SPS in nanocube?

[j-cal]

For graduation today, in addition to about a million other kewl things and cash i got a nano cube from my employer (owns an LFS) I want to try something new/different than anything ive done before and i was wondering if doing some SPS is possible. For those that havent seen these, it is 12 gallons, wet/dry filter, and 65 watts of PC lighting. The tank is small so the PC seem like a better choice than halides anyway. I want to try bare bottom with additional pumping to ensure no dead spots (i set one up at work and the simple pump it uses seems quite good for a lagoonal type reef setup). As far as water ima use RO/DI reef crystals with a 1 gallon change weekly to help with trace element usage and calcium usage. with concerns to bioload, if its doable with fish id like to try a pair of catalina goby ONLY..i figure that the bioload created by such small fish SHOULD be neglegible, but if its only doable without them they can go. are all of the choices that ive made so far acceptable/ideal? and is this a reasonable trial....btw i dont wanna try the more difficult SPS just the basics to get me strated and something to fiddle with while i am away at vet school next year. thanks

 

[j-cal]

bump in hopes someone looks...

 

[footbag]

I am in the process of setting up a 7g mini-bow SPS/Zoanthid tank. The tank has been running for 3 months now and the LR cycle ended yesterday. (Ammonia =0, Nitrite =0,Nitrate = 0)
I currently have a 32w PC Don't worry the 70w halide is in the mail. I am going to post my review of the lighting system on this board. There seems to be a lot of interest. According to the seller, it will not raise the temp more then 3 degrees if you use a fan. Current temp is 78 w/heater.
It has a sand bottom, and I used a 802 Powerhead hooked up to a homemade spraybar for circulation. This was the most significant addition. The powerhead is adjustable, but I have it open all the way.
I plan on adding ONE fish only. It will probably be a yellow watchman goby.
I have a 15g refugium/sump hooked up to it. It is currently growing macros. Seem like a big fuge? Thats my insurance. I want to keep the water quality perfect. I think that any problem could easily crash a small tank, so I have an extra 15g of insurance.
Glad to help, any other ?'s

 

[j-cal]

yer set up is dramatically different than mine. I was wondering if what i said is a reasonable to try to raise some SPS

 

[footbag]

The only thing that I'm thinking is that your 65w of light might be too little to get any good SPS growth. Upgrading to a higher wattage PC may [or may not] help, halides are usually recommended with SPS.
With that setup you would probably be able to keep monti digitatas and monti caps. These grow quickly, so slowing there growth may be a little welcome.
I think that your setup is reasonable to try, but there are a few loose ends. (Lighting and water volume)You can tie up loose ends with extra water changes, though.

 

[j-cal]

I was thinking that the lighting might not be w huge issue because of how close they will be to the light. i figure the farthest any will be away is about 6 inches. I def cant handle growth that is too rapid or they can and will easily outgrow my tank. I know of a local that sells acropora frags to a LFS that i frequent that raises his frags under VHOs. He has been doing this for years and I would have higher intesnity in my tank than his, and the frags that I buy would be from his acros. These SHOULD work right? mostly i like montis milles these acroporas that i see and porites. I know that the porites wont thrive but the others should i THINK

 

[cincyreefer]

What stores are you referring to J-Cal? I am just curious because I frequent many stores as well.

 

[j-cal]

Its just one store, but the acro im talking about is from monfort. They always have little frags and tom/eric told me that the acro frags they have come from a local growing em under VHO. Ive never seen them with dying acro in their VHO tanks either (save the time a brain fell on one and stung a side). granted they arent blue tort or anything that amazing, but pleasant pinks and oranges and some greenish. They dont have em all the time, but every 2-3 i see new ones. Do yall at A&E get SPS frags? and u think what im trying is reasonable?

 

[golfish]

Originally posted by J-Cal
I was thinking that the lighting might not be w huge issue because of how close they will be to the light. i figure the farthest any will be away is about 6 inches.
NOT, its not about how close or how many watts per gal...its all about how intense they are. Water quality is another issue. If you had a 20 gal sump and or fuge connected I'd say you MIGHT be ok, bad things happen REAL FAST in small tanks.
I just can't understand all these threads from people asking if they can keep acros under PC's....WHY? why would anybody bother? Sure, you might be able to keep then alive but chances are its going to be butt ugly.

 

[j-cal]

i shoulnd t have even brought up acros :-/ those are the onyl ones im SURE would be fine and thats onyl cause i know my tank woiuld have more intense light than the person cultivating them. they arent super bright acros nor do i care. i want something to keep me busy at vet school to get my feet wet in the world of SPS.
if i opt for no fish how can something spontaneously go wrong? i have no heater to burn stuff, i have no nutrient loan coming in minus the DTS and that should be negligible on the nitrogen cycle if i dont over do it right? I am not the type to fight until i hear what i want but sometimes i wanna fight until the argument is at least logical :-/ as for color thats nto what im striving for. i want a plesant SPS tank with live corals..heck ill be on a college budget....brown is the best to try to afford
What will the fuge do to benefit this style tank? i should in theory have little bioload to dilute with mroe water and no source of phophates if use RO/DI. im sure a sump could help if i did go with fish, but as is i dont see how a sump/fuge would be helpful.

 

[j-cal]

how about kip or graham...u guys think that this is worthwhile to try simple SPS or not?

 

[golfish]

Originally posted by J-Cal
how about kip or graham...u guys think that this is worthwhile to try simple SPS or not?

Yeah, your right, those guys have a lot more post then I do

 

[birdy]

Mark you crack me up

Okay, you are going to do what you want to do, so why get pissed when someone gives you advise you don't want to hear.
Have you ever set up a nano? Have you ever kept sps? If not I suggest you set up the nano and try to keep it with some easier stuff first, then if you are doing fantastic with it, then go with some of the hardier stuff, like monti's.
You are not going to get very good color of sps's from pc's. A lot of sps keepers have a rough time getting good color with optimal lights and conditions.
Good luck

 

[golfish]

Originally posted by Birdy
Mark you crack me up

Carla, I was just thinking about last week when that guy called me a (short for Richard, not Rich) ......He was 100% correct.

I don't think J-Cal is upset, He just wants Acro's in a nano. its probably possible if he added a good size sump and or fuge.
Originally posted by J-Cal
What will the fuge do to benefit this style tank? i should in theory have little bioload to dilute with mroe water and no source of phophates if use RO/DI. im sure a sump could help if i did go with fish, but as is i dont see how a sump/fuge would be helpful.
Like I said before "bad things happen fast in a small tank" I said sumpfuge not alage scrubber. If you had say a 50 gal sumpfuge you'd have 50 more gals of water, that would make the tank alot more stable. You could have a nice sand bed in the fuge, that equals food for the corals.

 

[brooklyn johnny]

Originally posted by skilos1
how about me? I have more posts than golfish...... If I were you i'd listen to Mark(golfish). He started me on SPS a few years ago and also helped out graham along with me a little while back. He's been in the hobby a long time and knows his sps. I agree that its pretty hard to maintain a small aquarium let alone keep it stable enough for SPS. You can ask brooklyn johnny and he will tell you that its not the easiest thing to do and it took a lot of work and money on equipment.
Man does this issue come up alot, and I'm happy skilos that you mentioned me in the context that you did. I always try to get across the message that this venture is not at all easy and should only be attempted by those who are experienced IF AT ALL. At the same time I never try and discourage someone 100% by saying it cannot be done. It can be done, but for the right reasons. When I set up my 10 gallon I didn't have the intentions of proving something. I had just been married and was in a small apartment and didn't want to sleep on top of the 180, so after going to nano-reef.com I saw the possibilities. I used my previous experience with some help from some of those guys and had a successful nano.
I have since upgraded, and the 10 gallon got more and more complex before I upgraded and was either going to need to be thinned out, or my wife was going to have to quit her job and get training from me to take care of the nano full time.
Very simply put, the margin of error when you have a small tank is much smaller. This is obvious with things like temperature change and dissolved organics, but I found that other important factors were an issue like water movement. SPS like alot of water movement, but not in one direction nor in fine streams. I just had an issue after getting back from 17 days on business where one of my SCWDs stuck and caused quite a bit of recession on an acro colony that had received that flow for months in a switching manner.
As I overcame the initial problems and things started taking off, the major issue was calcium and alk supplementation. I was adding a half gallon of full strength kalk per night, and on top of that towards the end I was adding about 20 mLs of B-ionic spread out over three daily doses to keep the pH change managable. Combine that with my business trips and my wife was being left four full pages of notes !
I could go on and on regarding specifics, but the moral of the story is you really need to have alot of experience before you shoot for keeping the hardest of corals (sps) in the smallest of boxes (nanos). The ease of keeping stability is proportional to the gallons in your system, and sps come from a relatively stable part of the reef (usually). If given this stability though sps can be very durable.
What I would suggest is setting up a kick*** nanocube, but gaining experience with soft corals and lps first as you become accustomed to running a nano...
Hope that helps...

 

[footbag]

Sorry to see your nano go BJ. It is the nicest nano I've ever seen.

 

[golfish]

very good stuff BJ

 

[j-cal]

like the whole issue wasnt centered around number of posts, its centers around number of different peoples opinions. i know that you (golfish) are usually right about stuff, but going off of only one persons opinion regardless of how good they are is idiotic ALWAYS. I know a few locals with things like montis and milles and some local acros under similar PC set ups, i was more concerned with my maintenance etc being fine. as far as personal exp ive had an LPS and softie tank (55 then upgraded to 125) for 2 years now. I have really good luck both at my store and at home with rough to keep things like anemones anthias etc etc. this thread makes me seem like im some yahoo wanting to throw rocks in a tank and hope they do great, but this isnt the case at all.
A question that I still dont get is this--sure i work at a LFS i completly undestand the small tank low margin of error statement, but if im only adding DTS as a nutrient source and doing weekly waterchanges, what kinds of issues can destablize this system. I dont plan on dripping kalk cuz im gonna stay up on adding calc from salt from water changes. So what issues might i run into that id need more water to dilute a problem? maybe im just asking this question wrong :-/
Another question tho, if i am getting these monti/mille/acro from local people keeping them and reproducing them under less intense VHO why would lighting be an issue. again im not looking for the most killer color i just want to try some that i know are acclimated to a similar lighting scheme in order to decide if a full blown SPS tank is something that i want.
My plan is to raise soem frags from the locals that have been growing with the same of slightly less intense lighting, not to order some neon acro and porites and then end with some blue tort arco,,,im not an idiot, i just figured that if they are used to similar lighting there wouldnt be an issue. apparently tho in my tank they are just gonna crash because most peoples acros are under halides my bad
as a side note i left this board for several months because of people like birdy who assume that because im trying somethign different that i have no experience. YES ive obviously had nanos before and was quite successful, but in general people on this board tend to assume that all other posters are complete morons--im not talking about golfish btw i value his opinions usually, but i think that people are analyzing this situation too broadly...my bottom line is that if i do this im not getting SPS that are used to halides and i have read a fair amount and i dont see why this sounds so preposterous given that circumstance

 

[bona42na]

J-cal where are you getting 64W of pc from? Stock nano-cubes come with 24w . I retro-ed 2 32W CSL kits into mine and quite honestly its not even close for SPS yet.Have another look unless youvve already done an upgrade. They are great little tanks for zoos leathers and polyps and other easy stuff like mushrooms but getting enough light for SPS in ther without huge heat problems will be a challenge for even the best reefers IMO. Peter

 

[brooklyn johnny]

Jcal a couple of issues you need to reconsider are these...
Heat will be an issue. On my 10 gallon I had 72 watts PC sitting right on the water, which gave the intensity for my sps, but without my refugium with a fan blowing over it the temp would go well into the 90s. Even with the refugium without the fan I would get in the low 90s. With the fan blowing over the refugium my daily temp would top out at around 83, which was acceptable. You could easily let your setup run with freshwater to see what your temps will hit, and I recommend one of the Digital temp alert thermometers highly. Mine would beep from time to time when the temp went over 83 as a result of various things, like a powerhead getting stuck or whatever.
Replenishment of calcium and alk through water changes I can guarentee will not last long if at all. As I said I was adding buffer and kalk like gangbusters and that was the MAJOR issue I was facing regarding keeping sps in a small volume. This problem is unavoidable if you are going to try and replenish through weekly water changes.
Anyway these are two major issues you'd need to face, but avoiding fish will help you in the build up of organics.
Bona was right on with the heat issue and I was constantly teetering on the line between overheating and starving light... I had the PCs less than two inches above the water which was important...
I've been in the hobby for 15 years and that little tank challenged me more than anything... I had alot of luck on my side too. I'm the last to discourage, but I hope we're all helping you realize what you'll get into...
On another side note sps cover a vast range of adaptability... consider that when and if you try small frags...
Hope that helps...