Hey guys, Jeremy here with KISS Aquatic Systems k-i-s-s
keep it simple stupid.
This is the two year anniversary update video of my ultra low tech nano reef tank. So this 20
gallon tank, it's got the three key essentials: light, flow, and heat. And it's got nothing else.
So you can see here my fancy schmancy super high-end lighting system. And of course I've
also got a power head and a heater. So yeah, wire management is clearly a very big challenge here.
Anyways this is a mixed reef,
mostly lps corals along the bottom half of the tank and macroalgae along the top half.
Now this tank has had some challenges along the way, and we'll get into that in just a moment,
but at this point things are running smoothly and I am getting much better growth out of these
corals here. So let's zoom in and get a closer look at some of these corals, really all of
these corals going right to left. So we've got 15 different corals in this tank, 13 of them are lps.
I don't know why but lps corals have always been my favorites,
I just find them to be a lot more fun to watch. So you've got the sweeper tentacles,
the shorter tentacles, the super inflatability and puffiness,
and just the overall aggressive and predatory behavior that these corals tend to display,
which does sort of set them apart from a lot of the sps and soft corals. But on the flip side,
the fleshy lps corals that you see here they do sort of tend to be smaller and slower growers
than softies and sps. At least when you're talking about the 10 dollar frags that I'm willing to buy.
But this is a small 20 gallon tank so I can get away with that here
and not feel as much pressure to add a ton of fast-growing corals to fill up the space.
For a bigger tank I'd probably stock differently,
but under the circumstances here I think this works. Now some of these corals are quite mean.
Six of them in particular do throw out some very long sweeper tentacles mostly at night.
So as time passes and assuming they continue to grow I'm gonna have to start moving them around
a bit further away from each other. Probably a little further up, up higher in the rock work
which I've already started to do actually. And of course my three cyphastreas on the left side
have been doing their job, and really spreading and encrusting the rock work there. So over
time this tank should continue to slowly fill up just with these existing corals I have now. So I
haven't added any new corals in six months and not really planning on getting any more at this point,
so we'll just see how these guys continue to do. All right, so let's zoom out zoom back out now.
I think I've given you guys enough close-ups of all my aiptasia and hair algae for the moment.
So it's actually kind of funny, my biggest challenge with this tank here
hasn't had anything to do with my lack of equipment or tech but rather with my decision to
really allow tons of macroalgae to just dominate the top half of this very brightly lit tank,
which I really did from the very beginning. So what happened is I
ended up creating a situation here where the macros really stripped my water of
pretty much all nutrients, to the extent that my corals really weren't getting enough
from the water column. So I did manage to starve out the few sps corals I had here,
and my softies they're still alive but they're not thrilled. They're just kind of staying the
same size as they have been all along. So my lps corals were actually doing reasonably okay
for the first year, which is good because they've always been the dominant corals here.
But I think that's probably because they have, a lot of them have really big mouths
and those nasty sweeper tentacles so they were actually able to hunt at night for food
given that I do have a massive pod and tiny little worm and snail population here for them.
So to some extent, having super clean water, super clean low nutrient low dissolved organic water can
be a good thing for stony corals in particular because it makes the calcification process
easier. But on the other hand corals are animals and they do need to eat,
especially these lps guys. So about six or seven months ago I changed up how I fed this tank.
Previously I was dosing spirulina powder to the tank once a week, really just broadcast feeding.
But I kind of felt like most of the nutrients just seemed to go to algae
rather than the corals, so I just stopped doing that entirely and instead started spot feeding
all of the individual corals with raw shrimp once per week instead. So still very light in
terms of the total amount of nutrient inputs in this tank, but just really much better targeted
directly feeding direct polyps with almost nothing getting lost and going anywhere else.
Unsurprisingly, I still get good macro growth in this tank which for me actually is important
because I do really like my macros. But the corals are definitely responding well and the past six
months I've really had a step function increase in the growth rate for really all of them.
So in that time I've managed to slowly start shifting the balance of power
in this tank between the corals and the macros from maybe six months ago I was at
10 percent corals 90 percent macros and today I'd say I'm probably about
30 percent coral 70 percent macros. So my target here over the next six months
is to get to about 50 50 market share between the corals and macros, and I think I'll get there.
Another side benefit from changing up my feeding approach has been that my aiptasia population
has started to go down over the past six months without me really having to mess with it much.
I mean this tank's still not great aiptasia-wise, I have more than I like. But it's definitely
better than it was in the past even with a really hands-off approach. So I mean I guess
it sort of makes sense that aiptasia declined when I stopped broadcast feeding the tank,
but definitely happy about that. So yeah folks, that's the update. This tank is running smoothly
at this point has been for a while. Corals are all happy, and most importantly there's really
very little work involved here which is good because I'm lazy and I have way too many tanks.
So basically one day a week I go around with the tweezers and hand feed my 13 lps corals.
Not every polyp obviously, but each coral does get enough shrimp to keep it happy.
Usually takes about an hour based on how much I feed for the coral to totally engulf and consume
the shrimp that I give it. Also once a week, usually the same evening, so I'll do the
feeding in the morning I'll do my 10 percent weekly water change which is where I also
like to prune back a little bit of the macros. I do have to dose daily. Every
morning I add a few milliliters of a balanced one part calcium and alkalinity supplement,
right now I'm using the tropic marin carbo-calcium. I mean I'm reasonably happy
with it, it's enough to keep my alk reasonably stable, call it the mid sevens to low eights dkh.
This tank used to run a bit higher in the low nines, but that was before the corals really
started growing a lot faster. But I'm okay with it in the sevens to eights, that's definitely within
normal seawater parameters, as long as it's stable which it is. So all in all this tank, it's
low tech but it's also pretty low maintenance: once a week feeding, once a week water change,
and tiny little bit of dosing once every morning. I actually don't have to do top offs
either because I cover this tank pretty tightly with a lid so no real evaporation to worry about.
So yeah thanks guys, that's all for now. This tank, it's been a fun little side project for
me in the past two years and honestly I'm enjoying it way more than I thought I would. So for all you
reefers out there who are cheap and lazy like me, maybe there's some hope for us after all.
So thanks again guys. Hope you enjoyed the video, take care, and happy reefing.