November 4, 2005—July 16, 2006
I had no timetable for Phase 1, 2, 3. I am in no hurry. I expected Phase 1 to last months, not weeks. The live rock alone constitutes a self-contained dynamic biotope which I wished to observe over an extended period of time. This is an experiment: it’s not about how fast I can populate a nanoreef.
Phase 1: Keeping live rock live
The Fiji rock came with three peanut worm hitchhikers. All died within less than two weeks of my getting the rock. 
No other interesting invertebrates sprouted on the rock, though eventually some Halimeda macro algae did sprout, as well as some fine feathery algae that might be a type of Caulerpa. The rock has pink coralline algae on the backside also. I had some lovely turf-like maroon algae which flourished briefly then was overrun by green nuisance algae. After several months of struggling to maintain Ph and specific gravity I had two catastrophic outbreaks of cyanobacteria. The “clean up” destroyed the new colonies of macroalgae. The Fiji rock at the time I moved it from the 2.5 gallon tank to the 10 gallon tank in July ‘06 looked pretty healthy, but rather barren, with a only small amount of green algae and the pink coralline algae which did not cover the rock. I upgraded to a 10 gallon tank (which is what I’d originally envisioned) because of the aforementioned problems with water quality and stability. The “First Attempt” category documents the 2.5 gal tank from Nov ‘05 through June ‘06 .
As far as the things I wanted for on my live rock: macroalgae, coralline algae, interesting harmless hitchhikers, Phase 1 is a disappointment. I have coralline algae, but the three interesting harmless hitchhikers (peanut worms) died shortly after I got the rock. My live rock is still nominally “live” in that it has some green algae (both macro and nuisance) and coralline algae on it.
Phase 1 is finished. On July 16, 2006 I got a turbo snail which moved me into Phase 2: invertebrates. Then I further departed from The Plan by getting a small colony of zoanthids. 
(They have since been re-homed.) See the Phase 2 page for an overview of how the reef tank experiment continued to grow and develop.
