2(+) Year Retrospective of a 12g Nano

[kathywithbirds]

Noice!!!! Our fungia did that too, it was a short tentacle but boy those tentacles are long to me!! Nice colors on everything... as usual.

So have we discovered RS yet?

[goldenmean]

I discovered RS during the end of April 2006 - 3 months after I added the first livestock to my nano.
Here is my "meet and greet" thread:
new reef forum - oh boy
In that thread I said my tank was 4 months old but I was counting when SW was added. Today I count from the end of my cycle which IMHO is more accurate measure of a tanks age. We really dont need to get into the "when does a new tank begin?" issue! LOL
The first thing that struck me was how friendly RS is.

[goldenmean]

One of my original LR pieces started to grow a zoantid at the 3 month mark. It was right front and center and no sign of zoas at all for all that time.
Then there was one polyp and quicky four as you can see in the first pic.
These few polyps grew to a large colony of over 150 polyps in about 10 months. It was pretty amazing.
The 1st pic is from 4/7/06
2nd pic - 8/13/06
3rd pic - 9/11/06
4th pic - 10/23/06
5th pic - 12/17/06

[InLimbo87]

Wow~! Amazing growth on those zoos

[goldenmean]

Here are two more pics of the zoa colony that appeared out of no where.
These pics are from Feb. 2007 - 10 months after the first polyp appeared.
Your are getting a sneak preview of how the tank looked at just over a year.

[zy112]

Great thread and happy two year! Love the zoas

[flricordia]

Awesome. Love the zoanthids. Tank looks beautiful. That is a long time to go in a nano. Must be doing a great job on it and it shows.

[goldenmean]

Thanks Zach & Mike.
I appreciate your comments.

This tank has been a labor of love . . . and really not all that laborious.
Now it has required a lot of attention but that is easy especially with this tank being in the bedroom.

There have also been some losses too which I will be chronicling soon.

[goldenmean]

Back to April `06.
I added a rock with a colony of blue mushrooms.
Zo brought me another addition that belongs on top of the tank.
You can see it in this FTS @ 4 months

[goldenmean]

In May we we going to Barcelona for a weeks so I added an ATO unit that I bought at my LFS. It has been one of the best buys. I hated manually adding water twice a day.
After we got back I start to notice some HH.
First there was this jet black nudibranch/slug. He just tooled around on the rocks and caused no problems. After a month or so he disappeared.
Then there was a patch of black and gray tunicates which disapppeared as fast as it showed up.
Then there were the bristle worms.

Early that summer the torch coral was doing well. Several of the heads had split. Then some of the heads started to not expand during the day. The coral went down hill from there. The flesh start to deteriorate. Some of the heads clearly died and the remaining ones were bad off. All other corals were doing well. By the end of July I had to remove the coral.
I'm not sure what happened but I put it down to them just not being a coral that that tank with those lights could sustain.

Love my hermits - Scarlet, blue legs, and electric blue.
The FTS is from at 7 months.
The trumpet coral is gone but check out those orange zoas.
The Open Brain is the pride of the tank!

[Dentoid]

Very nice timeline Jeff. Just got caught up on this one!

[hma]

Very, very nice Nano Jeff, congrats ... well done !

[kathywithbirds]

Awesome! I love hitchhiking corals too

[goldenmean]

Thanks Scott, Kathy, & Heinz for checking out my nano's lil thread and for the very kind words!


I had not added any corals for a couple of months so i made up for some lost time. I added 3 zoanthid colonies.
btw I had learned to do a fresh water dip of new zoanthids to rid them of possible nudibranches and other pests. The FW did does not stop the sundial snai.l A couple of weeks after the new zoas were added some polyps of one of the colonies was not opening. I removed the colony and did a close visual search. There was a sundial snail. Only one. They are such a pretty snail it is a shame they eat zoanthids. I was very glad I only had one.

[goldenmean]

At the 8 month mark I decide to get a fish.
My LFS had a new group of Amphiprion ocellaris but the guy that works there that I trust was not ready to sell them until they start eating so I had to go back 3 days later to get them. I bring them home and acclimate them and add them to the tank and one of them dies in a matter of hours. It really was upsetting. I call my guy at the LFS and he apologizes and the next day I get a replacement and he gets in the tank just fine. They are pretty small - juvenile - and one is just a bit larger than the other.
The larger one was pretty aggressive towards the smaller one and would chase him around and the little one would shimmer around.
I named the little one Omen and the bigger one Enom (yes - anagrams of nemo - eNom is the 2nd largest registrar of domain names and number 1 with spammers)

FTS @ 8 months