My sumpless, skimmerless, n00b tank.....be nice!

[Pico Keeper]

Started July 10th so exactly 5 Months and 15 Days old today!

This is my first real reef. I kept a 5.5 and 1.6g for a few months. They were too small, even though I kept them perfectly healthy and they looked great, I wanted more corals and space! Almost all the corals from this tank are from FMAS members & the FMAS Auctions! Thanks for everything guys!!!


Equiptment:

- 47g AGA Bowfront & Stand
- 2 x Tunze Nanosteams
- 1 AC500 Powerfilter (Finnex Heater, Chemipure, Filter Floss)
- 2 x 150watt DE HQI 14k MH

No Sump, No Fuge, No skimmer, Just tank, rock and flow!

Livestock:

- 1 False Perc
- 2 Ocellaris Clowns (taking care of for a friend)
- 1 Neon Goby
- 1 Purple Firefish (the other one went carpet surfing)
- 1 Pink Damsel??? (someone ID please)
- 2 Cleaner Shrimps (also, my friends)
- 1 RBTA (My friends, was very sick when I got it, coming back nicely)
- 1 Tridacna Crocea Clam
- Common Florida Star, Sand Sifting Star
- Lots of Softies, LPS, & SPS
- Weird hitchhiking Inverts (brittle, spaghetti worms, pods, micro stars, micro serpent starts, asterina starts, hydroids, tunicates, sponges, stomatellas (breeding), emerald crab, decorator crab, unIDed crabs, etc etc)

Husbandry:

- 30% Monthly Water Change
- Dose 2 Part B-Ionic
- I Top-off RODI manually 2x day
- 8 Hour Photoperiod
- I feed the tank daily (I'm definately an over feeder) - Cyclopeeze to the entire tank, spot fed to the Sun corals and gonipora, and then I also feed frozen foods to the LPS weekly.

Water Parameters:

- Temperature - 80 - 82.1 (Only gets that high on really hot days)
- Sg- 1.025
- Nitrates - Unmeasurable
- Phosphates - .2 but no algae probs so???
- Calcium - 500
- Alk - 9.5
- Mg - 1500

Future Plans:

I ran out of space, so for now I'm just going to let everything grow in. Hopefully this year I will move to a new place and I can finally begin planning my first big tank. I'm thinking 72" x 36" x 30" peninsula tank. SPS dominated, if I learn to take care of the ones I have now, so far so good. I've realized I need atleast 250 gallons to store all the corals and fish I want. If I can keep this reef happy with no sump or technology, im sure I will be able to keep whatever I want in the big tank. This is like a practice tank.

This tank couldn't be more simple. But I am a huge gadget nerd, so my big tank will be a money pit with multi spectrum MH & T5, ReefKeeper 3, Ocean Motions for Current, BK Skimmer, etc etc... lots of gizmo's and gadgets!

Now the pics, sorry they kinda suck. I'm shooting with a 13 megapixel canon, and im an amateur photographer, but this is the first pics i take of the tank, and I have no clue what im doing right now. More pics will follow when I get my Nikon working which has all my Macro and Micro lens.

Please leave comments, critism, suggestions, questions, opinions, etc...

My Neon Green Brain


Multi Colored Yumas from FMAS Auction


My extremely green GSP


My little zoo frag section (all from FMAS - NN)


Ora Birdsnest - FAST FAST FAST grower


Sun Corals, "Fred" the huge Brain Coral, and my Crocea


Pink Damsel (Can someone ID this fish?)


Clown and Recovering RBTA (other clown hosts gonipora)


I replaced MJ1200's with these, and I cant say enough good. The added flow changed the entire tank for the better. WOW!!


FTS

[Pico Keeper]

I decided to name all the corals since I've never counted them...

1 Big Brain (Trach)
1 Small Brain (Trach)
1 Pink Brain (Lobo)
1 Purple Brain (Lobo)
1 Green Favites Colony
1 Orange Fungia Plate
1 Orange Montipora Digitata
1 Pink Montipora Digitata
1 Grape Montipora Cap.
1 Acropora Tortuosa
1 Pocillopora
1 Candy Cane colony (blue/green)
1 Blastomussa Wellsi frag(5 polyps)
1 Blastomussa Merletti frag (5 polyps)
1 Echino Pink/Purple
1 Red/Purple/Green/Orange Acanthastrea Echinata Colony (50+ Polyps)
1 Red/Green Micromussa Colony (50+ Polyps)
1 Large Gonipora
1 Devil's hand Leather
1 Electric Green Star Polyps
1 Normal GSP
1 Kenya Tree Coral
3 Sun Coral Colonies (lots of polyps)
10-15 Tiny Cup Corals (clear orange tipped ones)

Lots of Pulsing Xenia Elongata

Green, Blue, Florida, Green/Orange Ricordias (lots)

Lots of Red, Green, Hairy, Pink, Skunk, Striped, Puple, Blue Mushrooms

Lots of Zoos (Chinese zoos, safecrackers, gpe's, orange bam bams, fire & ice, orange, pale green palys, turqoiuse palys, green skirt, etc etc..)

[Miamireefer]

Great looking tank...only advice I can offer is to really give space to the open brain next to the clam... I have 2 myself on the sand bed and when fully expanded take up about a 5x6" space....he looks pretty crammed... other than that very sweet display.

Nick

[Pico Keeper]

Yeah, when he's fully opended, he's touching everything around him. But unfortunately he's in the biggest open space in my tank. He doesn't touch the clam but he barely touches everything else around him.

[xxpipedreamxx]

AWESOME tank!

[thesaent14]

hey pico keeper you don't have sump or skimmer i am planing to make a cube similar to what you have with out sump or skimmer i am debating on it

[Bret61081]

Looks great! What are you feeding all those sun corals...they look great! I hate feeding mine! what a PITA!!

[gasman059]

lol MINE R ALSO A PITA
It's great that u can keep this small tank w/o skimming /I belive that in the future your bigger tank will need skimming and technology b/c its going to get out of hand in terms of maintenance + sps need tons more water quality than ur current residents IMO.
beautiful work !

[Rogger Castells]

One of the nicest mix reef tanks I've seen, now I understand all the bidding at the auction

[45commando]

Congrats-great looking tank.

[Husky_1]

Gorgeous tank.

[julioperez01]

Great looking tank congrats

[jessp]

any heat issues? do you have a chiller or just use fans?

[Pico Keeper]

Thanks for the compliments guys! I appreciate it!

Hey Julio, do you spy your old echino?? It fell into some rock over night 2 months ago, when I moved it back to its spot the next morning it was covered in clear goo and everything under it was just skeleton. It's completely healed now and has actually gotten larger in overal diameter.

I had some heat issues in the summer when I first put the halides on. Now it's pretty darn stable 80-81.5 is usually the max temp fluctuation. Cooler temps of winter, an added fan, and the added surface agitation the tunzes supply help keep things cool. Evap went up too. The heater keeps the tank at 80 at night.

Halides run really really hot about 8" from the water surface.

As soon as I get some spare time, maybe next week, I want to take more pics. Unfortunately im swamped at work right now.

[pitbullpooch]

looking great. ive always found that any of my tanks under 50 gallons run so much better skimmerless. my newest edition is a 40 breeder thats sumpless and skimmerless thats gonna be mostly sps. in the past i had a 75 gallon sps and ran it skimmerless and people said i would have to have a skimmer. when i did add one to the 75 it didnt seemed to do much besides fill the cup full of trace elements and pods which id rather have stayed in the reef lol. so i removed it. also i only did a 10% water change once a month and sometimes id go 3 months and do a 20% and everything stayed happy and grew. i had it for 2 years and now my brothers had it for 3 running it the same as i had with no troubles. so for me ill never use a skimmer untill i get a huge fo or a larger reef with alot of bigger fish. sorry for the ramble lol. anyways ill be watching for some more pics

[Pico Keeper]

I will be posting some new ones. I added a few more sps corals to the tank and moved a few other corals around. I need to upgrade tanks big time. I dont know whether to make a 125 for a while, or just hold off for the big tank in my new place in a year or so.

I would be more than happy with this tank, but I also want more corals for the upgrade. We'll see..

[Ludwigia73]

Beautiful tank, keep it up!

[Pico Keeper]

Originally posted by Ludwigia73
Beautiful tank, keep it up!

thanks man, i appreciate it!!!

[instrance]

Nice!