Nano Reef Aquarium

If you are a newcomer to this fascinating hobby you might not realize that there are many types of corals available for your aquarium. You firstly need to know why and how they are different, also what this means to the amount of time you will need to spend caring for them. Soft corals. These are the easiest corals to keep in your reef aquarium and ideal for the beginner. These corals generally have a leathery texture to them and have no skeleton structure to them. They rely on photosynthesis to grow. These and many others corals have an algae present called zooxanthellae. Both the coral and the algae rely on each other, if one was not present the other would simply die. So in order to keep these corals you will need lighting such as T8's or T5's will be more than adequate. Examples of Soft corals include: zoas, button polyps, mushrooms, ricordias, toadstools and more. Hard corals. These make up the majority of the remaining corals but come in two forms LPS and SPS. Lar...

Here is my new sun coral, it has about 30 heads and opens when the lights are on and have to say it looks fantastic. I have always liked these non light loving corals. This came from a local reefer at a bargain price. It feeds really well. I just hope i can provide enough food so it can thrive.

Whats next for my reef aquarium? well after purchasing a sun coral and my first SPS, montipora from a local reefer. I have made a few decisions. The softies are going to be going in due course, I now have found a real intrest in LPS and SPS corals. This means a few things are going to change over the nest few months. Apart from fragging, selling and swopping,  most of my soft corals. I have realized from my recent purchase that i need a couple of items. Firstly i need a much better power head, having seen the new vortech pumps in operation and there many ways of controling water flow, and space saving pumps. I now have the "I want one of those" problems. I am going to see if i can swap my T5 Lighting luminaire for a MP10 or MP20 on one of the online forums, this will save me loads of money and allow me to use my cash for future livestock purchases. Secondly i am having outbrakes of algea. I need to get rid of it, and using rowaphos in a...

Calculating Magnesium, Alklinity and calcium can be very confusing, I have found a online calculator that is very helpful and will take out all the guess work. You simply put in your actual values and the calculator will tell you exactly how much of your desired product is required. all products are included. such as off the shelf products and home made products. balling lite and calcium reactors methods are also included. Follow the Reef chemistry Calculator   link

I have just added a list of my corals to my reef blog so you can see waht i have in my nano reef aqaurium. The list is located in the right hand of the blog. I will be in the near future be adding pictures of my corals with a little information about them. You will then be able to click on the coral in the list to be followed with the pictures and information.

After browsing the internet forums i have discovered a fantastic website that displays a mainly SPS in a 50 gallon reeftank and is totally awsome. If you think your nano reeftank is small and nothing can be done, your wrong! This reef tank has totally inspired me and having numerouse softies and LPS corals, I have now decided stoney corals are the way to go. I am now in the proccess of fragging and selling my soft corals to raise funds for more LPS and one or two SPS just to see how i get on. Having success with many LPS i feel almost confident to move on to SPS corals.