029 for a few days. Everything else is fine, but both of my hydnophora varieties died.
• Water flow is extremely critical. In non-skimmer, non-filtered tanks like this, you run the risk of cyanobacteria. I have a lot more water flow in this tank than most soft-coral tanks would have, but I have nearly no cyano (a trace, on the glass, under the gravel).
• Really long, shallow tanks are awesome!!!! Easy to work in, just difficult to find good rockwork for.

 

I have to admit that I am impressed. It never fails to amaze me how great a softie tank can look when done correctly.

 

That's awesome man.

 

So far the only thing I've found that actually makes a softy tank done "wrong" is to overstock it with fish, overfeed it, ignore the top-off and salinity, or to over-light it (mushrooms and some leathers despise high light from good LED/T5/Halide setups).

 

Something else I'm trying on this tank is dosing a carbon source, without a skimmer. Again, this is "wrong" thinking, but it's working (halfway).

I'm dosing buffered Vitamin C powder (Sodium ascorbate). Right now I am dosing 1/8th tsp once a day (morning, just prior to lights-on).


I'm doing this for two reasons---


First, Vit C has (in my tanks, and others) shown some unusual benefit (which I do not understand in the least) to soft corals and LPS, and maybe SPS. They seem to polyp-out better, and grow healthier/faster. This is exactly what I am seeing. I have several zoa colonies that had been closing up on me, and my Tyree toadstool (green) would only open half the time. Now, they are all open, and all the other softies are polyped out, and most are growing more over the past 10 days.



Second--- for nitrate reduction, but NOT phosphate reduction (explained below)

Dosing carbon sources like this (and vodka, or bio-pellets) is done usually to remove nitrate and phosphate. In my tank, since there is no skimmer, this is limited. Phosphate is NOT removed. Meaning, the bacterial bloom that (supposedly) is occurring in my tank isn't being skimmed out, and thus the phosphates they consume (along with the carbon source) isn't being skimmed out.................... HOWEVER.

Nitrate is dropping, which was what I hoped for. In 10 days (of 1/8th tsp per day, in about 10g of water)-- my nitrates have dropped from 15ppm to 2ppm. No water changes, no feeding changes. The bacteria are probably converting the nitrates into nitrogen gas, which requires NO skimmer. If you have a better idea, I'm all ears, but it's working.



Also, a side benefit. The Vitamin C powder is buffered, and I've tested the amount of alk in it. 1/8th teaspoon raises 1 gallon of RO/DI water by 1 dKH, and this is pretty consistent (I tried several different iterations and got the same ratio). So every day, I'm putting in 0.1 dKH of alk in my tank, which seems to be close to my daily consumption rate (from corralline algae mostly), since my tank holds steady at around 10dKH.



I have not had any oxygen deprivation problems, which I am aware is a huge risk. But I've never had any cloudy water or slime-strands that usually accompany any sort of bacterial bloom.


Eco-Aqualizer ain't got nutin' on dosing Vitamin C lol.