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Just an update on my tank maturing - brown algee and green algee is gone completly so it's time to add some life to the tank.
On sunday i will recieve small hawaian red reef lobster which was suposed to go in my main tank but i think he will be perfect for my nano-reef. There's a cave for him to hide but it's not covered completly and everybody will be able to see my lobster.
I don't know how about some fish - hawaian red reef lobster is reef and fish safe but in such tiny tank i can keep only smallest fish available and i think lobster may hunt down realy smal fish if he gets hungry.
So no fish in my tank or regular feeding of the lobster - i have to keep that in mind.

Oh and look at "prima aprilis" 1 april joke on reefkeeping - http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-04fools/index.htm

My personal favorite "A Practical Guide to Keeping Polar Bears in the Reef Environment" I must think on placing an order on "reef safe polar bear" at my local pet store

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After looong wait for polish customs to make up their mind how to deal with my package i finaly recieved package from premiumaquatics.com with stuff for my main tank and 50/50 bulbs for my mini project tank.
It turned out that it has troubles working on magnetic balast and i had to order electronic one so will test lights in 2-3 days.

Yesterday i also bought for 20$ Debelius' Reef Lobster (Enoplometopus debelius). It was suposed to be Hawaian Red Reef Lobster but in package came much prettier Debelius' Reef Lobster. It's more agresive but will do fine in my tiny tank - it's 5cm long (2 inch).

Unfortunatly it doesn't like cave that i prepared for him and hides behind rocks - but he is a nocturnal creature and it's his normal behavior.

In week or so i will go to Berlin in Germany (it's only 120KM from my town in Poland) to look for some Ricordea Florida multicolor mushroom - IMHO it's the only way to make such a tiny tank colorfull and interesting.

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It's hard to get picture of my lobster because it's hiding all day and wanders at night. The only way to lure him out at daytime is to give him food but it's also ony jumping out from behind a rock and catches what it wants and hides again.

I will try to take a photo while feeding today.

I also noticed outbrake of tiny little white bugs. When lights are on they crawl out of the sand in dozens and sit on front glass and eat algee.
They are white and most are not even one millimeter long but i can see 10 legs around their body. Does anyone knows what it is and if i should start doing something about it? If yes than please PM me.

here's a pic of those bugs on front glass.

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here are some close-up's of those bugs

- first picture is of tiny less than 1millimiter bug - and i have dozens of them (this brown dot is an algee he's eating) - any idea what it is and should i remove them?

- on second is some kind of snail and there are only two of them

By the way - i also recieved information that joes's juice that i ordered at local pet store came (and belive me it's not easy to get it here in Poland) so i will fight apitasia next week.

[wade]

Its an amphipod. Normal in a low-predation tank.... and in early tanks esepcially. There is a chance you have a mixture of both copepods and amphipods in there too. Thank you for the pictures!

Wade

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Thanks wade - so i shouldn't worry than. Gues that my debelius reef lobster is not interested in them (or not hungry).

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I took a picture of my beautiful debelius reef lobster while feeding.

He's still shy but he spends more time in cave that i prepared for him - he even dug out "emergency exit" from cave on the back

I'm still thinking of adding some small fish but it must have some kind of defense mechanism so my reef lobster wouldn't eat it. Reef lobsters suposed to be reef safe, but they are known to sometimes hunt on sleeping fish if they are very hungry or very sick.
Yellow clown goby seams a good choice since it produces some kind of toxic slime when in danger and it should prevent it from beeing eaten when lobster feels like eating his tankmates

But my other concearn is that my project tank is realy tiny and there's not much teritory to devide. I've read that reef lobsters are extremly teritorial and agresive towards other lobsters. They are not teritorial towards fish and other animals but taking into concideration such a small tank - who knows.

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As warmer days are starting and sun is shinning with more power i came into another problem. Overheating of my mini tank. Temperature is rising to 29 and almost 30 degrees celcius, and it's only spring - i just do not want to think how high it'll be in summer!

I'm glad that my reef lobster is taking it bravely, but i just can't alow temperature to be so high.
Tomorrow i must go to computer shop and buy some low noise chipset or GPU cooler.

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So i made "cooling system" for my project tank.
I bought GPU cooler for 3$ at the computer store, glued it so it would blow air directly to PC bulb (main heat cause), glued wires with glue gun so everything would be hidden and it was ready - see pictures below.

I also instaled new balasts for PC bulb and changed it from 7W 6500K bulb to 13W 50/50 bulb. Now it should be all that corals need - light is very intense. I bought balast for two 13W bulbs but now i see that for such tiny tank one 13W 50/50 PC bulb should be enough.

As for new life in my tank - i decided to give it a try and i ordered Yellow Clown Gobby. I will monitor closely how reef lobster will react to new tankmate and if something bad will start to happen i will move gobby to my main tank.
I also will recieve some soft, LPS and SPS frags shortly.
On saturday i will visit few marine pet stores in Berlin so maybe i will find something nice and tiny for my tank.

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I've been to Berlin but i spent whole day at Berlin Zoo Aquarium and they closed all saltwater shops before i managed to get there - but no worries i'll be there again on 25th april.

But i did recieve ordered 6 frags and animals. by the looks of it i see that there's cladiella, sinularia, montipora, zoanthus, parazoanthus, some mushrooms. I placed everything on live rock and it looks nice. Took some pictures (it's nightshot so corals wasn't opened) - even my reef lobster decided to pose for my photos from his cave

I also did risk a bit and found two tankmates for him. I ordered yellow clown gobby which should produce some toxic slime and reef lobster should avoid eating it. I did keep an eye on it for first hour and it looked like ... lobster was running away from gobby - when it was getting closer to him lobster moved to another part of tank.

I also decided to add tiny1,5cm (1/2 inch) mitrax crab to my mini reef so it would do some cleaning in my tank.

Here are some pictures "reef by night"

[smk]

I made few adjustments to my mini reef.

First of all i took out heater - i did that because it was taking to much space and as it tourned out it wasn't needed. Before i took it out i unpluged it for a week and i monitored temperature.
13W PC bulb is heating water preaty good and with cooler on, it still keeps 25 degres celcius at day. During the night temperature falls down to 24 degred celcius so it's only 1 degre diference - it's even better because temperature on real reef falls a bit at night.
But after summer i might think about some small heater, but not necesarely since there's always around 20 degres celcius in my room (it would be more like a precaution).

Than i conected lights and cooler to same timer and cooler switches on with PC light and turns off when lights go out.

With heater gone i had much more space to use and i rearanged rockwork a bit and moved circulation pump from left side to right side of the tank. It improved circulation and flushes any leftovers from behind rocks. Now on right side circulation is made by water falling from skimmer and from internal filter build in tank top, and on left side curent is made by circulation pump.

Live rock was aranged so it would hide circulation pump.

Only thing that was eaten was bubble algee which (as i have read later on) was one of the mitrax crab favorite. Besides that nothing was eaten by nothing else. Mitrax and reef lobster just don't draw attention to each other and they are living happily with each other. Gobby on the other hand looks a bit out of place and a bit scared and i start thinking of moving him to my main tank because it's size is a bit "reef lobster foodish"

Besides that i'm quite happy with how my tank turned out and maybe besides adding few other frags i think it's as it should be. Now i must focus on keeping it in good condition (it's doing great so far).

But see for yourselve - look's great as for such a tiny reef - don't you think?

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and few other pictures

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and two more

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So this is how much i already spent on my project tank:

tank & equipment:

4g tank - 19x20x32cm (7,5x7,9x12,5 in), with 66g/h pump, build in filtration chambers and 7W PC light http://www.aquael.com.pl/ - 34$
lights upgrade 1x 13W bulbs 50/50 (actynic/10000K) + electronics etc Coralife - http://www.premiumaquatics.com - 19$
ballast for 13W PC bulb - http://www.aqva-light.com.pl - 4$
DIY tiny skimmer parts (no longer used) - 10$
DIY professional looking skimmer (made by friend) - 15$
Airpump for skimmer http://www.hagen.com - 10$
25W heater with temerature control http://www.aquael.com.pl/ (no longer used)- 12$
GPU cooler (from computer shop) - 3$
Regulated power suply for cooler (had in my house) - 0$ (regular price 10$)
Thermometer www.sera.de - 2$
Circulation pump - Aqua El Fan Mikro - 10$

equipment cost = 119$

Life:

6 lb of indonesian live rock http://www.aquanurt.com.pl - 28$
6 lb of live sand http://www.aquarius.ima.pl - 12$
Debelius reef lobster http://www.reefshop.pl - 20$
Mitrax crab http://www.aquarius.ima.pl - 23$
Yellow Clown Gobby (exchanged for it) - 0$ (regular price 25$)
Coral frags http://www.aquarius.ima.pl - 50$

life cost = 133$

total cost = 252$

[smk]

I got back from Berlin yesterday and bought a loooooooooottt more than i intended for my main tank (yellow watchaman gobby paired with shrimp, arrow crab, sexy shrimp, purple firefish and nudibranch (for my friend to help fight pests).
Unfortunatly i didn't buy anything for my small project tank besides reef glue.

I looked closer on how my corals are doing and i found out that one of the lether corals is sticking a bit over the water level when it's fully inflated, so i had to move it to lower level. I know it's not to good to move corals around but i had no choice.
While glueing corals I also moved montipora to better spot, red mushroom and few tiny rocks so the cave was more closed and thus better for my lobster - he's afraid to sit there at daytime, but loves it at night, so now i got him some more shade at front cave.
By the way - lobster got used to my sight and when i'm comming from work and look at my tank he always comes out of his hideout and comes to me and waits for some food - that is a clever animal - knows who gives it diner . Usualy reef lobsters don't tend to come out at daylight but this doesn't mind it.
I also glued everything to live rock so my mitrax crab wouldn't be able to throw my frags around anymore (my little rascal did that few times a week).

I also mesured water parameters and they are quite good and stable:

NH3/NH4 - 0mg/l (ppm)
NO2 - 0 mg/l (ppm)
10mg/l (quite high but i think it's normal by 4cm thick sandbed - i have the same situation in my main tank and it's stable for over 5 months now so i gues it's nothing to worry about)
PO4 - 0 mg/l (ppm)
Ca - 480 mg/l (ppm)
PH 8,3
KH 8
salinity 1,022

Tank is working with water and LR nearly since day one of nano buildoff and parameters are stable for well over a month so i think it's a good start for my nano tank future

Things to do in next few weeks will be adding some auto water topoff system - it's a must for me because after adding cooler i need to pour almost 0,5L of fresh water each day (!!!) It's not good for stable salinity levels. Probably i'll buy dosing pump with water level switch.
I will also surely add 2 or 3 more small coral frags. And that's it. My tank will be more than ready to stand on it's own (and food from me )

It'll be my last post before end of nano buildoff contest because i'm going to 5 days to Sardinia on holiday and i'll be back on 3rd of may. I wish everybody good luck. Everybody did great job and i'm realy inspired by few tanks.