fowlr to nano conversion?

[FranktheFixer]

I am seriously considering converting one of my tanks to a nano reef.. It’s a well-established 29gal fowlr tank. It's got plenty of live rock, a small percula, and cleanup crew- (2 fire shrimp, a couple of stars, snails) - water tests are always solid. I currently have an Aquaclear HOB PF- I plan to add an AquaC Remora and koralia head. My real question is in the lighting- I don't want to start with any light intensive corals- just some hardy specimens for the first year or so- I am considering the Coralife 2x65w - will this do the job for some soft coral and maybe an lps? Also my heater, although a cheap pos, has always held the tank at exactly 78 for the past 3 years, should I replace anyway? I've done allot of research on the subject of nano reef's and am ready to take the plunge, but wanted to pass this over to the experts here to see what i might be missing before I do anything (especially since everthing i'm reading details a new setup- not a conversion, is a live conversion from fowlr to reef even possible?)
Looking to buy to add to this live 29gal setup:
AquaC Remora with 1200
Coralife 2x65w (10k + actinic) possibly their lunar model with the built-in moonlight leds
koralia head (or similar)
Reef test kit and nutrient additives
refractometer (no more color matching, yay!)

is a live conversion like this possible or do i have to teardown and start fresh? unfortunately have crushed coral in all my tanks, including this one- am i s.o.l?
Am i looking at the right equipment? Am i missing anything? Can i expect to do this conversion live with the current inhabitants intact? What pitfalls should I expect?
Thanks!

 

[tbone212371]

I run a 29 gal mixed reef...
With a 10 gal sump refuge...
I do not run a skimmer (Only reason is because I change 1/3 of my water every week)
And I personally believe it is not nescessary for a small set up and it pulls too much out of the water...Plus my corals love a dirty water column.
As for lighting I use a 24" t5 set up (96 watts)
(2- 24watt actic and 2- 24watt 10,000K) with 4 moon lights and I have a lot of zoos and palyps and Kenya Trees and a frogspawn and a large Galaxea coral in the tank.
As for the heater I use a 25watt heater in the fuge and my temp stays at 78 for 24/7

As for your equipment that you have you are ready to go!
Your substrate is fine.. It is all a matter of preferance..
A power head is fine... (I don't have any but I run dual returns with eductors to boost my flow)
I hope this info helps you..
Good Luck and have fun with it...
Thats what it is all about...

 

[mnat]

While I am no expert, we just did setup a 30g tank so we might have some tips for you. The Remora skimmer is a great choice, we have the same one and it does a hell of a job. We also added a cpr small HOB refugium to put some chaeto in to help out, I don't think you have to do it, put extra volume always helps. You may want to go with 2 koralia heads, we have 2 koralia 2s because we are keeping sps in there. You can probably get away with the 1s or even a 1 and a nano if you are only going to do some softies and zoas. Your lighting will also limit you basically to those corals as well. You can do zoas very easily with that lighting and you may be able to tryout some of the more low light LPS species out there as well. I don't know how deep your tank is, but you can always move them up. Also, most LPS do not like a high flow anyway. You probably want to get rid of the crushed coral as it traps a lot of gunk and makes it very hard for your cleanup crew to clean. We just did that on our 12g and 20g and put in a nice live sand bed. You want to add some diferent snails (nassarius and turbos) and get some hermit crabs as well.

I don't think doing a conversion from a FOWLR to a reef is really a huge deal. The main thing is making sure your fish don't eat coral and a small perc will be just fine with corals. My fiancee never had coral in the 20g and now it is full. All she did was upgrade the lighting to make sure the corals are well fed. The main thing is keeping your water quality good and making sure your elements (mag, calcium, etc.) are kept in line. Also, make sure your stars are reef safe because I couple will eat coral.

 

[FranktheFixer]

thank you for the positive and helpful responses! they are greatly appreciated. i feel a bit better about the equipment lineup. i was just a little hesitant to simply apply this stuff to a running fowlr and expect it to eventually become a nano reef. i kinda like the look of sand and was also wondering if i could carefully add a 1/2" layer of live sand to one corner of the tank for starters- on top of a low spot of the crushed coral- just to have a sand spot- purely for aesthetic reasons. do you guys think this is feasible?- or will it just eventually become a mishmash and not worth it. also, can i possibly start to remove some of my crushed coral, maybe a cupful every two days? is this suicide? i have no undergravel filter and can do this very carefully as to not disturb too much chemistry too quickly- i'd practically be willing to remove one piece of crushed coral a day for the rest of my life if that's what it takes to get a nice sandy bottom.

 

[mnat]

We just went the whole nine yards, pulled everything out of the tank, drained it and removed all the crushed coral at one time. We then scrubbed the tank put down the sand bed and put the live rock back in and let the water clear. Once the water was clear we put all the fish and corals back in. Everything was a bit stressed but were fine the next day. If you cover up the crushed coral with sand you are going to trap gunk underneath which I would not recommend. We were lucky we had an empty ten gallon tank to put everything in with a heater not to temerpature shock the livestock. We also had about 25g of fresh saltwater ready to go and just made it a massive water change. The next day we just checked the parameters and made any corrections to make sure we did not pull out all the trace elements. Considering you have some hardy livestock, the rapid change should not stress them too much.

 

[JRWOHLER]

I second the removal of the crushed coral and giving everything a fast cleaning. Also the one real potential problem is if you have anything other then the clown fish. No chocolate chip starfish right? Just make sure everthing is reef safe. I don't really care for cp lights prefer T5 by a mile. Good luck.

 

[FranktheFixer]

i did fail to mention the blue legged hermit in my current cleanup crew- the two stars are a serpent and a chocolate chip- i plan on moving the choco chip to my larger fowlr tank. also- will only keep reef safe inverts and fish- actually, the only fish i plan to add in the future is a royal gramma and maybe a green mandarin (if my copepod population stays as strong as it's been)

 

[mnat]

I'm the finacee previously mentioned in this thread, I started converted my 20G which has been running for four years from FOWLER to (baby) reef in November. I keep VERY simple corals, you can look at my transition on the "Her 20g" thread on the Nano forum.

I upgraded my lights to 4 25w T5s recently, and the upgrade had a huge impact on my zoas, palys, star polyps and clove polyps, which were the only corals I had at the time. Everything is growing more quickly under the new lighting and the colors are much much better... although I get a LOT more algae on the glass now.

If you want to keep a mandarin in a Nano, you might want to read Matt Wittenrich's (brief) article on mandarins in the Jan/feb issue of CORAL magazine and do some research on teaching one to eat frozen food. from my limited experiance, they can go through pods at an unbeliveable rate. There is also a thread on keeping mandarins in nanos on the FOWLER or general discussion forum, I'm sorry I can't remember which.

Good luck with the conversion!

 

[FranktheFixer]

thanks mnat. i read matt's mandarin article a week or so ago(here at http://www.bluezooaquatics.com/resources.asp?show=352)and found another good article at (http://www.defineyourreef.frihost.net/fish/dra4feed.html)- i feel pretty good about supplementing the copes i have with the methods mentioned, i know these gorgeous little fish require extra attention and effort to keep- but i think it's well worth it. i've cared for allot of picky eaters through the years (harlequin shrimp, purple nudibranchs, seahorses, etc) and really feel up to the challenge-
i'll be checking your thread on your 20- thanks so much for the tips everyone.