The Red Sea Max Nano aquarium that we set up in one day and then untouched for a year has been one of our funnest concepts we’ve shared on video. While we thoroughly enjoyed demonstrating what is possible with the most minimal amount of effort, the less you work on a reef tank the less rewarding it becomes over time, at least it is for us.
We already started reimagining this 20 gallon aquarium by adding several nice colonies of Palythoa grandis sun polyps later last year but finally it was time to get the lush carpet of green star polyps under control, removing the primary rocks and trimming the edges like it was grass. Our primary intention was to add a small rock covered in orange zoanthids and home to a couple small bubble tip anemones which deserves a little bit of showcasing to see what they can actually turn into.
But once everything was as we planned we found ourselves with a lot of real estate on one of the supporting rock arches which was a great opportunity to position several of the torch coral strains we have spilling out of some of our other displays. We assembled a classic green Euphyllia glabrescens with sparkly white tips, a classic Dragon Soul torch, and a similarly orange strain of torch with more confined ball shaped green tips.
We still have a little work to do to condition the large colony of classic Australian gold torch and some of the sun polyps but in the meantime we’re very tickled with the extra color, action and movement of the tentacles of our new torch coral bouquet. It’s been roughly a thousand days since this reef tank was set up so in our next installment we hope to share a super cut of the journey that our nano reef tank has been on, culminating with all the current species in the peak of health and maximum color.
