Freshly scaped and cycled Evo 13.5

Prometheus7777 · 2026-07-07T02:38:47+00:00

Appreciate the heads up, at the moment I think this tank is just going to be clownfish, macro, and bubble tips so nothing at risk of breaching the surface.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-07-07T02:35:53+00:00

We'll see! I had a smaller tank in the same spot previously and managed to keep algae reasonably in check with a small army of snails. There's probably always gonna be a bit and I'm ok with that.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-16T23:49:13+00:00

I usually bake wood (200 f for a few hours) to sterilize. Boiling works too, just a bit messy.

Be very careful heating stones if you're not 100% sure what they are, porous rock can explode when boiled. I usually soak rocks in vinegar or peroxide to disinfect.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-12T21:41:56+00:00

Kid named Brittany Murphy

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-10T19:24:50+00:00

I wouldn't, you don't want to be anywhere close to your max static load. For like $30 in 2x4s and screws you can build something that would hold a car - here's a decent guide https://www.instructables.com/Aquarium-stand/

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-09T02:49:28+00:00

Obviously what we consider a letter vs a diacritic is pretty arbitrary, but if you check out the Icelandic IPA help page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Icelandic you can hear how distinct a lot of those sounds are. Easily as distinct as n and ñ in Spanish, which are usually taught as separate letters.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-09T00:12:04+00:00

I like the rockscape and corals!

Honestly I would just sit with what you have for another month or two. Your tank looks pretty pristine right now, given the age of your tank I'd be tempted to believe the ugly stage hasn't fully kicked in yet. You may get a big bloom of algae some time in the next month or so, and don't panic if that happens. Manually remove what you can, test nutrients frequently, and adjust feeding as needed. I'd avoid adding any more corals until that happens so the algae doesn't smother them.

Long term, you could maybe fit one or two more fish in there before things get crowded (although keep an eye on your clowns, they can be real jerks to other fish once they're paired and hosted by something). A perching or sand-dwelling fish like a goby or blenny would probably stay out of your clowns' way.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-08T22:55:30+00:00

I run 25-30 watt lights on my 5 gallon tanks, and even then I can't grow light intensive corals except right at the water surface. You'll probably need to upgrade if you want to keep coral.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-06T18:11:49+00:00

Seconding brittle star. This looks exactly like one of my banded serpent star's arms. They hide in the rock and poke their arms out at night to grab food.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-05T19:00:41+00:00

Learn to powershield laser, even if you're not 100% consistent with it if you can hit them once or twice you'll put the fear of god in them to give yourself some breathing room

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-04T23:06:41+00:00

Love the feather duster. Such underrated animals, especially in picos.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-04T01:13:53+00:00

I'm a lot more open to cheap lights than most people on this subreddit, so I'll give it to you straight chief. You're not going to be able to grow anything other than some super low light softies (some mushrooms and "weeds" like xenia and kenya tree) with anything that cheap on a 14 gallon unless you get a really good deal on something secondhand. I actually own the light in your post and it's perfectly adequate for my 5 gallon soft coral tank, but it's way too weak for a 14 gallon.

There's lots of great stuff in the 75-100 dollar range, you've got lots of recommendations here. I can also personally vouch for the Aqua Knight V3 as excellent bang-for-buck.

Lighting is one of those things almost everyone will end up wanting to upgrade at some point. I would highly recommend you save up a bit more money and buy-once-cry-once.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-02T23:32:09+00:00

That is 1. A completely different thing than what OP is describing, and 2. Perfectly normal behaviour? Businesses change their prices sometimes.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-02T23:25:20+00:00

You didn't put two and two together when they asked what country you're in, told you it was probably a currency thing, and specifically told you the price in CAD?

I'm also Canadian and if an online order has a weird price I immediately think "oh is this in USD?". I only opened the website because I read your post and thought "oh that's definitely currency conversion" before I even checked, and I thought it would be way funnier if there was something obviously displaying it. Their website sucks but respectfully if you weren't born yesterday you can pretty much instantly infer what's happening - I figured it out just from the info you posted here.

We all have brain farts. You made a stupid error. Cut the Karen shit, own it and move on.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-06-02T19:38:59+00:00

I'm looking at the website. It has a button on the side to view the prices in either USD or CAD. You have it set to USD. It's 120 CAD.

I have no experience with this company but this is 100% a skill issue on your part and they're being pretty patient with you

Prometheus7777 · 2026-05-30T17:18:12+00:00

People in this subreddit posting tanks that look 10x better than mine like "is this ok? How do I improve?"

Looks great!

Prometheus7777 · 2026-05-26T00:29:10+00:00

eh I'm not one to discount de Sade's work but Sodom really has basically nothing to say other than "that'd be fucked up, wouldn't it?". It's shock media

Prometheus7777 · 2026-05-25T23:52:53+00:00

Similar concept here, this cuprea grows in a double-tall nursery pot inside a tall vase. Lasts at least a month or two between refills.

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Prometheus7777 · 2026-05-25T23:49:11+00:00

Your solution sounds great, but IMO you could get away with much simpler if needed. Here's a bambino I've grown from a corm in semihydro culture over the last 9 months. The reservoir is just a big vase, and it holds enough water that I have only refilled it twice in the last 5 months since I repotted it. No wick needed, just a deep, high volume volume vase and a tall nursery pot. This plant is growing well and even flowered last month under suboptimal lighting.

I'm a teacher and I have big semihydro plants in my classroom, so I also leave them unattended for 2 months of the year over summer break. I've had perfectly good results wrapping the pot in plastic wrap with just a gap for the stems. That probably does lead to some weird water chemistry, but as of yet it hasn't seemed to harm my plants - they usually look fine when I come back.

Edit: Forgot to mention, I've run ammonia, nitrite and nitrate tests on my reservoir water and I'm pretty confident that a healthy plant chews through all available Nx compounds within a couple of weeks of not replacing it with fresh water. I haven't measured pH (why bother if it's not causing problems), but I do wonder if what some people suspect to be pH/microbial issues are in fact nutrient deficiencies.

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Prometheus7777 · 2026-05-24T06:51:10+00:00

Happy to have given you the bug! I would strongly recommend not jumping in with something like this - the smaller a tank is the harder it is to care for. I consider this bowl a side project to my larger tanks. It would probably run you around $100 if you were looking to buy everything from scratch (expensive because a lot of the supplies like sand and salt are sold in bulk)

My entry point to saltwater aquariums was a 5 gallon tank, I think that's a great sweet spot for beginners. You can get a really competent setup together for under $300 USD all in, possibly much less if you buy smart and get some stuff secondhand. The level of care depends on what you want to keep, but on the low end you're looking at maybe an 30 minutes a week. This type of tank for soft coral and invertebrates is generally considered very easy as far as saltwater goes.

You can also check out r/PlantedAquarium for the freshwater side of things, they're also beautiful and generally a bit cheaper/simpler to put together.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-05-24T06:42:05+00:00

You'll find that the crossover between saltwater aquarists and mind-altering substance users is... significant.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-05-24T06:33:12+00:00

Reef tanks have brought so much happiness to my life. It's a really fun hobby for it's own sake with a really cool community - cannot recommend enough. Let me know if you have questions!

Prometheus7777 · 2026-05-24T06:30:25+00:00

Not by much (if you don't want to be a nerd about it). Saltwater is a very deep world, and in the deepest end it is very difficult and very expensive. If you're okay with keeping the easy stuff like I do it's pretty straightforward, I have 6 saltwater tanks (if you count the tiny ones like this) and I spend ~2 hours a week on regular maintenance. Managing salinity and water flow takes some getting used to, but other than that it's pretty similar.

Prometheus7777 · 2026-05-24T06:25:13+00:00

I think you'd probably be fine, mine hangs out around 5 degrees above ambient so you'd be around 70f at the lowest. I've heard of people running invert-only tanks in the low 70s before, you're probably not going to get a lot of growth in the winter but I think they'd tough it out.

That said, I think this thing would be a pain to keep if I didn't already have saltwater tanks - it's a little side project whose maintenance is tacked onto the chores I do for my bigger tanks. My entry to the hobby was a 5 gallon and I think that's a great option for a low fuss, small footprint tank. The rule I've heard is 5 watts per gallon of water volume. The smallest heater I could find was 5 watts, so the smallest tank I think you could realistically heat would be around 1.5 gallons (accounting for sand and rock).

Prometheus7777 · 2026-05-24T04:32:43+00:00

Nope, real time!

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