New to Nano; Stocking Questions

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Fire Eel
MFK Member
Aug 11, 2007
1,211
15
68
South East Michigan
A couple of days ago I received a text from my sister, asking if I would be willing to take in a Scarlet Hermit Crab that she had found at the tail end of tearing down her work's saltwater tank. She had thrown out all of the substrate and the water, the liverock was high and dry in a bucket, and he was in a styrofoam cup in just enough water to cover his shell.

I ran out to pick him up, took all of the liverock, and rescued some of the sand from where she'd dumped it on the ground. I stopped by the LFS to get what I could to set him up. I ended up selling the excess liverock to purchase the salt and hydrometer that I needed.

He's been set up since Wednesday, his water is around 76 deg F and the Hydrometer is always sitting in the green zone (floating). After talking to a friend on here who had a small invert tank, we decided that we could try getting a few more inhabitants. We picked up 2 zebra hermits, 2 red-tipped hermits, 2 mexican turbo snails.

I'm going to let it sit with just these critters in it for a while before I'm going to be comfortable enough to get fish, but I would eventually like to get at least 1-2 fish for this tank. I'm wondering what, if anything I could house in here? Or if I should just get a larger tank(20-30 gal) and continue to prep this tank for the day I feel brave enough to take on dwarf seahorses?

Thanks in advance!
 
by nano i'm gonna assume its a standard 14ish gallon tank... Which in my opinion (i'm not an expert by any means) but i would upgrade to a 40-55 gallon tank, skip the 20-30 range as well. The larger the better. If you are into inverts there are plenty of reef safe fish that you could keep with them. Liveaquaria.com has a complete section on reef safe fish that could be kept with inverts. And when you say the hydrometer is in the green zone, what is the SG? it's best to keep it at 1.024. The temperature is good. However i wouldn't add to many excess things until the tank is fully cycled. Salt tanks take much longer than FW tanks to cycle. so just be careful
 
there are very few fish you can keep in a nano, (by that i mean any tank under 30 gal). Only some types of gobies would be ok. So I recomend leaving it as is, then upgrading to a bigger system idealy around 50gal.
 
My tank is actually a 10. I was running it as a freshwater tank until she called me to rescue the crab. I've been doing research on seahorses for the last 6 years, just need to be more experienced in saltwater before I get any. My fiance just got a job, and I'm trying to bribe him into getting me a 29 for my saltwater, so I can do more with my tank. Currently our space is prohibitive for a 55 gal, even the 29 is a stretch; so that'll have to wait until we move into our own place. Then he eventually wants a big tank with a lionfish.
 
Well i hope it all works out for you, feel free to ask any more questions if you have them. But like we mentioned above, make sure you cycle your tank properly, and when you have the space/money upgrade at least to a 40 gallon tank at the minimum. A lionfish will need a lot more room than the inverts.
 
I don't recomend using liveaquaria as your source for minimum tank size... I've seen more then a few BIG errors on it in the past, as like anything it's not perfect.
 
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