Reefing on the Edge: Week 2

Week 2:  Charlotte is Born

By Brian K. Griffin

In my last article I started setting a Fluval Edge as a nano reef. If you missed it, you can read it here.

A week or so ago I was chatting online with Jake Adams, who along with a great group of people, runs Reefbuilders.com. Jake’s a good guy and very knowledgeable, with a degree in marine science and plans to study coral reef ecology at the graduate level. You may have heard him speak at a marine convention or read an article by him in a reef magazine.  If you haven’t, I would encourage you to Google him and have a read, or at least visit reefbuilders.com, a great site with tons of information.  

During our chat, I had told him that I was writing this article and he asked me what I was going to name my Fluval Edge setup. At first this sounded a bit funny, but he went on and told me that he would like people to give names to their tanks in hopes that they will develop more affection and sentimental attachment to their creations. I thought about this for a couple of days, and it finally rang true—thus "Charlotte" was born! 

I’ve let her run for a week or so and learned a bit more about Charlotte. 

Evaporation 
Since she is almost fully enclosed, the amount of evaporated water is at a minimum, maybe one quart a week. This is a big plus for a nano tank, as swings in salinity in small aquariums can create major problems.

However, when the water does evaporate, it makes it appear as if there are air bubbles at the top of the tank. This gets worse as evaporation continues. To prevent this from happening, you will need to add fresh water on a regular basis to keep the water about 1/4” high in the lip around the opening as you can see below. The fact that these bubbles are so apparent is a good reminder to keep the water level topped up.
  
Salt Creep
Uh Oh!!!  Yes, we have it, and it’s not in a good spot. Actually the design of the Edge pretty much eliminates salt creep in the usual places.  However, the lights are a weak spot of the design. As I mentioned in last week’s article, the two small 15W halogen lights are suspended over the opening in the Fluval Edge, where they are nicely tucked out of sight.

However, this is where the filter spills the water back into the tank. While there is not a lot of splashing, there is enough to get on the exposed lights and sockets. Since we’ll be doing a major overhaul on the lighting, a short-term solution was necessary as having water coming into contact with a light fixture is not something that can be ignored.

Interim Solution
For a temporary fix that should last until a more permanent solution can be found, I got some acrylic mirror mounts from K-Mart. I mounted them on the lip of the opening, sideways as shown, with silicone so that they can be removed easily once a better solution is found.
 
I then cut a piece of acrylic 6” x 3” and set it on the mounts.  As you can see, when the light bar is in the down position, the lamps are now protected from the direct splash of the saltwater. 

The included halogen lamps may be fine for freshwater, but by no means is the amount of light emitted anywhere near acceptable for saltwater if you are going to keep corals.

A picture taken a couple of days after I put this in shows just how much water is being kept off the lights. My thoughts are that the entire light bar should be covered. It could be as simple as building a box around the light to prevent water from splashing on the lamps and the sockets while still allowing air flow around the lamps and letting the heat escape. 

I’ll be coming back to this next week when lighting is changed and revamped as well as discussing this with Hagen in hopes of a permanent solution.     

Water Changes
A success with a reef tank depends on good water quality! In a small tank such as Charlotte, it is imperative that you pay close attention to how you maintain your water quality. If something goes wrong, it happens fast and before you know it, you can have a disaster on your hands. 

I’m using RO/DI water for replacing evaporation as well as for mixing saltwater. The hang-on-the-back filter that comes with the Edge is still being used with just a sponge to capture the larger “gunk” that is picked up by the filter.  This power filter is not used for circulation.

As discussed in last week’s issue, a Vortech MP10 ES by EcoTech Marine is circulating the water in the tank and around the rocks quite well.  Biological filtration is being handled by the six pounds of well-cured live rock.  Once the sponge is now longer needed, I’m thinking of using this filter as a refugium. This will be discussed in a future article.

No protein skimmer will be used.  I’ll be doing a one-gallon water change each week. This should remove the organics that a skimmer would normally pickup as well as replace trace elements.  I’ll post the results of tests on a regular basis so that you can see what the water chemistry looks like.

Water Temperature

During the first week, Charlotte's water stayed at the ambient temperature of the room that she is in. This is just as it should be. Hagen has a 25W compact heater that fits nicely in the Edge. I decided against it as it is preset and is 25W. If necessary, I’ll use a heater that has a temperature setting.

For now I added a small heater from Hydor.  While it is preset it is only 7.5W and advertises that it can pull the temp up approx 5 degrees F.  I don’t want a heater to be seen in Charlotte, so the only option is in the filter box itself. You can see that the Hydor heater is flat and fits quite nicely in the filter.  If it doesn’t work, it can easily be changed.

Cleaning
One may think that cleaning an Edge with its sealed glass top would be a royal pain in the butt. Obviously a magnet cleaner is the answer. There are a lot of magnets on the market today using the rare earth neodymium magnet. My favorites are the Magnavores that are is a high-quality magnetic algae cleaners that do as they are advertised. Unfortunately, the hefty Magnavore design is not conducive for use in this aquarium.

About three years ago, Two Little Fishies released the NanoMag which is perfect for Charlotte. Its slender profile of maybe 1/8” on the back side allows the magnet to slide between the rock and glass easily. 

Adding a Cleanup Crew
As far as cleanup crews go, I a firm believer in one hermit crab and one snail per gallon. This crew is a bit larger, but it’s all good.  

I picked out a mixture of snails: Trochus, Nerites and Ceriths. I decided to use these, as they don’t die when they fall over. I also put a small conch in the mix to keep the sand stirred up. The conch is also great for photographing when they are busy at work.

There are a few Blue-leg Hermits; they are always doing their job.  The store was out of Scarlett Reef hermits, but I will throw a couple in when we get them back in stock.

The brittlestar is for detritus, the Emerald Crab does a great job at larger-size algae. Of course I threw in a Peppermint Shrimp for any Aiptasia that may pop-up, as well as to have something in the tank that I can watch move around.

Next week, I’ll share my new experiences with Charlotte and dive into the major upgrade of LIGHTING, which is always a great topic of conversation. 

If you have any questions or observations about what you have read so far, feel free add comments here or to email me at brian@oceangalleryii.com. 

Your questions and my answers will appear in a future article. 

Stay tuned!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Griffin setup his first saltwater aquarium back in the mid 70's while attending Florida State University. From that moment on, he fell in love with the hobby. Over the years, he's have had many reef aquariums, the largest being a 8'x4'x2' lookdown system with a total volume of just over 1,800 gallons.

He became known in the industry when he started Reefers – A Marine Aquaria Store back in 1999. The company closed its doors in 2002, but he's been active and in touch with the industry and has had the pleasure of rubbing elbows with some of the greats associated with this hobby.

Besides his two sons and women, he has an undying passion for the hobby of reefkeeping. He worked with ZeroEdge Aquarium and helped them bring the ZeroEdge name to a new level in the industry. Today he "resides" at Ocean Gallery II located in North Plainfield, NJ, doing what he does best, helping people set up successful reefs.