Welcome Sue & Pat.

12g is a nice size to begin with - I personally think it's a bit harder & requires more maintenance to keep a nano tank, than a large tank.

Take care,

marco

BTW, you won the AquaMedic Nano Tank, right?

Yes, I did win the AquaMedic and I'm thinking of starting one up with it as well.

So your the one who got the Nano...I so wanted that thing....welcome to the club, glad you made it to the event....Hope to see you on our trip April 20 to Mote.

We started using the new tank as a frag tank and it is working out perfectly! look forward to seeing you at Mote as well. = 0 )

I looked at that tank for over a week in my living room while I was putting together all the stuff for the raffle...I put alot of tickets into that box for the nano...whaaa!!! ok I'm done whining...I'm glad you've got the tank up and running, We're in almost crash mode at our house..having a few problems with some corals RTN'ing on us...so My 34 gal right now has almost 40 frags or healthy colonies from the big tank, I can't wait to see what this starts in my tank now. Trying to save what we can I spent almost 3 hours today pulling stuff out to aclimate into my tank, and fraging the unhealthy stuff hoping if I at least try, it might make it...its so frustrating when one little thing gets out of whack in your tank and things start dying off quick. ARGHHH!

sorry to hear your having probs, We feel for ya:( I lost more stuff in my 90 on the 3rd more (mind you, 2 streets over) than I did in the other moves. Although, after talking the ex into letting me remove the corals at the house in north port, only to find out she lied(DUH!!)the frag tanks (total 100gal,4 tanks 25gal each,were down half way on water. lost about a grand in corals. Anywho, I did some mods to the nano9, istalled 2 50mm cooling fans, and mod the skimmer, got rid of the venturi, installed a wood air stone and a pump. That got rid of the micro bubbles. C-Ya!! Pat

Sorry to hear that- what went wrong??

I believe it was a combination of the tanks filtration being down for three weeks due to the neighbors calling code enforcement on our project in the garage, beta testing the skimmer, adding stuff from another tank, plus adding a bunch of dead rock to the sump, and then we had the tunze's off for a few weeks due to the stand construction and when we turned them back on it kicked everything up again. So Nitrates were sky high and last night we had our first normal read in a few weeks...but we also had to buy a Sulfer Denitafier (sulfer-denitranizer - for you scott)...sorry I got the name of it wrong the first time and Scott and Marco are giving me a hard time about it. We've also been doing massive water changes every other night. Last count a few days ago, over 15 corals were dead, another 10 were dying. I tried saving what I could yesterday as some more really nice peices were dying....so I got them off the rock the best i could, but that also means I made alot of frags. but only two peices are showing the affects still of the problems in Marco's tank.
Hopefully we were able to stop the problem, and his stuff that is still in his tank will live, as well as the stuff now in my tank.

what cristina said pretty much sums it up ...

I used to have quiet a bit more biological filtration, at least another 100 lbs of live-rock, + my DSB in the refugium w/ a bit of chaetomorpha.

A few months back i sold my reeflo that worked awesome, and worked with scott (spazz) from Aquatic Acrylics to beta test a 12" model of his volcano skimmers - well ... the first round didn't go as well as expected - the skimmer never did perform well, and it took scott a while to get the proper materials to finish a revised & worked over replacement.

That finally did arrive close to a month ago, by then i had already lost about 5-8 larger prized colonies ... wild birdsnests, staghorns, acroporas ... etc. etc. etc.

Of course, most that have seen pictures of my tank, or have seen it in person ... they know that i do have a higher than usual bioload ... my fish count used to be around 50, not all were large, but al created waste.

Between the skimmer not working properly, then starting the project in the garage that got interrupted .. and running without any sort of filtration or sump for 3 weeks .... then adding Lisa's livestock, a bunch of dead rock after adding approximately 200 gal ... that seemed to have done the trick to get my 'trates up into the way past red zone.

Lesson learned. Don't fix what's not broken ... (skimmer)

The skimmer has since been fixed, and works very well. Scott sent me an entire new one, as a replacement - the one that was at the Open House on display was my old one.

As for the comment about the sulfur/nitrate reactor ... my nitrates will most likely always be an issue ... with the bioload I am interested in running - so i chose to experiment with a sulfur de-nitrifier. I had been dosing vodka, and a lot of my coral colors were lightening up, and fading .. beside the nightly RTN/STN, and bleaching the corals were still doing.
I'm hoping the sulfur de-nitrifier will help out, but I do have plans to up my biological filtration again in a few weeks once i get some stuff sorted out with the county about my garage project.
Most likely there will be 1 bin with a RDSB, some LR & coral rubble for pods as well as chaetomorpha , and 1 with LR.

My approach has been heavy skimming, and it has always treated me well. While I am impressed with & respect Jeff's system, he runs 2 coral life skimmers .... and has quiet a bit more rock that I do at this time, but a very light fish load.

Wow-What a trial by fire you've been through- hope it clears up soon. Your neighbors called Code Enf. because you were working in the garage??

I built an enclosed storage room in my garage ... for all of my tank equipment & sump etc. .. wanted to keep the humidity to one area, was sick of all of my tools rusting in the garage. Didn't pull a permit for it.
I built it saturday/sunday, code enforcement was called monday, and showed up tuesday morning.

How did I get thrown into this??? I've got my own problems. Although I am convinced mine is a bacteria problem that has only affected two corals.

my tank was starting to turn south real quick. After trying everthing known to man, I changed the bulbs and all algae went away and Tank is back to norm.

quit dosing sugar, went to vodka, quit that, added UV & changed bulbs.

I'd think it was more the UV than the bulbs .. but i'm sure the bulbs helped to not grow the stuff the way you were growing it.

Now we just need to fix the phosphate problem in my tank and our house will be somewhat fixed....I tested my tank today and nitrates were in safe range, and phosphate was almost black, I put a buffer in so hopefull it will help, and plan to do a water change as soon as I get some more salt. We started mixing water the other night and ran out...thought we had more than we actually did, guess we forgot a water change that we did...

I've been having quite the slime problem, thought it was gettin better but the last 24 hours have proved wrong...guess it didn't like the 47 corals I added to the tank the day before.

Sounds like some nice neighbors you have, Marco. Should have invited them over for cocktails before you started...

Got home last night and my Unknown Marshall Island Bonsai Acropora (nice long name) had RTN'd about 50%. This was a coral that the STN had stopped. So, I fragged that one and my yellow bottlebrush (the one that grew into a table). While fragging, I used melafix and Revive together as a dip. No tissue loss overnight on the frags. That leaves one coral that I have had tissue recession problems with. It has stopped the last few days, so hopefully it will be ok. If not, I'll spending my Saturday night fragging more corals!! These are the three corals I had problems with when I dumped everything for the auction in my tank. It's amazing what the sudden addition of 40 to 50 corals and 30 or so fish can do to a nice balanced system.

Marco still has me beat for problems though! Just needed to vent. The Marshall Bonsai was by far my favorite coral. If all goes well, I'll have about 10 in a year or so.

NEXT YEAR WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A DEDICATED FRAG TANK AND A DEDICATED FISH TANK FOR THE AUCTION ITEMS!!!!!!!!!!!

I think you need to empty your skimmer in their yard near the lanai. They should have spoken to you first, and IF you were an ass, then call. See, skimmer waste has a use!! Just my opinion. PAT

My neighbors are ... well .. to be polite about it ..

and I have no issues with that - they keep to themselves, their house & yard is one of the cleanest, if not THE cleanest on the entire street.
I did however not attend 3 of their parties I (we) were invited to, all due to the fact that I'm not a big alcohol consumer, and their parties were heavily stocked with it. Ever since i didn't attend, they haven't talked to me, except to complain about my company truck being parked in the vacant lot across the street.

oh .. and BTW .. i make some NASTY skimmate! Let me know if you want to sample it sometime