Check this guy's nano out!!!! Most amazing thing Ive ever seen.

[mswt5]

WOW!!!!

http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=17395&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

[mswt5]

OH YEAH!!!

To see the pic of the nano you have to be a member of reefs.org.....
Register real quick and check it out....

[brandon429]

you'd have to be an --oddball-- to try and put a reef in something like that. Next thing you know he'll be putting reefs inside tiny plastic boxes and the like...

[brandon429]

naww Im just joshin you...

Sure appreciate it :spin3: , and also there are many lengthy threads on ReefCentral about the reefbowl. If you can stand to wade through the verbage, there will be some fun pictures to look at.

Its really an optical illusion, its not as complicated as it may seem. Put a fish in there and it all changes. but with corals that dont require alot of heavy feeding, theres no reason they can't be kept in an odd-shaped container provided you meet their oxygen, circulation, nutrient and light demands. I tell you what struck me completely was this months feature tank-- nice acropora/montipora eh mswt5....

That tank is incredibly stocked and aquacultured. I started thinking about the nubs I call sps in the reefbowl vs the oak trees in his 3 year old tank...





brandon

[mswt5]

Yeah....this months tank is amazing!!!
Im not much into hard corals....more of a softy kinda guy....but its still awesome....I think the amazing part about his tank is all of the fish he can keep in there
So that tanks already been seen around here huh?.....
Ill i have to search em out.....thanx

[mswt5]

HAHA......now i feel even dumber.....nice bowl there brandon....hehe

Im very interested in it and was wondering about all the specifics and stuff.....
Im sure youve gone through all this several times before so I dont wont you to have to say it all over just for me.....Do you remember any of the posts or anything I should read???

[Agu]

'I have to ask, how do you clean the inside glass ??

Glad to see it's still up and running :D.

Agu

[brandon429]

Hello Agu and MSWT,

For a couple of days I have been trying to load a few pics to show you guys how I keep it clean, the server just times out and I have reduced the pics down to about 160kB which should be way small enough to post....

Ill just go ahead and write about it--
Each morning there is a slight dust cloud on the inner walls of the bowl where diatoms and small critters have collected from the previous night. I have built a tiny cleaning magnet the size of a pencil eraser to handle this, and putting these little guys back into suspension each day helps a little in feeding the corals and suspension feeders (such as sabellid fan worms)

The magnet is built from RadiosShack neodymium rare earth magnets, coated in epoxy on each magnet and separated by two felt pads--so they wont scratch the glass. They are very strong in spite of their size...

For coralline, I just scraped it for the first time in a year. It had grown to block out about half the viewing display. For that I use some surgical hemostats and I clamp them to a razor blade and scrape away. The blade needs to be bent to conform to the insides of the bowl.

Weekly, I use a paper towel to wipe out the top part of the inner neck above the water line. This area is a "natural protein skimmer" because the circulation for the bowl is solely through an airstone, and the popping of these bubbles at the surface ejects much slime, copepod shells, and general gunk up onto the sides of the wall above the water line. This removes a small portion of the internal waste from the system.

The bowl is doing well, and I can't wait until server will let me post some updated pics in there. A few months ago I installed some more blastomussa, a new finger leather and a euphyllia. This totals about 14 different corals (sps and lps) in the bowl which is far surpassing the bioload I thought it would handle unskimmed/unexported.

It seems that the little nitrogenous waste in the system is accounted for by the LR surface area and the current. Ammonia/trite is always 0 and nitrates are 15-20ppm usually after a week or two running.


b