Nano Tanks

[TacoKing]

I have been keeping reef tanks for a few years now. My current system is a 110H show tank with a 100gal sump and a 55gal refugium. It's primarily SPS with a ton of turn over using tunze streams.

 

Now, I want to get a tank for my office. I figure I might actually get a little more work done. I'm looking for a tank around the 10-15 gallon size. Not too large, but not extremely small either. Since this is a small tank I don't plan on using a DSB, most likely just an inch or so of medium sized sand and 10 or so pounds of live rock. As for circulation, i'll probably go with a maxi jet or two. If I can, i'd love to get two maxi-jet 600s and put them on a wave maker of some sort.

 

I've got that much nailed down. What I don't know is first off what kind of tank to use. I would perfer glass for it's durable aspects. Are there any premade ones out there that would make this whole thing extremely easy?

 

What about filtration? Do I need a skimmer? or would weekly one or two gallon water changes be sufficient?

 

How do people control evaporation? What type of mechanism do you use to replace deminished water?

 

Finally, lighting, PC is the norm for something like this, but how many watts, what kind of light and so on.

 

Thanks for the help.

 

-TK

[supernip]

water changes, no need for a skimmer. PC lighting as you would for any tank or halides are fine. kalkwasser via auto top-off or manual top-offs if you want. Chris-Marks makes a 16gal cube you might be interested in.

[foo]

Are there any premade ones out there that would make this whole thing extremely easy?

There are those hood/filter and light setups that make this sort of thing easy like those acrylic "Eclipse 12" setups or "Eclipse 1" hoods that fit on a 10 gallon tank. Those things contain a small filter, light and pump all in the hood. They can be retrofitted with a 32W PC lighting retrofit kit making it sufficient to support soft corals.

Be cautious about retrofiting anything more than a 32W PC into one of the all-in-one premanufactured plastic hood setups or you may have a fire hazard.

 

A setup like that is probably what you wan't if you want something faster to setup and dont want to keep more demanding corals. But if you want to keep SPS corals then I think you'll need to put in more time to build a custom hood to accomidate stronger lighting like a MH. Then you have other issues to deal with like heat. Of course you could always hang a pendant over the tank and blind all of your co-workers.

[tinyreef]

Now, I want to get a tank for my office.  I figure I might actually get a little more work done.

liar, liar

 

since you're already into sps i would figure that's your pref for the office nano. mh with vho actinics would be my choice. tank-wise i would go similar to your home setup, i.e. tall tanks. 15H, 20H, 29g etc., to get the big tank look. good viewing area for the co-workers' "ooo's and aahh's". and dsb's still an option.

 

get an auto top-off from physh1. 5-gal lasts my 15H two weeks in the middle of summer.

 

i would also suggest drilling a elbow bulkhead for surface skimming and sump/refugium. i figure you're going to dose or reactor for the sps. the protein skimmer can go in the sump too. i just prefer to filter/skim/dose than wc.

 

of course, this all depends upon your boss. hth

 

edit: added the smiley, read a little harsh the other way