Corals and nanos

D

Darby

Hey all.

I've been wondering about corals, lighting levels, and the things that survive that just shouldn't.

I've got a JBJ NanoCube24, with the stock lighting. 2 x 36W CFs. For corrals I ahve 2 different types of Xenia, a bunch of zoas, a couple of burgundy mushrooms, and have recently picked up a small frogspawn (single head), a 3 stick bit of orange Gorgonian, a 4 lobe Candycane, and some sort of small "tree". All of these last 4, except for teh candycane, were laying under the racks, almost discarded in a way. Anyways, they all seem to be doing great, and even the Gorgonian is regenerating a part that was dead.
2 people that have recently come over have said that some of them should not be surviving in my tank, let alone doing well, which makes me wonder...

... Just what is appropriate for my lighting level and livestock?

Livestock is currently:
Flame angel
Yellow tail damsel
Royal gramma
Emerald crab
Pom pom crab (sans pom poms now)
Skunk cleaner shrimp
pair of Scarlet leg hermits
a blue leg hermit
a green leg zebra hermit
various snails

center rear chamber is a refugium with some cheato, lit at night.

It's a pretty high flow tank, with a Koralia 1 at the front in addition to the regular return. I wouldn't mind some Acro in there, but I think need MH lighting, right?
 
Although I am fairly new at this, (my nano has been up for about a year), I have to say that I have everything that you have except for the Gorgonian, and everything is fine, in fact growing and splitting under the same conditions... (lighting ect)
 
Darby, the acro may not do well under 72 watts of light even if you put it very close to the surface.
The rest is doing well because the tank is 17.5 inch tall and the lights sit about 1.5 inches from the top of the tank.

I make a few assumptions here on my measurements.
water is 1.5 from top of tank which means the lights are 3 inches from waters surface. Now I take into account a couple inches of sand on the bottom. So what this tells us is you have a usable water column of about 15 to 15.5 inches or less and the lights are 3 inches from the waters surface. This said, the higher on the rock you placed your pieces, the better they will do.

Some things you did not indicate which can make a huge difference to water quality in the nano.
skimmer?
how often do you do water changes?
live rock / rubble in chamber 1 or the sponges? If sponges you have a nitrate factory there unless you clean them in RO water daily.
phosban reactor or a bag of phosban in the sump somewhere?
 
I keep the water pretty high, it usually only goes about 1/4" below the top edge band. Water changes are usually every week, about 4-5 gallons. I do have sponges in the first chamber, and it just crawls with amphipods. In the last chamber I used to have charcoal, but trashed it on accident. Currently I put a new bag of PhosEx in about every 3 weeks or so.

Perhaps I should put some rubble in the first chamber? I like the sponge because it catches all of the stuff that gets blown around (like bits of hair algea) that I can then remove. I'm not confident that the rubble will allow the same ease of cleaning, and I don't want my cheato getting all boogered up. I get no reading (or a reading of 0 anyways) for NO2 and NO3.
 
Totally left out teh skimmer...
I have a remora nano that I run for a full day about every week-and-a-half or so. Even if I leave it in for 4 days strait it doesn't pull much out. I keep the thing scrupulously clean as well.
 
If you deside to upgrade your lighting, I have a 132 watt PC hood for the DX24 from Nanotuners I'm selling since I use MH now.
Thanks, and can not wait to see some pictures.
 
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