Well I've had my 12 Gallon Nano-Cube Deluxe now for about 3 months, and haven't posted anything about it. So what the hell. Here goes, this is my nano!

The cube showed up on a wednesday. Needless to say, I was incredibly excited. I put the stand together, and got the cube on just right.


I wasted no time getting sand. The next day after school I went to pet-co and got a bag of live sand (crushed coral), and a bag of sugar fine dead sand. Got it in within minutes of coming through the front door, and put the water in. I wish I had found a better way of adding the water, because the water was murky for about 3 days afterward. Thats when I discovered my flaw. The sugar fine sand was stired up really REALLY east by even the slightest movement. So yes, the pump stired it up really bad.

This pic was taken about a day after the addition of the water.


About a week and a half after the cube arived, I had the rock. The Live rock I put in all came from another persons tank. So It was COVERED in coraline algea. Unfortunately, the guy shut his tank down because he couldn't keep up with the hair algea. So I got alot of that as well. Oh well, an emerald crab fixed that FAST!

The base rock I added was all Utah Rock collected out of the dessert just outside of Salt Lake City.

I tested the water daily for about another week. When my ammonia hit 0, and all my other levels balanced out, I wasted no time getting things in there. You can see in this pic zoas in the front, and if you look carefully, there is a stalk of about 7 heads of candycane toward the back.



Just as a side note, I don't have alot of rock in there. Probably only about 20ish lbs. I wanted 4 fish in there from the get go. First off, I was building this tank around the candy stripe pistol shrimp and the yashia goby. Second and third, I wanted to be gobys. And the fourth needed to be a swimmer. Because I wanted a swimmer, less rock seemed logical.

I got my first fish about 3 days after the addition of corals. This fish was purely an impulse buy simply because I'd never seen one in a store before. So I picked him up. For the next week, I'd never seen a fish pissed off more. OMG, he was ramming the walls, flinging himself at everything, and not eating ANYTHING!!! He settled down pretty easy and started eating alot. Unfortunately, he stopped eating, and is getting incredibly thin. Time for garlic I suppose.



All the while, I'd been surfing the net looking for good deals on clean up crew and corals. Just out of curiosity, you know ;) . I ended up making two orders. One from sealifeflorida.com and one from saltwaterfish.com . Sea life inc. has some pretty cheap stuff. The snails were 80 cents a piece, and the rics were like $15 per mouth. I ordered 4 rics, and 20 snails to split between my nano and my already established 72gal bowfront. I got all the fun stuff from saltwaterfish.com. I got the hermits, the cleaner clams, a few snails, another ric, some crabs, just to meet the order, another fish. I found out quick that the fish I had ordered doesn't play well with my Citron Clown Goby.

To make a long story short, the new clown goby went into my already established 72 gallon bow front, killed an acro and wound up at the same LFS I got the rock from.

Now came the fun part. My LFS had been trying to order my shirmp and goby combo to no avail. When the order finally showed up, it had no shirmp, just the goby. The goby never made it through QT, and I didn't get him. They tried again, same thing. Finally, a Candy Stripe pistol Shrimp showed up, but with a Hi-Fin Goby, not a Yashia Goby. I went in to take a look, and decided I'd live, and bought the combo for $80. I took them home, acclimated them and all was well. They went into the hole I wanted them too, the it was so cool! The shrimp annoyed me all night long. I was almost mad for buying him in the first place, but that soon passed. Of course going with what this tank has been, the shimp and goby moved to another spot in the tank (in the back where no one can see them, and are living happily out of sight).





Shortly after I bought the combo, I found out that the sally light foot I had ordered from saltwaterfish.com was a bad idea. It killed both my annemone crab, and my porcolin crab. I was very unhappy. I would have emailed them and said that they both died within their 14-day period, but the sally had ripped thim into little pieces, and there was no way to prove it. So I swollowed my pride and booted the sally out of the tank so fast it made his head spin. Plus he was after my fish. I was pissed at him enough, but that was the deciding factor.

I found my third fish (the swimmer) at another LFS. He's awesome. I know people will say that he's in too small of an environment, but he seems to LOVE swimming in and out of the rock. I'm sure I'll move him to a larger tank eventually, but for now, he's happy enough.



My fourth fish came well after the establishment of the tank, the corals, and the other fish. He's just about the coolest fish ever. When I had first set up my 72gal bowfront, we got a fish called a red cap or red headed goby. He was pretty neat. He'd be incredibly active during the day, and during the night, he'd jump up down on the rock catching pods. He was so cool. I found a picture of this guy on a nano tank forum, and couldn't resist. I tried to order one, but no one could get one. One day we went from Jenks OK to Edmond OK to visit my grandparents, and found an LFS. I figured why not, so we went in to take a look. My dad found a pagoda cup he couldn't live without, why I dunno, it's just brown. But thats besides the point. I have to say, I was impressed by this shop. Their sellection beat out any other store I've ever seen, and their livestock was BEAUTIFUL!! Back towards the back of the shop and on the end of the fish system was a sea horse tank. Yeah, who cares, I wouldn't mind having sea horses, but not right now, so I moved on. Once I had looked at the whole store, I have to say, I was in love with just about everything. But you know how it is in an LFS you've never been in before, and sometimes in your normal shops. I went back over everything, and really asked myself. Do I need the money? My dad answered that question for me, and started to extract me out of the shop. Then I saw him. In that little sea horse tank sat a queen conch shell, and in it sat the fish I had tryed to order for months. I wouldn't say he was any bigger than about 1/2 inch at the time. $20. My LFS had quoted me at $40. SOLD! That day, I got a new pagoda cup, a bottle of tiger pods, a 20gal tank for a sump on a new tank, and the fish of my dreams. A green banded goby. So cool!



He's still small so he doesn't come out alot, and when he is, he's in the perfect spot to where my camera won't focus, so thats the best I could do.

So there you have it, 4 fish in my 12gal nano. Thats right, I did it, and we all love it. Now for the corals:

I don't know what everyone else is, but I'm a collector. I try to get my hands on everything as far as zoas and rics go. I've also found myself dabbling in the candy cane and brain spot of things. So here's some growth pics first.

First set up:

My Zoas:

My Candy Canes:









(I have other species in my 72gal bowfront)

My Lobo brain and other LPS:















(compare the pic of the citron in that brain pic, and the pic of him when he was first put in. You can easily tell he's stopped eating)

My rics:









Let me know what you guys think. And remember, I'm always looking to expand on my collection, so if you have something that would look good in here, let me know :rolleyes:

Looking great! Nice set up and i really must compliment you on your photography. You take some excellent photos.