10g nano reef

[tang daddy]

I just wanted to share a few pics with the members here of my salty nano that has been up and running for close to a year now.

When I first set it up, I wasnt planning on anything fancy or hitech. I wanted to keep things minimal so I used stuff I had laying around, I got the 10g curved tank from a member here as a trade and had a powerhead which is a koralia nano. I also added a stealth 100w heater and the lighting is a 150w HQI with 14k bulb (this was bought off another member)

I took live rock from my 75g reef aswell as some aged water to speed up the cycle which didnt really happen. I also added corals in almost immediately which they all did pretty well.

my current livestock:
fire red shrimp
true percula clown
sexy shrimp
black king kong crab
stomatella snail
turbo snail

corals:
ultra red acan
blue mushroom, green with blue spots, purple warpaint
purple xenia
green sinularia
ricordea florida
ricordea yuma
green cloves
paly's (green hitchiker, nuclear green paly's, magician paly's)
zoas (fire and ice, la lakers, blue zoas and a couple more)
large purple feather duster

I uploaded some crappy pics but will update it in the next few days as I am adding a few more corals.....

[BelieveInBlue]

looks like your clown has decided to host a feather duster worm haha =P
Nice looking nano reef; could use a piece of live rock to make it look not so empty tho.
What do you use for filtration on that? Just the corals?

[tang daddy]

looks like your clown has decided to host a feather duster worm haha =P
Nice looking nano reef; could use a piece of live rock to make it look not so empty tho.
What do you use for filtration on that? Just the corals?

Hi and thanks for the compliment, as for liverock I actually sold a piece that had a red bubbletip anemone awhile ago. I decided to use a few lbs of rock as oppose to 1lb per gallon because the space is limited and I wanted a open scape.

The liverock is my only filtration, I don't run any skimmer because it's so small and easy to change water if needed.

I plan on adding more ricordea and zoas, this is kind of my experiment tank because I want to see how fast corals grow in a nutrient rich environment. I
just started to feed phyotogold, phytoplankton,zooplankton and reef snow 2 times a week.

I also feed the lone fish and shrimps flake food 2 times daily.

[FishFreaks]

ok so couple questions tang daddy....is it hard to manage the parameters in such a small nano reef? other people on this website have said no way a 10 gal nano reef is duable saying many bad things....i dont agree.i have yet to dabble in the SW but was thinking about trying a 10g nano reef. what do you think? would only want like anenomees and a small clown and maybe a gobi

[tang daddy]

Fishfreaks, to answer your question....

Keeping a salty nano is no harder than keeping a hitec planted tank, the only difference is no co2 and different spectrum lights. You will also need more flow than a planted tank.

Part of the reason why I posted pics of my 10g nano was to show people that it can be done with ease and isnt hard at all, although you need to do proper research first before jump in.

You could easily do a 10g nano with anemones although you must have proper lighting, certain species of anemones require less light while others require more...for instance, Red bubble tip anemones require more light.

[Morainy]

Thanks for sending me a link to this thread about your SW nano, Chris. You've captured my interest and I'm going to start reading about live rock, the SW cycle, anemones and so on. Everything about saltwater is unfamiliar to me except for dipping my toes into the ocean. But you've convinced me that it's not as difficult as I'd thought.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

In a nutrient rich nano like this, Chris is having success because of his choice of livestock. Soft corals are generally hardier and less troubled by med.-high nutrient levels. In fact, some prefer "dirty" water to the pristine water required by sps or hard stony corals. It should also be noted that his fish bioload is very low (ie. only one fish). The higher the bioload, the harder it is to keep a nano clean enough to support corals. Chris also has his larger reef tank as an emergency water supply in case a quick water change is needed. For instance, with his other tank available, if an anemone is not doing well in the nano, it can be quickly transferred to the bigger system. This is not an option for those who only have the one nano.

It is possible to keep anemones in small nanos but by no means "easy" since anemones do best in larger, more stable and mature systems. For every success, there are many that do not make it. The best anemones I have found are clones from someone's tank, that way you get a "captive-bred" anemone that is already adapted to living in captivity, as opposed to one harvested from the ocean and used to oceanic conditions.

The reason most sources claim that small nanos are more difficult is that the smaller the volume, the quicker things can go bad because the "solution to pollution is dilution". Less volume means even a small problem (like a dead fish, shrimp or coral) can cause an ammonia or nitrite spike that if it is not caught right away can crash a tank.

The problem I have (and most aquarists have) is that we want to stock more than one or two fish in a nano. Low bioload nanos are not too bad to keep but high bioload nanos require more attention to water changes, etc.

And as Chris stated, do lots of research before diving into the "dark side" of fish keeping. Be forewarned, almost everything in sw is far more expensive than in fw.

Anthony

[cichlid]

Would you say 3-4 fish under 3.5" in a25gallon is asmall bioload?

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Yes 3-4 small fish in that size tank is very doable.

[cichlid]

Thats what i thought, a couple gobies, a clown, green chromis... Electric blue hermit crab...