Despite much conflicting information about reef aquariums, small nano reef tanks are the easiest and most affordable way to dip your toes into this fascinating and stimulating hobby. It’s been over two years since we installed the Red Sea Nano in one day – corals, rock, fish and all – then let it coast for a whole year without any water change, dosing, minimal testing and simply used observation of the animals to let us know how the tank was doing.
It actually wasn’t our initial intention to set the tank up in one day, or go without putting our hands in for a year – we did the setup in one day to have a reasonable filming schedule, and we let the tank do its thing for so long for no other reason than the corals and fish were doing excellent. Just because we got away without having to work on the tank for over twelve months doesn’t mean that some degree of more involved maintenance could be deferred indefinitely – we’ve done a few small water changes and sprucing up of the corals and scape but at long last we finally had to roll up our sleeves and give the tank some well deserved attention.
Curiously because the tank is only around twenty inches cubed and everything about it is on the small side, thoroughly scrubbing the rocks free of Valonia, doing a water change, siphoning the gravel and cleaning the filter sock and skimmer took only a little more than an hour. We didn’t take care of the low level Aiptasia infestation but that can be much more easily addressed without nearly as much bubble algae than we had before but we’ll end up manually tag-teaming it with a peppermint shrimp and manual applications of caustic solution.
While most of the videos of the one-day nano reef have showcased the tank and animals under broad spectrum daylight lighting we challenged the viewers of this video to accrue 1000 likes if they wanted to see the tank under fluorescent and deep blue lighting conditions, a milestone which was surpassed in only a handful of hours! With the resounding affirmation of what you guys want to see next from this nano reef tank we’ll be gathering up your questions in the comments for the next video where we’ll take a closer look at everything like a magazine cover photo and discover just how flashy all these corals can look.
Two Month Update on the One-Day Nano Reef Tank Build [Video]
