Nano Plans - Opinions please!

[Onychophoran]

Hey guys, first post.

 

I'm hoping to start setting up a 20g long next week.

The tank is to house mainly a selection of inverts with perhaps a couple of small fish.

A rough idea of what I hope to stock is:

 

Fish:

2 Clowns

1 Fire Goby

 

Inverts: 

1 Horseshoe Crab (2". Obviously short term, I intend creating a species-specific tank down the line)

1 Shrimp

1 Tuxedo Urchin

2-3 Hermits

5-6 Snails of different types

 

The plan is to have a deep, mostly unobstructed live sand bed (for the Horseshoe) with a live rock "shelf" about halfway between surface and bottom and running the length of the tank, only barely "connected" to the bottom. 

 

The filtration system would be HOTB. I do not plan on running either a skimmer or sump system for this aquarium, at least at for now. Circulation pumps and LED lighting will be featured.

 

I am not planning on adding Coral or other branching/encrusting organisms at this point, but the long term plan would be to stock the tank with a variety of suitable varieties. This would be only after the tank is very well established and stable.

I will be keeping a close eye on parameters and carrying out other general maintenance wherever needed but one of the main goals for this project is to create a low-tech, low maintenance contained ecosystem. 

 

What kind of success do you think I would have with a system like this? What would you change? Any feedback would be deeply appreciated 😄

Also looking for invert suggestions :)

Edited June 20, 2019 by Onychophoran
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[TheKingInYellow]

My opinion, never buy livestock with the intentional of being able to house them appropriately later.  

[billygoat]

Hello and welcome to N-R! 🙂

 

I like everything about this plan... except unfortunately for the horseshoe crab! It will rapidly outgrow your tank, bulldoze your rocks no matter where you put them, and make a gigantic mess (they are incredibly unclean animals). It's really hard to overstate the negative impact horseshoe crabs have on water quality; I think you would almost certainly have to have a skimmer and do frequent gravel vacuuming just to keep the tank clean. It will also be very difficult to rehome the crab if you decide to get rid of it later on down the line because nobody really wants them. I don't mean to throw sand on your fire here, but I would hate for you to get into reefing just to find yourself saddled with a horrible chore of an animal that is extremely difficult to take care of. 😅

 

Everything else sounds great though! It's certainly possible to keep a beautiful home aquarium that requires very little maintenance, so long as you are careful about your livestock choices.

[Friendly]

43 minutes ago, TheKingInYellow said:

My opinion, never buy livestock with the intentional of being able to house them appropriately later.  

Quoted For Truth!

[Onychophoran]

Thanks for the input guys :)

 

To be more clear on the HSC, I have a 150g that I currently use as a "hot house" for some of my tropical invertebrates such as arachnids, insects, myriapods and onychophora. (The tank is heated along one side with a mat and I keep all my bug enclosures in there)

The plan is to turn this into a fish-only marine tank but due to my current living arrangements it may be a year or two before I get to set that aquarium up.

This is where the Horseshoe will be re-housed to, but for now I was hoping to maintain the animal in the small "reef" setup I talked about.

The tiny HSC is currently dwelling in the 20 gal cube of a friend who wants pass it on to me in order to stock more Coral. He/she seems to have mostly left the rockwork alone and apparently hasn't caused any noticable issues, however that is an AIO system with skimmer, etc.

 

 

I have kept Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda in a brackish-water setup many years ago and had success, however that aquarium and the lFS I stocked it from are long gone and I cannot find a source for legitimate Brackish/mangrove HSCs anywhere in recent years.

 

 

 

However, I won't scoff at you guy's advice :) I may be altering my plans significantly. 

[TheKingInYellow]

Even a 150 is pushing it.  I mean when the crab is 1' in diameter I'd be thinking 600g+ pond or stock tank.

[billygoat]

The problem with those crabs is that they bait you in with their tiny initial size and adorable, weird eyes and tails. They seem docile enough until they reach a certain size, and then suddenly there is carnage on the reef, rocks falling everywhere, invertebrates trampled or devoured, filth in the water, madness, horrors. 😳😱 I think it's possible to keep them (though you're eventually going to need a very big tank), but I don't think it's possible to keep them with anything else, at least not in the long term.

 

I do like your initial aquascape design though. Maybe you could take the same concept and apply it to some other "species-specific" theme tank with a different sort of invertebrate as the star of the show? Perhaps a thin-stripe hermit crab (Clibanarius vittatus), or even a giant Caribbean hermit (Petrochirus diogenes)? The giant hermit would definitely have to be moved out of the 20g eventually, but a 150-gallon tank would (probably) be enough space for one when it starts to get big a few years down the line.

 

Edit: the more I think about it, the giant hermit would probably end up having a lot of the same issues that horseshoe crabs would, namely that keeping anything other than rock, sand, and the crab in the tank would be next to impossible. It wouldn't make quite as much of a mess as a horseshoe crab, but the thin-stripe hermit might be a better option.

[Clown79]

Everything sounds good but the HSC, for many reasons. It really shouldn't be sold in stores, most can't provide what it needs.

 

I would do a lot of research on deep sand beds as well.