Possible salt nano tank

[Aw3s0m3]

Don't do the mandarins. You won't be able to stock enough copepods to feed them. 1 mandarin is recommended in 100g just becuz all they do is forage all day so 2 in a 15 is a really bad idea. Corals aren't as hard as others make them seem. As long as mg, ca and alk are stable, you won't have any problems. Once you start moving towards sps and clams, that's when it starts getting difficult. When it comes to how long you should wait before adding livestock, what I did was set it up and let it run with just live rock and sand with the lights on for about a week. I did a wc then added a clean up crew then I just left it. I tested every other day and once I showed no nitrites or ammonia, I did a wc then added my first corals and continued from there. Quick question though, you said you're not gonna be running a filter but I think you should. Even though the rock and sand will have all the bio, you still need some sort of mechanical filtration and water movement. Corals and fish will not do well in stagnant water.


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[Zoodiver]

Small marine tanks can be fun to learn with.

I just upgraded the 3 gallon invert tank on my night stand to a Nuvo 8. Granted I did a lot more filtration that comes with it - but I always go over board. It's not bad to keep up at all. Small changes keep it stable. I do a water change every week, and just top off with a little bit of FW daily.

I tossed out the original Nuvo pump and stepped to a Rio 400. In the back, I crammed the middle section full of bioballs from Living Color. I also added a 5 stage canister that I had on the 3 gallon. The tank originally had a 90 gallon/hr turn over. The tank now has 150 gph turn over in the display section, and closer to 300 gph running through the filtration.
I only run inverts in the tank. Easy to deal with and tolerate changes when I neglect up keep. It's got 1 camel shrimp, some blue leg hermits and a handful of emerald crabs. The anemone hermit got moved to the living room tank. He made too much noise at night banging the shell on the rock and edges while climbing around.

 

[Aw3s0m3]

Small marine tanks can be fun to learn with.

I just upgraded the 3 gallon invert tank on my night stand to a Nuvo 8. Granted I did a lot more filtration that comes with it - but I always go over board. It's not bad to keep up at all. Small changes keep it stable. I do a water change every week, and just top off with a little bit of FW daily.

I tossed out the original Nuvo pump and stepped to a Rio 400. In the back, I crammed the middle section full of bioballs from Living Color. I also added a 5 stage canister that I had on the 3 gallon. The tank originally had a 90 gallon/hr turn over. The tank now has 150 gph turn over in the display section, and closer to 300 gph running through the filtration.
I only run inverts in the tank. Easy to deal with and tolerate changes when I neglect up keep. It's got 1 camel shrimp, some blue leg hermits and a handful of emerald crabs. The anemone hermit got moved to the living room tank. He made too much noise at night banging the shell on the rock and edges while climbing around.

Just wondering how come you put bioballs? I'm on reefcentral all the time and they always say to ditch the bioballs and cram the chamber with live rock rubble. This seems to be the common view of all the reefers on there, but I never really understood why. All they would ever say is that bioballs are nitrate factories, but don't go on to explain how so.

 

[Zoodiver]

Honestly, just to say they are in there. Just like the canister. It's not needed. The Nuvo filteration is fine for a tank like this. Part of my career is desiging and operating life support systems, so I like to get a little flashy when I do my home tanks.

I usually laugh at the 'facts' on RC.
Surface area is surface area.
Alot of the problematic set ups using bio balls that I've seen are poor uses. They lack proper flow and create dead spots. Those dead spots are allowing waste to break down and convert from ammonia to nitrtate instead of allowing the waste to be filtered out prior to it feeding into the nitrogen cycle. The term "nitrate factory" is exactly what they are. Surface area for aerobic bacteria to convert ammonia into nitrite and then to nitrate. That is exactly what you want from a biological filter of any type: bioballs, live rock, fluidized beds etc.... Haha.

I use them in almost everything I do (big and little). Either fully submerged like this one for biological, or as a degas tower to allow proper stripping of CO2 or O3 (if being used) and infusion of O2 back into the water. On the 5,000 gallon shark display in my sig, I ran a tower that was 2'x2'x4' of bioballs. It also had twin RK2 fludized beds for surface area. On the 500,000 gallon shark display I ran at the aquarium in Minnesota, we ran several boxes of bioballs to off gas. They were on average 5'x10'x5'. On the twin FW systems I did at the zoo in St Paul, we ran biotowers full of bioballs that were over 13' tall. Dallas World Aquarium ran massive towers on both FW and SW large displays. ETSS pt skimmers use them in the down draft columns to create the foam in the skimmer.

 

[Runitis]

The LFS I'm getting the tank from sells Copepods in phytoplanton so I'd just take some home and put it in a pickle jar in my window and dilute it whenever it gets to dense. He also told me to focus on a mainly invert tank with just a few fish. His exact instructions we're take home the tank and set it up with life sand. Then come back in a few days and get some hardy inverts and live rock, he said there shouldn't be an ammonia spike with the live sand and rock. Then wait a few weeks to get some coral and wait a month then get some hardy fish. Now of I heard this from about anyone else I'd be pretty skeptical but his ideas have the support of 2 entire local fish clubs as well as many satisfied customers that setup reef tanks using his instructions and he's written books and articles on this stuff so it's kinda hard not to trust the man .

Salt water setup is not that much different from salt systems need time and patience is huge for salt like I said if the anemone dies it will kill everything If not caught in time
. 1st thing I recommend is research salt water setup. Dont rely on one person but take many and come to a conclusion. By live sand do you mean the premade stuff? Because that won't work. If from another tank then Ya. Second you will still get die off and potential spike look up curing live rock stuff will die of from being put into a different system. That's not really enough corapods youll go threw a bottle every couple days. Another thing don't forget it's Still a business and he needs money not saying he's wrong but there are still more cautious ways to do it to prevent as little problems. But If your set then go for it.

Also what is the set up you have planned?
Lighting, how much rock , sand, filtration? Current?

 

[LSUFireGal]

You can't reliably culture pods the way you can brine, like the pickle jar in the window sill. I have a 220g and one mandarin. Do not put a mandarin in a 15g tank. When I bought the set up the mandarin was already in there, it was a skeleton, luckily I had a prolific pod population in my 60g so I put him in there. When I say the 60g was full of pods I mean it was packed with them. With in 2 weeks I could barely find a pod at night if I wanted to, but I had a plump little mandarin. That 60g wasn't going to support a mandarin for long no matter how many pods I dumped in there. If you had a larger tank with a refugium to continuously replace pods I would say it is worth a try. Mine is now back in the 220g but I make sure my refugium is teaming with pods at all times. I even transfer a couple of rubble piles back and forth between the dispaly and refugium just to ensure the display is continuously seeded.
Even if you can find a mandarin that is eating frozen or pellets don't risk it. Mine will eat pellets and then just stop for no reason. This is when they starve. My tank is over 6 feet long and he pod picks from one end to the other several times a day. A pair of mandarins probably consumes close to the entire contents of one of those packages of pods in a few days.

Check out a pom pom crab they are cool. As far as fish check out the assesors. Man they are cool. They swim sideways and upside down and are just so fun to watch and there are a few common types. I had a yellow and he was so cool gave him up when I took down the 60 and I was tempted to keep it just for him. lol

I agree with zoodiver. Not all the RC Rules are as black and white as they make it seem. I ran my 60 with a *gasp* canister filter. It was super stable and water quality was top notch. I even ran that same canister filter with bio balls in it. My nitrates never got above 5. RC is full of a lot of great information, but there are some die hard reefers there who know what works for them and aren't willing to consider other options. My advice. Do your own research. Check out build threads or tank profiles for tanks similar to yours and see what is working for the ones you like. If you find one that is how you would like to end up go back and read how they got to that point and what lessons they learned along the way.

Yes inverts (and the xenia) need iodine, HOWEVER, you should't dose things you aren't testing for. Too much iodine is worse than not having enough. I started testing for iodine and realized that it only got low if I got lazy with water changes.

 

[divemaster99]

Ok that's a lot of questions to cover so here I go. Somebody above said stagnant water is bad and while I'm not filtering I am aerating, if you can recommend a very compact, cheap, yet efficient filter then I'm listening. I'm not really sure how many pounds of either I'm doing but probably 2-3" worth of sand so I get a good bacterial buildup and a decent amount of rock. Current is going to be provided by an air stone. Ok so maybe I'll rethink the mandarins then, some other fish I like are about any type of blenny, some of the rarer clowns, royal grammas, and a few others. And to answer another above question yes I'm getting the live sand from one of the tanks at his shop, same with the rock so they both already have a decent bacterial colony growing.

 

[Aw3s0m3]

Ok that's a lot of questions to cover so here I go. Somebody above said stagnant water is bad and while I'm not filtering I am aerating, if you can recommend a very compact, cheap, yet efficient filter then I'm listening. I'm not really sure how many pounds of either I'm doing but probably 2-3" worth of sand so I get a good bacterial buildup and a decent amount of rock. Current is going to be provided by an air stone. Ok so maybe I'll rethink the mandarins then, some other fish I like are about any type of blenny, some of the rarer clowns, royal grammas, and a few others. And to answer another above question yes I'm getting the live sand from one of the tanks at his shop, same with the rock so they both already have a decent bacterial colony growing.

Speaking from my experience with my 14g biocube, I wouldn't go more than a 1" deep sand bed. Mine was at 3" for 2 years. Everything was fine and I had sand sifters and everything was growing but then 1 day, my alk was being sucked up FAST! My corals stopped opening, stopped growing and a lot of them died. I started testing everyday and after dosing 14mL of b-ionic daily, it would still drop from 7.8 to 5.4 everyday. I battled this for months until 1 day, I read that too deep a sand bed could cause problems so I took out the live sand and replaced it with sand from another sw tank except this time only 1/2"-1" deep. The following months, all params have been stable so it turned out that there was soo much bacteria in the sand that they were sucking up all the alk. As for water current, instead of an airstone, I'd go for just a powerhead that way you have flow going around the tank instead of all in just 1 spot. Too little flow can cause algae problems which can get really annoying.


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[divemaster99]

Speaking from my experience with my 14g biocube, I wouldn't go more than a 1" deep sand bed. Mine was at 3" for 2 years. Everything was fine and I had sand sifters and everything was growing but then 1 day, my alk was being sucked up FAST! My corals stopped opening, stopped growing and a lot of them died. I started testing everyday and after dosing 14mL of b-ionic daily, it would still drop from 7.8 to 5.4 everyday. I battled this for months until 1 day, I read that too deep a sand bed could cause problems so I took out the live sand and replaced it with sand from another sw tank except this time only 1/2"-1" deep. The following months, all params have been stable so it turned out that there was soo much bacteria in the sand that they were sucking up all the alk. As for water current, instead of an airstone, I'd go for just a powerhead that way you have flow going around the tank instead of all in just 1 spot. Too little flow can cause algae problems which can get really annoying.


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alright thanks for the advice. So I'll do a powerhead for aeration but it can't be an expensive one. Filtration I'm just leaving up to sand and rock with weekly 25%s. Now I just need to look up some good fish, inverts, and corals.

Thanks for the help guys!

 

[Runitis]

alright thanks for the advice. So I'll do a powerhead for aeration but it can't be an expensive one. Filtration I'm just leaving up to sand and rock with weekly 25%s. Now I just need to look up some good fish, inverts, and corals.

Thanks for the help guys!

Salt water isn't the place if you're going cheap!!! I'd suggest two korlia nanos! Or at least one! For rock I'd do around 10-15lbs. All clowns are generally available and can Be captive bread. Corals need expensive light. But a hardy anemone I read up was a green bubble tip again don't suggest it for 6 months at least it's just the general consensus for my fish community. Check out live Aquaria they are good for a general look and info but. How are you going to be mixing salt also recommend a refractometer over a cheap hydro.

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