Thor's NaNu Nano 18 Cube

Nice build so far! You'll definitely be pleased with the 9002, little dude is a beast. Following along...

 

Thanks for following along Nightster. Hopefully you will enjoy the thread.

You are absolutely correct in regards to the 9002. Took a little while to break in, and then awhile more before I was able to dial it on. It is a very sensitive device, and I don't mean that in a bad way. It responds well to very minor adjustments to fully dial it in. I am still tweaking it to find the perfect spot, but it's pulling out tons of smelly gunk everyday. It jus works!

 

I believe there is a mod for the adjustment setup online somewhere, may be worth a read.

 

K, I will check that out. Thanks for the heads up!

 

It's been a few weeks and it is update time!

First params:
Ca: 380
Mg:1200
Alk:9.9
Phos: 0
Nitrate: 0

So I am still playing with my dosing to get my params to stay a bit more consistent. My Ca and my Mg have been the main ones moving up and down more than I'd like. So, for now I will be dosing Mg to get that up, and I added Kalk to my top off to try and keep level with Ca and Alk. Once I get my Mg stable, I will work on my Ca--I'd like it to be about 400 or so.

Otherwise, diatoms are gone and my rocks have moved on to stage 2, green algae (but no hair algae so far) in their place. Progress, even if it is of the "ugly" variety. I had a huge 'pod boom this week, which is always good to see too. Added some shells and one of my hermits immeadiately molted--glad I added them before he took out a snail for a new home.

I added a few more snails and a cleaner shrimp to my CUC to help keep things clean and they are doing a stand-up job. This has also may have had a secondary benefit (which I will get to in a bit). On to the pics, none of which are very good. I haven't had time to bust out the wife's Nikon and do real photography.

So I finally captured my Hector's on "film". Barely.


So "Chester", as my son calls him, (cute side story: my son thought I said "Chestor's Goby" and the name stuck) certainly gave me some challenges. He ate sporadically for a day or two, only coming out at meal times. Then he stopped eating. Then he stopped coming out at all. When he did come out of his little hole, he was not looking good--emaciated and losing color. He started glancing. I was trying anything and everything to get him to eat for about 10 days, and now I have so many different varieties of food I can feed a 100 gallon tank for months! (Slight exageration). I thought he wasn't going to make it. Last ditch effort, I went back to live brine shrimp and it worked. He has been doing much better and is out and about all day now. He basically stays right by the clown's side all day--truly an odd couple. So, I am basically working to wean him off live foods again, adding other foods at the same time as the brine. For now, things are looking up.

The return to eating may have also been due, in part, to the addition of other critters to the tank like the cleaner shrimp. I'm not certain if the action of the live brine triggered him to eat, or if he just felt safer with other things in the tank, or other possibilities. No matter, I will take it.

Also, added this ORA periwinkle monti. The pic is not a good rendering, it is actually a cool lavender color and has some super tiny light blue polyps. Not an overwhelming coral color-wise, but different.


That's about it for now. Happy Reefing!

 

nice update! I was looking at a Hector's the other day at the LFS and opted not to buy it for a multitude of reasons. Very cool looking fish for sure! Love the monti!

 

So my zoas have not been happy the last few days. A few polyps have closed and are shriveling up. I was thinking maybe alk was getting too high and irritating 'em.

Then I saw what I think may have been a zoanthid eating nudi hover off and shoot behind a rock. Happened too fast for me to say for sure, but it was definitely that or a flatworm.

Sigh...

 

Okay, so I waited until an hour or two after lights out and then went back to inspect the tank. I can rule out Nudis, as the little critters moved way to fast for that. I can also rule out flatworms as they really did not look like flat worms.

It is tough to say how many there were other than there were more than one. Perhaps 3 or 4, or even more. The activity was mainly focused around the zoa, but I saw one cruising around the sandbed, and a few others cruise around the rock work for a few seconds. I could not capture any pictures, although I will try. They were about a centimeter in length, and the most similar thing I can think of that they reminded me of in the way they looked and moved was that of a silverfish.

I am thinking some kind of predatory amphipod, but really that is just a guess. In any case, they are certainly destroying my zoa's. I will be watching to see if my poci or my monti appears to be irritated over the new few days as well.

In the meantime, more research on pests to be done, and I will just hope they do not find the poci or the monti tasty...

I hate pests, but they are just part of the hobby...

 

Oh yeah, also my theory as to how they got in the tank is they hitchhiked in as eggs on one of my corals. I did dip my corals, but that likley would not have any impact on the eggs, and I will admit I did not go over the top for inspection.

 

Update!

Sorry in advance as there are no pics with this post.
params:
Mg: 1520
Alk: 8.69
Ca: 360
Phos: .03
Sg:1.024

My rocks continue through their green algae look, and there are a few spots of fil type algaes, but no cyano. I do have one spot the is starting to grow hair algae where Chester likes to hang out.

Basically been using my back wall as a Turff algae scrubber. Let it go for thr week, scub it off and harvest as much as I can. Repeat. I just scrubbed it yesterday which explains the slight bump in phos today.

Added another nassariuss snail, two more hermits, and some nerits to help the clean up aspect. Added purigen in addition to the gfo and carbon I'm already running. We will give that a week or two and see what kind of results I get.

I lost my Zoa this week to the amphipods. Couldn't get an rx for sentinel. No matter, I just won't add any softy or LPS until they either die off from lack of food source, or when mu pink streak wrasses on back order gets in. I think he will hunt whatever it is down in short order.

Dipped the rest of my frags looking for eggs, and I did indeed find
Some. So I will keep my eye on that.

Added a purple with blue growth tips stag today. Should be adding a setosa and a green birds nest next weekend. At that point I will just about be full on corals except a red planet.

Other interesting hitchhiker was found today: asterina star. This one seems to be of the film algae variety, but if the changes I will remove it.

Have a great week 3 Reefers!