Uslanja
Active Member
Hi JandR! Thanks for the very nice compliment! This tank and its predecessor, "Our First Nano" have been allot of fun!
For lighting we are using a 36" T5 HO fixture by "AquaticLife". It is using 2 X 39 watts 10,000K daylight bulbs, 2 X 39 watts 420/460 actinic bulbs and 8 LED blue lunar bulbs evenly spaced in 4 groups of 2. The thing we love about this fixture besides the quality and workmanship is the built in lighting control timer. We would recommend one of these fixtures to anyone wanting a T5.
For filtration we are running an AC110 HOB that we modified for a refugium. There is a piece of Cheato in there for nitrate export as well as a place for pods to reproduce. We have a Honshu Pipefish and they like live foods, so we hopefully are getting some copepods from the refugium. In addition to that we were running a Marineland Penguin 200 HOB but we switched that out for a Fluval 205 canister filter last week. The main reason for the switch out was to eliminate the micro bubbles that were being created by the way the water returns to the tank. We maintain a regimented feeding and cleaning routine so at this point we are not concerned about the canister filter creating any additional nitrates. But time will tell if that is the case for us. In the canister filter we are running a filter sponge and a pouch of carbon in one of the trays. We may switch out the filter sponge for floss in one of the lower trays but that will be decided once we learn how well the sponge works and how good we can clean it. We want the sponge to grab the larger suspended particles but be porous enough to allow the phytoplankton that we feed through. The only other chemical filtration that we might use is "purigen". If we find that algae is becoming a problem we will run a bag or two of purigen for a while and see if that helps. But we are still very much in the settling in and learning stage on this tank. But it sure has been allot of fun!!
For lighting we are using a 36" T5 HO fixture by "AquaticLife". It is using 2 X 39 watts 10,000K daylight bulbs, 2 X 39 watts 420/460 actinic bulbs and 8 LED blue lunar bulbs evenly spaced in 4 groups of 2. The thing we love about this fixture besides the quality and workmanship is the built in lighting control timer. We would recommend one of these fixtures to anyone wanting a T5.
For filtration we are running an AC110 HOB that we modified for a refugium. There is a piece of Cheato in there for nitrate export as well as a place for pods to reproduce. We have a Honshu Pipefish and they like live foods, so we hopefully are getting some copepods from the refugium. In addition to that we were running a Marineland Penguin 200 HOB but we switched that out for a Fluval 205 canister filter last week. The main reason for the switch out was to eliminate the micro bubbles that were being created by the way the water returns to the tank. We maintain a regimented feeding and cleaning routine so at this point we are not concerned about the canister filter creating any additional nitrates. But time will tell if that is the case for us. In the canister filter we are running a filter sponge and a pouch of carbon in one of the trays. We may switch out the filter sponge for floss in one of the lower trays but that will be decided once we learn how well the sponge works and how good we can clean it. We want the sponge to grab the larger suspended particles but be porous enough to allow the phytoplankton that we feed through. The only other chemical filtration that we might use is "purigen". If we find that algae is becoming a problem we will run a bag or two of purigen for a while and see if that helps. But we are still very much in the settling in and learning stage on this tank. But it sure has been allot of fun!!
