Jay's Little Ocean AIO Aquarium.

[JaysLittleOcean]

So as I started to break down my original 150 gallon aquarium I found myself wanting to desperately stay in the hobby. But between raising a family consisting of my wife and three boys & working a demanding job that occupies 19 hours a day Monday through Friday. Few options of staying in the hobby were available. But I stumbled upon the JBJ 45 RL All-In-One aquarium and decided that the size would be small enough to make caring for it manageable (and not to mention extremely affordable). But it would be large enough to accommodate my vision of what I beautiful aquarium should look like. So I apologize in advance because most of the photographs will be taken with my Apple iPhone 6S Plus and not with my Canon 7D Mark II DSLR. But if time permits I will definitely snap some high resolution photographs. So I hope you decide to tag along and share your comments, thoughts and suggestions.

(This is a photograph taken this evening of my reef aquarium as the sunset mode was in full swing.)

 

[Lenny718]

Very nice. I love mine and got it for the same reason, my 120 was to much to maintain between work and family. I think the 45g is the perfect size, not to small to limit what you can keep and not to big that it's a pain in the *** to maintain. What are your future plans for it? I built mine to house a magnificent anemone and pair of clowns and I'm now adding sps to fill up any open space.

 

[JaysLittleOcean]

Very nice. I love mine and got it for the same reason, my 120 was to much to maintain between work and family. I think the 45g is the perfect size, not to small to limit what you can keep and not to big that it's a pain in the *** to maintain. What are your future plans for it? I built mine to house a magnificent anemone and pair of clowns and I'm now adding sps to fill up any open space.

Thank you. I plan to make it a SPS Dominated aquarium housing very high end SPS Corals. I managed to find a true Oregon Tortusa recently and I am on the hunt for a Purple Monster Acropora now.

 

[JaysLittleOcean]

Here is my current equipment, livestock and coral stocking list.

Equipment Currently Installed

-Tunze 9004 Needle Wheel Protein Skimmer
-Tunze 7095 Multicontroller
-Two Tunze 6095 Nanostream Controllable Power Heads
-Tunze Osmolotar 3155
-Two Aqua Gadget Mini Media Reactors. One is filled with Aquamaxx Activated Carbon and the other is filled with Aquamaxx Granular Ferric Oxide
-Eheim 300 watt Glass Heater.
-EcoTech Marine Radio. xr30w Pro Gen 3 Light
-EcoTech Marine Reef Link
-Neptune Systems Apex Controller with a single Power Bar

Future Equipment
-Looking to add a Geos Reef Calcium Reactor.
-Looking to add two Neptune Systems D?S for coral food and Magnesium supplementation.
-Looking to add a Neptune Systems PM2 with extra Temp Probe, Salinity Probe and ORP Probe.
-Throwing around the idea of adding a secondary EcoTech Marine Radion xr30w Pro Gen 3 Light.

Livestock
-8 Fiji Green Chromis
-2 ORA Snowflake Clownfish
-2 Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
-1 Tiger Tail Cucumber
-4 Dwarf Zebra Hermit Crabs
-7 Margarite Snails
-6 Tonga Nasarius Snails

Corals
-True Oregon Tortusa Acropora
-Reef Gardener Reef Goddess Acropora Selago

 

[JaysLittleOcean]

So my little reef has past the two month mark and I'm actually happy with the progress I have been making. I am still trying to get the normal maintenance schedule, lighting and dosing all within balance while learning how quickly my aquarium exhaust certain things like activated carbon and granular ferric oxide. But here are some photographs to show my progression.

 

[JaysLittleOcean]

My First Aquarium Low... Nuisance Algae.

Today marks the 70th day that my aquarium has been running and I'm glad to say that within such a long time I'm happy to see that I am able to sustain not only the 10 fish in my aquarium but also about 18 pieces of SPS Corals as well. But as with any maturing aquarium we go through stages of "wow my tank looks amazing" to "why did I get into this hobby". Well after my days of high I have started to hit my first low... Nuisance Algae! I have a rather long photo period running my EcoTech Marine Radion Gen 3 Pro for 12 hours of light that cycles through a variety of spectrum and then about another 2 .5 hours of moonlight split up on either end. End my Nitrates are around 7.5 ppm which I got my attention when it hit 10 ppm. So as of two weeks ago I increased my water changes from 2 gallons per week to 5 gallons per week to address that and see what the results are. My Phosphates have been undetectable by my Salifert test kit and I paid no mind. I have a Innovative Marine MiniMax Media Reactor which holds the recommended 1/4 of AquaMaxx GFO which I used to want to change every 2 months but will be doing so every month due to the algae outbreak. So even with those adjustment I still feel that I need to do more. So I'm going to start the Red Sea Algae Management program and start dosing NO3O4X as part of my my maintenance routine and see what results that yields. My delivery is coming today so feel free to tag along to see what results I get from that.

 

[dherrera83]

nice!!

 

[Lenny718]

Tank is maturing nicely! I've had good results with N03 P04x just use as directed and don't overdose, if you have a dosing pump that would be the way to go.

 

[Lenny718]

Also are you running the stock return pumps? One of mine just failed and even though JBJ is sending me a replacement I'm debating on switching to two maxi jet 1200s

 

[JaysLittleOcean]

nice!!

Thank you.

 

[JaysLittleOcean]

Also are you running the stock return pumps? One of mine just failed and even though JBJ is sending me a replacement I'm debating on switching to two maxi jet 1200s

I'm still using the stock pumps but if I had to change them I may go with Tunze depending on flow and what's available.

 

[JaysLittleOcean]

Red Sea Fish Algae Management Program.

My Red Sea Algae Management program arrived today and I was eager to get things setup. I read through the manual and got my game plan together. According to the directions. I would need to add 3 ml of the NO3O4X supplement for every 25 gallons. Since my aquarium is 45 gallons I figured a safe bet to start with would be 5 ml per day. I'm using my Jabeo 4 channel doser with 4 additional channels on the slave unit in order to dose 5 separate 1 ml doses every 4.5 hours per day. I also read on the instructions that it is recommended no to use in conjunction with phosphate removing media. So luckily enough my Innovate Marine Mini-Max reactor containing the AquaMaxx Granular Ferric Oxide was easy to remove by just pulling the reaction chamber out of the water. So now we wait until Saturday after my water change to see what my nitrate and phosphate levels looks like for the first week. I have also purchased the Red Sea Algae Management Pro Test Kit to use in conjunction for monitoring. Crossing my fingers for good results.

 

[JaysLittleOcean]

Red Sea Fish Algae Management Program.

The aquarium hold approximately 45 gallons of water. With displacement for the live sand and live rock I have dropped that number down a bit further. According to the Red Sea NO3O4X supplement instructions for SPS aquariums within the first week I should be adding approximately 3 ml of solutions for every 25 gallons of saltwater. So I have calculated that 5 ml per day should be about accurate for my aquarium. I have spread the dosage out as stated every 4.5 hours.

It has been approximately 24 hours since I first started administering the dosage and my first observations are as follows. I have noticed that I am experiencing Slow Tissue Necrosis on one of my corals. While most of my corals have degraded in the vibrance of their pigmentation I am not total convinced that this is due entirely to the dosing. But I did also notice that my pH levels has been suppressed since I started dosing according to the graph below from my Neptune Systems Apex Controller's pH monitoring Probe.

 

[JaysLittleOcean]

Red Sea Fish Algae Management Program.

So I went through my normal weekly maintenance routing of doing a 4 gallon water change and then testing all levels the after 24 hours. Well I stopped dosing with NO3O4X after the second day. Apparently that was too strong of a dose and test results with both Salifert and Red Sea Fish test kits showed that I completely stripped the water all detectable Nitrates. Further test shows that my phosphate levels are currently at 0.8 ppm. So I put my GFO reactor back online and gave the tank the weekend to recover as the bacterial bloom created such a cloudy mess in the aquarium. But as of yesterday evening the cloudiness has disappeared, my pH levels are returning to normal and I am slowly configuring my doser to accommodate an acclimated growth. The Hair Algae looks bad still but not as vibrant as it was a few days ago. So the product work and is actually extremely powerful. So I will give it until Wednesday before I test again to view results and make small adjustments as normal.

 

[JHOV2324]

:spin::Lurking:

 

[JaysLittleOcean]

Red Sea Fish Algae Management Program.

As of right now I am still holding off on dosing NO3O4X until I complete a Nitrate test tomorrow evening. As of right now the algae is not as vibrant as it first was but I do have a much more noticeable amount of hair algae. I'm going to give it another week but at this point it starting to encroach on the corals and I'm not entirely sure how comfortable I am leaving it alone. I have been considering ordering a Pygmy Sea Hare to deal with the algae but I'm willing to give it more time. Polyp extension on the corals has decreased a but on the majority of corals. So just sitting here in the low point of my aquarium.