Harmony in a Nano Reef – The Bonsai Way

[kaykay]

For more than a thousand years, bonsai art has retained its traditional ideals of harmony and space. This originated from Zen Buddhism, who view this as a way of the combination of man and nature, working together to achieve harmony.

This sacred art-form is still considered by most enthusiasts as a simple way to connect with nature and find a sense of balance. Because a Bonsai, with proper care, can live for hundreds of years, we can see the true sense of harmony achieved in the Bonsai ecology.

This is also how we want a reef tank to be like – to live for as long as it can on its own.

MadScientist and I have put our thinking caps together for a while to come up with this humble perspective of how we will build our competition tank.

The theme of “sustainability” couldn’t come at a more appropriate time, as we become so cognitive of the limited resources the world has today for our sustenance. At its very core of this theme, renewability and the expendability of resources has to be balanced as much as possible.

So, for this nano reef competition, we would like to create an equilibrium of sustainability within the closed water column, with an eye for minimalist architecture in its structure and poise.

Sustainability. It is almost impossible to measure the carbon footprint of individual livestock in the tank. Therefore, to achieve this equilibrium, only livestocks with low “carbon emmissions” can be considered. Nonetheless, we still can achieve a good range of fishes and corals in a good spectrum of colours in this water circuit.

Architecture. Achieving a minimalist structure can look plain. It will require perfectly-shaped rocks to make it work. But as we know, an ideal world does not exist. So we have to activate plan B.

;) ;)

[Gouldian]

Another hidden dragon, coming out to the open. LOL

[kaykay]

Water quality and chemistry will be taken care by Mr Scientist himself (I mean, who better than a scientist right? LOL). This will be uploaded in a separate part later.

I’m doing the easy part, which is the aesthetics.. haha..

Choice of livestock.

Fishes.

Going by the central theme of Harmony, I am going to display all fishes in pairs. Whether there is any “Brokeback-ness” in any of the pairs, I cannot guarantee though. But fishes have been observed carefully before netting them at the LFSes. As long as they don’t fight or squabble with each other, I deem them harmonious couples.

1. Pair of Helfrichis (Paired them for a month in a betta box)

2. Pair of Flame Gobies

3. Pair of Fire fishes

4. Pair of Ocellaris (Already paired when bought 7 months ago)

5. Pair of Yellow Prawn Gobies (The 28 gallons should provide sufficient room for 2 of them)

6. Some schooling fishes – Parvulus Cardinals x 4, Banggai Cardinals x 2

The missing blue and green balance will be provided by the corals.

I’m a fish lover. Can bear to see a tank loaded with just corals but few fishes. Well, this is enough bioload for the small tank already. Sustainability, I have to keep reminding myself.

Corals.

The supplied tank is an intermediate LED MT-603. 25 x 1W Daylight 14K. This means that demanding corals are completely out. NPS corals, which require constant feeding, is also not considered. The challenge is then how to recreate a natural-looking piece of ocean, yet with a minimalistic look.. The choices of corals are naturally softies-dominated. Some LPS will add weight to the overall feel.

Rockscape.

Looking at the bonsai plant, it is often off-centre. Perfectly balanced perspective is not natural anyway. So it shall be for my structure. I chose to use PVC pipes to be the main skeleton of the rockscape. Flat pieces of coralline encrusted rocks have also been identified as the 2 main “branches” of this bonsai.

Any exposed PVC will hopefully be camouflaged accordingly.

[kaykay]

Forgot to add, I'm no dragon.. The efforts I have spent is a far cry from the rest of you guys.

I want to take this competition as a good opportunity to learn as much as I can, and to get to know more reefers..

Looking at the efforts of some of the other reefers, I feel so paiseh with the little preparation I have..

[Admiraltian]

Will be looking fwd to see everyone competition tank on that day.

[MadScientist]

Even though the tank's "shelf life" is approximately 4 days, we believe in setting up a tank that is sustainable throughout an aquarist's journey into reef keeping. Hence, we spare no effort in the setting up of the filtration and water parameters.

Mr eheim strongly believed that it is not fish that one is keeping, rather, it is water that one is really keeping. An excellent filtration system with uncompromising water quality is paramount in reef keeping. No effort shall be spared even for a competition tank lasting only 4 days.

Due to technical restrictions, it is unfeasible to produce 20+ gallons of ro/di water for the mixing of salt mix. Hence, we have decided to use nsw provided by the sponsor. That does not mean we are compromising in the quality of the water. pH and temperature will be measured using a 2 points calibrated (7.01 and 10.01) matrin instruments pH meter with temperature display (ATC). Salinity will be measured using a 2 points calibrated (ro/di water at 18 Mohms/cm and saltwater at sg 1.026, 53mS/cm) refractometer from trans instruments (ATC). Mg/ca/kh will be measured with d-d test kits while no3 and po4 will be measured with salifert test kit.

For the water to pass quality assurance test, it must have the following parameters :

No3 = 0 ppm

Salinity = 33 ppt

Kh = 12.1;4.3 dKH;meq/l

Ca = 440 mg/l

Mg = 1310 mg/l

Po4 = < 0.03 ppm

[MadScientist]

Calcium shall be adjusted by using red sea foundation a, kh/ph with foundation b and mg with foundation c.

As for filtration, mechanical, chemical and biological filtration are deployed.

Mechanical : coarse sponge, deltec mce600 hob skimmer, seachem clarity as flocculating agent on a need-to-use basis.

Chemical : seachem matrix carbon, seachem purigen, rowaphos. (dosed in excess of approximately 2x)

Biological : mixture of eheim bio-rings, live rocks, seachem matrix. Bacteria additives (tlf npx, seachem stability, brightwell microbacter, prodibio bacteria, microbe-lift special blend) will be added to provide for the initial seeding for the bacterial population.

As one might have heard, a hungry man is an angry man. And an angry man is an unproductive man, as we saw from the recent strike. Hence, we do our best to ensure our bacterial population are well fed for maximum productivity. We will be dosing reef carbon from brightwell and carbon from prodibio as carbon sources. A tiny dose of vinegar shall be added in for that variety and different "taste" that all gourmets carves for (the use of different types of carbon sources may minimise the occurrence of mono-colony of bacterial population).

[kaykay]

The perils of owning a small small tank at home for the competition..

Tore apart the home tank for the event. Lol..

[Gouldian]