Nano-reefs

[Thoth]

Anyone have any experience setting up a nano-reef tank. I have an empty 5 gallon bowfront and an thinking about.

Though I've read conflicting things about the amount of lighting, so I was wondering if anyone has one and how much light do you have?

 

[Aquanut]

I have quite a bit of experience with these type of tanks. The smallest one i have right now is 10 gallons ( i have 2 -10 gals a 29 gal, a 125 gal and a 150 gal. The amount of lighting depends on what you plan to keep. If you don't plan to keep any corals then the amount of light doesnt matter, whatever looks good to you. With corals it depends on what you want to keep and how much you want them to grow. If you tell me how much light you have i can make suggestions or tell me what you want to keep and i can tell you how much light to use.

 

[Thoth]

I was planning on live rock with polyps, i.e. zooanthids, mushrooms and leathers. Plus some inverts to Keep things clean. Though flexible on this depending on the lighting.

I was planning on making a simple custom light set up using these self-ballasting 10 watt 50/50 (10K/actinic) flourescent bulbs (package claims it is equal 55 watts of incandescent lighting) at my local pet store. I was planning to use 2 of them though I can probably fit 4 for a total of 40 watts.

Thanks for any help.

 

[arachnagirl]

Thoth: I have a 10 gallon nano reef and ran two 20W 50/50 PC (the ones that can fit into an incandescent fixture). It worked great!! I kept mostly mushrooms, zoas, green star polyps, cloves, suncorals, frogspawn and open brains. I also have a three gallon mantis tank with zoas, cloves, kenya tree and mushrooms. It has two 9W PC; one 10K and the other actinic.

 

[subminimal]

Thoth: I have a 10 gallon nano reef and ran two 20W 50/50 PC (the ones that can fit into an incandescent fixture). It worked great!! I kept mostly mushrooms, zoas, green star polyps, cloves, suncorals, frogspawn and open brains. I also have a three gallon mantis tank with zoas, cloves, kenya tree and mushrooms. It has two 9W PC; one 10K and the other actinic.

What type of hood/fixture do you use? The only hoods I have seen that have incandescent fixtures are the reptile type.

I was in a local pet shop the other day and they had a 2.5 gallon bowfront nano-reef set up. I was impressed and considered trying it myself.

 

[Letmegrow]

Nano Reefs.

Buy a JBJ nano cube, all you need to add is sand and rock.



Coralife and other companies make a couple retrofits for the PCs.
There is a whole vendor list and vendor experiance on ReefCentral.
I would go to www.reefcentral.com and go to the nano reefs forum.
Or www.reeffrontiers.com

 

[Joe1968]

my tank is currently a fresh water but I wanna start a small nano reef someday. I heared of a good site that sells corals and stuff I think its called gateway aquatics, the guys thats works there are awesome.

 

[Thoth]

Cool setups arachnagirl and letmegrow.

I hope my looks half as good. So I gather from your set ups I should be okay with 20watts with 50/50 lighting for my 5 gallon bowfront.

 

[Aquanut]

I have 3.4 watts of light per gallon on my 125 g reef which is 24 inches high, you would have 4 watts per gallon and be much closer to the light. I have all kinds of polyps, soft and LPS corals that do great. See photos of my tank on the thread titled "ocean zooplanton"
I think the hood Aracnogirl is talking about is the ones that come on the cheap aquarium kits with 2 incandesent lights. I have a 10 gallon one of these i got at the Thrift store that has two 7.5 watt Coral life 50/50 bulbs. Its a fish only tank so i dont need so much light but like the crisp white light. Even with that level of light you could keep mushrooms, Xinea and a few other low light corals. If you decide to get into the marine tanks check out
Reef Central. They have a great forum, online magizine and other stuff. For fun check out my clubs website at www.idahoreefs.org we also have our own forum you can access through the site with a lot of local experts from my area.
In closing, saltwater tanks are a bit more work to set up but much easier to keep and maintain than freshwater once they are set up.

 

[Aquanut]

By the way, beatiful tanks Aracnogirl and Letmegrow!

 

[Thoth]

Aquanut, thanks for the info & link, and you have a beautiful tank (too bad something of that scale is beyond my means at the moment).

I've lurking on some nano reef forums, the only confusing issue was the lighting where I've seen people say 10 watts is fine to 125 watts total lighting is necessary for a 5-10 gal. set up. I appreciate the help in clearing this up.

 

[Letmegrow]

Thanks for the compliment.

As long as you change your bulbs on time, and have the right spectrum you can get away with even 2 wpg on a 5 gallon tank. I only had 2.5 on my 12 gallon.

Sorry I don't check this board often, I will check up more frequently.

 

[Aquanut]

Lighting spectrum and how often to change bulbs, yikes! how many threads have been started on those topics. Like most reef fanantics i would be happy to give my opinions, but only if asked!