Welcome! This is where I will be posting major updates during the life of my small reef aquarium which is located in my bedroom. This is hopefully going to lead onto a much larger aquarium once I move into a more permanent home.

The tank has been running since the 31 July 2019, and had livesock since 28 August 2019.

Equipment List:
- Red Sea Reefer Nano [$400]
- Seachem Meridian Sand [$120]
- Coral Rock from Hollywood Fish Farm (~8KG) [$160]
- Ecotech Marine XR15 Pro light [$1040]
- Ecotech Marine Reef Link [$299]
- Seneye monitor [$280]
- Aqua Excell Protein Skimmer [$289] REMOVED
- 2x Wave-maker OW-10 flow power-heads [$198]
- SunSun Return Pump [$93]
- Eheim 300w Heater [$80]
- RODI unit [$449]
- Refugium grow light [$40]
- Automatic Dosing pump [$130]
- Petrol generator (in-case of emergency) [$440]
- Test Kits [230]

Regular Expenses
- Seneye replacement slides [$25/month]
- Frozen food [$10/month]
- Salt [$80/3 months]
- Dried food [$40/6 months]
- Supplents [$110/6 months]
- Online Management and Tracking software [$10/month]

AquaticLog Page: https://www.aquaticlog.com/aquariums/nztek/3

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Livestock:

Current images of Tank

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Date - Just some glamour shots of some things I thought were looking good and needed some update photos. The shrimps love to get into every photo they can!

8 April 2020 - Big maintenance morning: 
-Removed bio balls from overflow chamber. Unsure why I put these in here before the filter sock. They ended up just filling with detritus and giving me a lot of Nitrates. 
---Stirred these up to allow the crap to flow out and into the filter sock, then removed and placed into mesh bags to relocate into the Return Pump chamber of the sump 
-Removed 1/2 of the sandbed today to also mitigate Nitrate issues and allow flow to reach right under the rock structure. Added benifit of this is there is now a massive new cave and overhangs for inhabitants to enjoy! 
This was also a mistake I made at the start by putting in way too much sand and being ignorant to the issues which may come in the later years from this. This step will hopefully help here while the system is still new without all the nasty things deep in the bed. 
---Keeping sand in a bucket for possible future use after washing it. 
---Will remove a little more sand next week after the bio system has balanced out. 

-General cleanup of Sump Auto top-off reservoir.

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22 January 2020 - Installed my new Jebao WiFi 3.4 dosing pump today. Interface is terrible but it seems to work fine after a calibrating and testing. I’m dosing AquaForest Components 123. 1ml of each every day at 2am, 9am & 3pm. Each component dose is separated by 20mins.

12 January 2020 - Visited the new Reef Aquaria store on Rosedale Road for a look around and to meet the ownew. Ended up coming out with some new trochus snails and a Zoa frag!

Still yet to see my Golden Head Sleeper Goby, but I do see a section of sand under a rock consistantly having a pile of clean sand, so he must be building a home :)

6 January 2020 - Green Star Polyps filled out the gap where the Aiptasia was very nicely!

5 January 2020 - Tank looking extra pretty today when next to the apocalyptic skys outside from the fires in Australia!
Photo has not been edited in any way!

Also one of my Turbo Snails is looking FABULOUS with his luscious head of hair algae!

4 January 2020 - Decided to start dosing suppliments after my Alk has been starting to drop faster then I can replenish with water changes. After a lot of research i decedid on AquaForest Component 1+ 2+ 3+. $99 from Hollywood Fish Farm.
I have also ordered a 4 head dosing pump which I plan to use for these. In the mean time I will just dose manually over the day while I am off work.

31 Decemer 2019 - It’s amazing how dirty the socks can get after 4 days! Bit of soaking in Bleach and a wash in the machine and they are good as new :)

30 December 2019 - NEW LIVESTOCK! Ordered 2x Cleaner Shrimp and 1x Golden Head Sleeper Goby from EasternMarine.co.nz. Arrived Same day too from their new Auckland Warehouse.
No actual photo of the Goby sorry as he went straight into hiding and has since dug tunens all under the rock to hide in. But hes very cute!

27 December 2019 - Today I had to sell the Longnose Hawk Fish. Due to my Red Fire Shrimp really not liking him being around and because I wanted to get a couple Cleaner Shrimp in the future and these are not a good mix with the Hawks… Was good to see he went to a great home!

25 December 2019 - MERRY CHRISMAS! Today my Hammer Coral decided to shed its zooxanthellae due to me adjusting the colours of my light slightly. I did this change to remove some of the white and green spectrums to make the tank look more blue in the evenings. Hammer was back to normal over the next couple days.

24 December 2019 - Replaced the LED lamp for my refugium with a proper grow lamp with a pink spectrum. 15w and $39.90 from growshop.co.nz

21 December 2019 - Female Clownfish seems to have a little bit oc Ich and a bump on his chin. I have been doing some super long hours at work and some major life distractions which meant the tank was negleted for a couple weeks unfortunatly. Rushed to Hollywood Fish Farm and spent about $180 on a new tank, filter and heater for her. Set this up and filled using old tank water and a filter sponge to seed the bacteria with.

Medicated with Copper and kept concentration correct using a Copper test kit. Feeding multiple times a day so hopefully she makes a speedy recovery!

18 December 2019 - Rose Bubble Tip Anemone not looking too flash. Checked water and Alk is a little low so will be adjusting this slowly over the coming days.

15 December 2019 - Sourced some Chaeto from a nice person on Facebook. Also came with some cool sea stars and a few bristle worms!
I have since replaced the light from a white LED to an LED with the proper grow spectrums as the Chaeto was starting to die off…

14 December 2019 - !!!! Aiptasia on my Green Star Polyps!. Removed the whole rock and started chipping away to remove the Aiptasia inside a Bucket of RO/DI water. Made a mess but the GSP will quickly recover

Today I also swapped over to the Red Sea Blue Bucket salt instead of the Pro variant. This is to stabalise my paramaters while my corals don’t yet need to extra elements in that quantity and also because its a real pain to mix due to the excessive precipitation. The blue bucket mixes clear every time and is saving my pumps and heaters.

11 December 2019 - Purchaced a rather large water storage container hehe. This will be to store RO/DI water so I have a few months supply and hopefully stop flodding the garage.

8 December 2019 - Cleaned up the Sump and added in some more bio media on the otherwise empty floor. This is also because im going to soon add a mini Refugium

8 November 2019 - I really need to change this Hermit Crabs shell. The one he’s using is just way too big and he knocks everything over!

6 November 2019 - Turbo Snails doing their job well!

3 November 2019 - Added a Blood Red Fire Shrimp today. Seeing as I also have a Hawk Fish currently, I don’t see the shrimp coming out of hiding much. Planning to sell the Hawkfish soon.

2 November 2019 - OVERFLOW CHECK VALVE

For quite some time, I have been frustrated when at the back flow into the sump whenever I shut off the return pump. The noise is also an issue and probably the most annoying is the water level rising in the sump, causing my protein skimmer to over-flow as I never remember to turn it off.

So today I set off to fix this.
Made a visit to my local Chesters, which is conveniently located next door to my local Hollywood Fish Farm! Picked up some bits and set off home to install:

-1x 20mm PVC Check Valve [$26.57]
-2x 20mm Hose Tail [$5.64]

Started by dismantling the return pipe which was made easy by the red seas quick mounts. made a cut in the middle of the pipe and inserted the check valve in-line. Measured the length of the valve and removed this from the pipe length to ensure this is not too long when reinstalling.

Below is the finished product installed! Couldn’t be happier as now when I turn the return pump off for feeding there is no rush of water back into the sump and no more gurgling sounds :)
As a side thing, I also mounted an LED strip to the roof of the cabinet to give more light ☺️

22 October 2019 - Added some more coral today from Eastern Marine
- Hammer Coral
- Torch Coral
- Flowepot
- Frogspawn
- Grape Coral

20 October 2019 - Replaced the net on my cover with a black fabric I found at bunnings for covering plants. Looks HEAPS better than the white material. One issue was I had to increase my lighting. Using a PAR meater I worked out I needed to add 15% of intensity to my schedule, which I did. Sorry I don’t have a better before pic. That white cover only lasted a day before I went to locate a better option. Other than that, the Red Sea DIY kit frame was supurb and looks stunning with its sunk in look.

9 October 2019 - Added a Yellow Coral Goby and Hawkfish today. Coral Goby is sooooo cute!

8 September 2019 - Hermit decided to shed his skin last night.

5 September 2019 - Added Magenta Dottyback from AquaForrest on Quay street

4 September 2019 - Added a Green Star Polyp. Eventually placed this on its own rock in the sand to avoid spreading to the main rock work and taking over.

1 September 2019 - Purchaced a shelf for my RO/DI unit to mount to and for storing all my clean water to eventually be used for mixing salt and top-off water

31 August 2019 - 2nd Livestock order, Annemome and Candycane

28 August 2019 - FIRST LIVESTOCK ORDER… Ordered some clown fish and corals last night :) They arrived at work early this morning, so I went home and added them to the tank!

27 August 2019 - Algae starting to bloom really quick

26 August 2019 - Ammonia reaches 0!!!!

23 August 2019 - Tidyied up sump area dna electronics.

18 August 2019 - Today I decided to get a Hermit Crab for the tank seeing as the Ammonia levels had almost reached 0 and that we would need sometihing hardy to keep ammonia present for the tank cycle. Picked this guy up from AquaForrest Aquarium Studio on Quay Street in Auckland for $35.

17 August 2019 - Tank almost cycled and will soon add some Hermit Crabs

13 August 2019 - Purchaced and installed 2x Jebao Wavemakers

9th August 2019 - Ecotech XR15 light arrived! Installed this and had a good play with the web interface and schedulling.

Once I installed the diffuser for the XR15, the difference was quite noticable. See below:

6th August 2019- Shopping list for system finally complete. Moved tank to the location where it will be living and started to fill with rock and sand. When happy, filled with water. Once filled the tank was clowdy for a couple days.

7th July 2019 - Aquarium picked up from Hamilton and delivered home safely.