It’s been a good long interval since we did an update on our one-day nano reef tank build but this tank has been absolutely coasting. Part of the reason for the delay is that we did an update at 300 days talking about everything that had been going on with this Red Sea Max Nano but not much else has changed in the interim.
When you don’t do anything to a reef tank, there’s not much to say and the only thing we’ve done to this 20 gallon aquarium is one water change performed just a couple weeks after the tank hit the one year mark. This is the first time that we’ve ever set up a reef tank and let it go a whole year without any water change, and we even refrained from putting our hands in the tank during that whole time.
This tank thrived with all of its initial inhabitants including a handful of corals and a pair of clownfish with no dosing, no water testing, a protein skimmer that was used mostly for aeration, and a glass top prevented evaporation negating the need for an auto top off system. We did end up adding one emerald crab, one peppermint shrimp and a couple of Astraea snails for light cleanup duties of pest algaes and few Aiptasia but other than the very scant feeding and weekly glass cleaning, this tank was about as cruise control as we know how, and we’re very satisfied with the results.
The one-day Nano Reef Tank was really an exercise on how much could be accomplished all at once, and then not doing anything to it was a demonstration that very little maintenance or course correction was necessary to have a nice nano reef display. Reef tanks really aren’t that hard especially when you stick to the fundamentals of temperature, salinity, lighting and water flow and we really hope that this nano reef can serve as an example for people wanting to set up their first reef aquarium, or current reefers interested in dabbling in the smaller side of things.
But now that this reef tank is already in full swing, we’re excited to actually start working on it, making adjustments of the aquascape and especially planting a wider variety of corals within it. We’ve got a nice crop of Sun Polyps we’ve been growing out literally for years and we believe they’ll be showcased very nicely in this particular aquarium, as well as some other red and orange corals to help introduce more pop and contrast to the overall color palette.
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