So I've been a member of AA for about a year now and finally decided I would start a thread for my 20L reef to get some input and also to inspire others who might want to start a reef on a college budget. I set the tank up my sophomore year at college when I moved into a house off campus and it is now a little over 2 years old. The adventure has been absolutely WILD to say the least (as you can imagine with moving and living with several other buddies). The things I've gone through with it and things that have happened to it I'm sure makes me just about the only person who would have stayed with it to this point. If anyone is interested to hear more of be glad to share but for now here is a little background on the setup:
For equipment I am using 2 hydro 425 gph powerheads a hang-on-back remora-s skimmer since there is no sump and a marineland canister filter which is stripped of all packaged media and replaced with chemipure elite and purigen. I also do 20% WC's each week. The light is just simple 120 watt blue/white LEDs from eBay.
For inverts/coral there is a few mixed hermits, ~10 mixed snails, strawberry crab, a skunk cleaner shrimp, and a red harlequin serpent star. Corals are some green hairy shrooms, ricordea shroom, pagoda cup, pink and purple zoas (don't know name), meteor shower cyphastrea (I think), frogspawn (rescued & slowly coming back), green montipora digi, red monti digi, red monti cap, purple monti cap, and then some frags I just got of maroon monti undata (I think it's spelled), acans, and golden eye & stunner chalices.
And for fish I have a red firefish, purple firefish, cherub angel, mccoskers wrasse, and a spotted mandarin. Ive had the mandarin a little over a year and trained him onto Frozen mysis myself. Not sure he even knows he's a mandarin as he likes to swim in the water column and eats just as voraciously as the others do. I know I will hear it for the wrasse and angel but I just got them a few months ago only b/c I worked a deal for them at $15 bucks each. Now that I've moved into my own apartment away from campus for senior year I am going to move it all into a 40B as soon as the next $1/gal sale happens. The 2 fish were on my list to get for the 40 and I only got them because of the price and the guy I got them from told me if I had issues he would take them back. Both are ~1" and to this point neither has paid any mind to the other or the other fish in the tank.
Recently I just got a jebao wp10 to replace the 2 hydors and when I tried it out I ended up removing it after 10 mins since it really seemed to tick off my corals and polyp extension receded. Is this too much flow with the wp10 (and canister I guess which is used for surface agitation) or should I give it another shot and hope the corals just needed to acclimate to it?
Also I've always struggled with bubble algae and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions to get rid of it? I've tried emerald crabs with no luck and also about 6 months ago took out each rock during a wc that had some and scrubbed it off in the old saltwater and then rinsed each which did the job initially but slowly the bubble algae made a comeback.
Any suggestions/opinions I'd love to hear. I'll do my best to keep things updated but for now here's a FTS..
Cheers everyone
Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium Advice
For equipment I am using 2 hydro 425 gph powerheads a hang-on-back remora-s skimmer since there is no sump and a marineland canister filter which is stripped of all packaged media and replaced with chemipure elite and purigen. I also do 20% WC's each week. The light is just simple 120 watt blue/white LEDs from eBay.
For inverts/coral there is a few mixed hermits, ~10 mixed snails, strawberry crab, a skunk cleaner shrimp, and a red harlequin serpent star. Corals are some green hairy shrooms, ricordea shroom, pagoda cup, pink and purple zoas (don't know name), meteor shower cyphastrea (I think), frogspawn (rescued & slowly coming back), green montipora digi, red monti digi, red monti cap, purple monti cap, and then some frags I just got of maroon monti undata (I think it's spelled), acans, and golden eye & stunner chalices.
And for fish I have a red firefish, purple firefish, cherub angel, mccoskers wrasse, and a spotted mandarin. Ive had the mandarin a little over a year and trained him onto Frozen mysis myself. Not sure he even knows he's a mandarin as he likes to swim in the water column and eats just as voraciously as the others do. I know I will hear it for the wrasse and angel but I just got them a few months ago only b/c I worked a deal for them at $15 bucks each. Now that I've moved into my own apartment away from campus for senior year I am going to move it all into a 40B as soon as the next $1/gal sale happens. The 2 fish were on my list to get for the 40 and I only got them because of the price and the guy I got them from told me if I had issues he would take them back. Both are ~1" and to this point neither has paid any mind to the other or the other fish in the tank.
Recently I just got a jebao wp10 to replace the 2 hydors and when I tried it out I ended up removing it after 10 mins since it really seemed to tick off my corals and polyp extension receded. Is this too much flow with the wp10 (and canister I guess which is used for surface agitation) or should I give it another shot and hope the corals just needed to acclimate to it?
Also I've always struggled with bubble algae and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions to get rid of it? I've tried emerald crabs with no luck and also about 6 months ago took out each rock during a wc that had some and scrubbed it off in the old saltwater and then rinsed each which did the job initially but slowly the bubble algae made a comeback.
Any suggestions/opinions I'd love to hear. I'll do my best to keep things updated but for now here's a FTS..
Cheers everyone
Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium Advice
