Our Nano competitionTank

[sunny03]

Was told that i need to start a tank thread for the nano competition tank. So this is how we started

Had gather a few reefers to take part in this nano competition for the fun of it.. However, only two names are to be submitted so the rest you know who you are .....

How we going about of doing it ?

***To be Cont***

[Solo77]

Lol. Good start.

[peong]

Oh, sunny03, long time no see, welcome to this playground, cannot wait to know what are you going to play with?

[RockyBoy]

Looking forward for your setup... :thumbsup:

[Admiraltian]

Everyone is excited for the nano competition!

[Gouldian]

[sunny03]

It has been some time since i last posted here..

Was researching on how to do rock scape for a nano tank and i came across an article in other forum . some of you might had already seen it. took the concept and add my own ... with reference from Veganbrian

Every time we look at the reef, what do you see first? It is the placement of the rocks then the attracting colours of the corals. For those who are photographer this might sound familiar to you. The rule of thirds. The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. As follows.

With this grid in mind the ‘rule of thirds’ now identifies four important parts of the image that you should consider placing points of interest in as you frame your image. The theory is that if you place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines that your photo becomes more balanced and will enable a viewer of the image to interact with it more naturally.

The picture will be more interesting if the horizon or your point of interest is not in the center of the picture. Put the horizon a third of the way down from the top (or up from the bottom) of the frame, or the subject a third of the way in from the left or right. Experiment until you find a composition that appeals to you.

Read more: http://digital-photography-school.com/rule-of-thirds#ixzz28R2aFtNe

We often see people just buy a big rock and put it in the tank. Theres no thought in that and it does not create a natural feel and takes away from the movement and shape or the rock. Structures tend to catch the viewer’s attention more than just a bland landscape where they don’t really know what to focus on.Why are mountains so amazing to us? Its because they are not a big slab of rock. They have all sorts of movement and depth. Things like points, divots, Certain lines or trees,caves, snow and running water.

Another thing to add is to keep in mind your lighting and how that will hit onto your rock work. The taller the rock work the more light will hit it and the brighter it will be. Light will become important when the reef is started up. Consider that within your aquascape.

Next to follow will be the coral placement. We would not want to have a group of colours blue/green/red etc. The trick is to throw those colours around the tank all over the place.. In the colour wheel, green is opps of red. in our reef tank we can put a some GSP at the top left corner and red brain or plata at the lower right foreground. Or a green colour surrounded a red colour colour

For this nano Tank we hope to achive rock scape like this Minimalist approach with Nature Filtration

Choice of corals of course will not be SPS...

***To be cont ***

[peacemaker]

[sunny03]

Natural Filtration

What do we mean when we decide to go for natural filtration ???

Majority of our filitration comes from molluscs and one kind of soft coral..

- molluscs

We will be using green mussels and oysters (if we can find them)

Blue mussels (Mytilus edulis). Picture: Ron Offermans.

Why we choose them ???

Mussels, in contrary to all other molluscs live exclusively on filtration. From the surrounding water they not only take oxygen to breathe, but also food. This nutrition method proved to be so successful that mussels not only managed to distribute into almost all parts of the sea, no matter in which climate zone, but also into the ever changing salt-less waters of rivers and ponds on the continents. Blue mussels for example can filtrate up to 5 litres of water per hour, oysters even manage 25 litres.

An experiment with blue mussels. In the left glass there are no mussels, in right one mussels filter the water.

Reference from Robert Nordsieck

http://www.molluscs.at/bivalvia/index.html?/bivalvia/common_mussel.html

- Soft Coral

Many might wonder which soft coral can filter water ?

Answer is Xenia !

Why Xenia ?

It is believed that they can absorb some nutrients directly from the water. Xenia may do better in tanks that are not frequently skimmed. Base on this believed we choose Xenia .. Having said that, Xenia also provide a constant look of gently flowing and waving in the water. Their cream to white stalked/polyps added another group of colours into our nano reef.

***To be Cont***

[Solo77]

Impressed. Lol

[Kakani]

Very detail learn alot from this thread... Camp here....

[Gouldian]

The hidden dragon is awaken!

[allantang]

mussels? waaa.... time to chiong sheng song lor... haha

[patricklhc]

Please keep the details coming in bro.. Fantastic knowledge! Will start hunting for Xenia and oyster on wed

[Terryz_]

It is difficult to keep the mussel alive unless it is collect for aquarium use... Those that are being sold live at sheng siong will not make it, tried it and done it... The vast difference in temp, will make it the difficult to acclimatize them and many will not make it thru but few will do well..

[RockyBoy]

Very interesting stuffs!!!!

[sunny03]

Very interesting stuffs!!!!

More to come ... This is just the beginning

[skinbone]

To help Ts elaborate on the color portion.

You have to place corals according to their needs concerning light, current and neighbors. In what concerns the layout there are requirements such are color, shape and texture.

If you have a plan to begin with, it’s not difficult to satisfy the corals’ needs and the aesthetics of the layout.

As with anything that deals with color, a basic understanding of the use of the color wheel helps to create color schemes with an orderly progression of color, color balance and harmony.

When you want to create an area with corals, and you want to avoid the “everyone showed up” look, you should try to find corals in the same color or neighbor colors. So an area with orange, browns, yellow and red corals will go very well together. Red, purple and blue will work fine too or green, yellow and orange.

It’s as simple as picking a color in the color wheel and finding its neighbors. It’s worth noting that each slice of the color wheel has different saturations and brightness. You can have a light or dark orange, more or less vivid, more grayish, etc. Even an area only in orange can be very interesting if you try to play with different tones of orange.

Very vivid colors are like people with strong, intense personalities: they can achieve great things together, but it’s much more difficult to make them work together.

Other possibility to combine colors e through an opposite strategy: instead of finding similar colors, choose a complementary color. This is an obvious way to create contrast, but if you choose pale tones, instead of creating a very contrasting area you will get a rich background against which you can place a more striking color.

You can enrich your layout by combining both this techniques: create a background with corals of 3 neighbor colors and then place a single coral with a contrasting color in the same area. This coral will immediately stand out.

Ideally, your tank will have 1 or at most 2 of these very special areas. These are the places where your eyes will be drawn.

The creation of contrast is most obvious with the use of color but it can also be created with shape or texture. In an area filled with soft corals, a hard coral will stand out.

In the same area you can play with contrast and similarity at the same time. For example, imagine this sequence from left to right: blue zoanthus, orange zoanthus and orange montipora digitata. The blue zoanthus are similar in shape and contrasting in color with the neighbor orange zoanthus. The orange montipora does exactly the opposite: it has a very different shape but the same color. Normally it isn’t a good idea to change everything at once. Two neighbors should have something in common. One exception to this is those very special areas where you place the pieces you want to draw attention. In those areas you can attack with full contrast in color, shape, etc.

If you have a valley you already created a great contrast: it’s the division between two areas. It’s normally a great idea to make the two sides of the valley similar at least in one way, whether it is color, shape or texture.

read more in http://reef-aquascaping.blogspot.sg/

[m12345y]

So assuming I have red green blue acro and red green blue digi, are you suggesting to put red acro and red digi together, and so for green n blue?

[sunny03]

almost two months no update...

Finally found some time to do a overhanging rock saving space..

Tunze magnet.. to hold the rock

Stuff needed to make this hanging rock.. total time spend 5 mins..

[stevenchia]

Nice! Seems like the ball start rolling...