I'll second the idea of a shallow sand bed. A lot of the old school thought was you need the deep beds as surface area for bacteria. With the knowledge we have now and the updated filtration, a little rock is more than enough surface area for inverts and a few small fish in a nano sized tank.
Possible salt nano tank
- Thread starter divemaster99
- Start date
Well I don't mean cheap but I'd like to setup the whole tank for no more than $300 plus the cost of inverts, fish, and corals. Also I just took some measurements and I can put a 20 long on one of my kitchen counters (it is semi close to my toaster oven but it doesn't produce much heat), so hoepfully that will be easier to handle with the increased volume. If I change about 5 gallons a week I can just mix salt and other chems directly into a 5 gal bucket. I'll just use spring water to top off the tank (which I think would be about once a day). I'm still doing research and I joined TRT to get some more advice but I never got an email, hopefully I can get some feedback from people on ther by Friday.
You should probably get a ro/di unit if you plan on keeping coral or buy distilled for water changes and top off. The minerals in spring water can mess with your pH and can cause algae problems. I used to use filtered water from the grocery store and the algae was the worst. after the Ro/di unit came things did so much better.
