The Nano Reef

Guest Blogger: Neal

So I thought today's post would be about my reef aquarium obsession. This wasn't a question posted, but Ginger did request to hear about it in an email to Leslie.

I tried to start my first saltwater tank when I was in 8th grade. I talked my mom into buying me a 29 gallon aquarium and I attempted to stock it with some fish. Let's just say that the outcome was less than desirable. The fish didn't live very long, and the aquarium ended up in the garage. I always wanted to try it again, and during my third year of dental school, I was introduced to the world of nano reefs. I set up a 5.5 gallon nano with some live rock and some corals. It was fun and lasted about a year, until we went on vacation in the summer and turned the air conditioner off. We came back to stinky tank full of dead corals. Anyway, last summer I decided to try it again. I set up another 5.5. Here's what it looked like last November:

I have slowly been adding corals. There is a pet store really close to the office I work at on Saturdays that sells coral frags for $5. Needless to say, I go there way too frequently. Here's what the tank looks like now:


These pictures are pretty bad, but we don't have the best camera. Maybe we'll have to jump on the bandwagon and get a DSLR. Anyway, in the pets post I said that the best pets are those that you don't have to feed live food. Even better than that are pets that you don't have to feed at all. That's why corals are so great. Most of the corals kept in reef aquariums are photosynthetic so you only have to feed them if you want to. I have one that isn't photosynthetic that I have to feed (the black one in the center) and I hate it. I usually feed once a week because it's kind of fun, but it's nice to know that if I don't feel like doing it, the corals will be just fine. The downside is that you have to have special lights for them and they can be very expensive. The lighting is probably the single most expensive part of any reef system.

Anyway, the 5.5 is great, but it's got a lot of limitations as far as space limitations for corals and fish. We had a fish for one day until it got sucked into the filter and died (I think Leslie wrote about that.) Audrey and Parker really want fish, and Parker has his heart set on getting a shrimp. So it's time for an upgrade. I cut up some of my corals and sold the pieces (known as fragging. See www.frags.org) and bought a 40 gallon with a stand. I'm still in the setting up stage, but it's going to be awesome. The stuff in the 5.5 will go in it with LOTS of room to spare. As far as livestock, I'm thinking of a pair of these with an anemone. They may be out of my league, being wild caught and I don't have experience with fish. I don't know, I think they're really cool, though. There is a guy that is breeding them here.

So that's the nano reef. Leslie can't walk past the computer without checking blogs and I obsessively check these sites:

MARSH
Nano Reef
Reef Central
Frags.org
Rare Clownfish

So that's the tank!