Nano reef setup?

[Tired]

Yeah, pond snails aren't that bad. And they WILL starve. It takes them awhile, but they can't breed, and can't do well, on low food. Things need food to survive, grow, and make babies. Or you can manually remove them, or you can get assassin snails, or you can tolerate them.

[Seadragon]

12 hours ago, Couesfanatic said:

Pond snails and BBA really arn't at all that bad. I have both right now. I have had them for years. They follow the levels of overfeeding your tank. More overfeeding=more snails. BBA is more complicated and is argued to be related to CO2 levels and detritus/dirty tanks. BBA is easily killed with Excel or hydrogen peroxide. Trim the plants, clean equipment and BBA goes away. No need to restart the entire tank. I'm new to this salt thing but it seems bristleworms are the same type of thing. 

 

It's all relative to the person and your definition of bad.  You can spot kill BBA with Excel, but you'll never get it all and eventually it'll come back.  I tried Hydrogen Peroxide, it didn't work, the Excel worked way better.  But, I'm not going to do that a few times a week for the rest of my life, so I just let it go and do its thing.  When I say BBA is bad, it looks UGLY, can stop plants from growing by covering them up, creates WORK to squirt Excel on them wherever they may be forever, and you can never rid of it completely.  If you google search BBA, there are many horror stories out there of it.  When you want a freshwater tank to look it's best for your client, starting over and preventing BBA in the first place is a must.  If you have some crappy tank in the basement along with 30 other tanks, of course you do not care of BBA or Bristleworms or Pond Snails.  No one cares.

 

But, when you have a beautiful display tank, that has no ugly BBA all over the plants and no Pond Snails (thousands of them) all over the glass and no bristle worms (hundreds of them of all sizes) creating havoc, you keep that beautiful look and there's less maintenance involved.  The point of these 3 things, you can never get rid of them.  They are like a cancer.  Once you got it, it's there forever.

 

[Couesfanatic]

I 100% disagree. I've gotten rid of both in many of my freshwater tanks. If you are getting tons of snails and BBA you are doing something wrong.

[Seadragon]

11 minutes ago, Couesfanatic said:

I 100% disagree. I've gotten rid of both in many of my freshwater tanks. If you are getting tons of snails and BBA you are doing something wrong.

 

Please, share with us how you did such a thing.  Me and countless other hobbyists would love to know such wisdom.

[Seadragon]

22 hours ago, Couesfanatic said:

Pond snails and BBA really arn't at all that bad. I have both right now. I have had them for years.

 

22 minutes ago, Couesfanatic said:

I've gotten rid of both in many of my freshwater tanks.

 

I'm also confused, do you have them or not?  And if they're 100% gone, how?  Seems like you're contradicting yourself.

[Couesfanatic]

I've been running tanks for 20 years. I've had them off and on for years. I eliminated them when I cared enough to. 

 

For snails, get assassin snails, it's that easy. They will eventually kill all the snails and you can re-home the assassins . Or you can bait the snails and pull them out daily. You will eventually get them all. Done it several times. 

 

BBA is eliminated by keeping up on proper husbandry. Spot treat outbreaks and trim. I've had tanks with BBA that were eliminated from the tank and I've I had tanks I don't care to work that hard on them so I live with the BBA. 

[Seadragon]

11 minutes ago, Couesfanatic said:

I've been running tanks for 20 years. I've had them off and on for years. I eliminated them when I cared enough to. 

 

For snails, get assassin snails, it's that easy. They will eventually kill all the snails and you can re-home the assassins . Or you can bait the snails and pull them out daily. You will eventually get them all. Done it several times. 

 

BBA is eliminated by keeping up on proper husbandry. Spot treat outbreaks and trim. I've had tanks with BBA that were eliminated from the tank and I've I had tanks I don't care to work that hard on them so I live with the BBA. 

 

Let's talk about the Pond snails first.  At this time, none of my tanks have Pond snails for reasons I already said in the past.  But, some of my tanks do have Mini Golden Rabbit snails.  The problem with Assassin Snails is they will eat all of the other snails, good and bad.  So in the past, when I did have a Pond snail infestation in one tank, they are extremely tiny and can get into all of the tubes and canister filter and whatnot.  Even if you did use multiple Assassin snails, you'd still have the tiny Pond snails in the tubes and in the canister filter, etc.  And on top of that, you can't even use the "good" snails since the Assassin snails will eat them.   Although I know they will probably eliminate most of the pond snails while not allowing you to have other good snails at that time, I doubt they can remove 100% of the pond snails because some are in places the Assassin snail cannot get to.  It's a good solution to control a Pond snail infestation, but it has its limitations and drawbacks.

 

So, I too have done the spot treatments with Excel on BBA which does kill the BBA wherever you spot treat.  The problem with BBA, it gets on everything and is everywhere.  So, it would be a constant maintenance thing or "proper husbandry" forever.  I believe that you may not see the BBA at this time, but I wouldn't bet your life if it's still not there and hiding somewhere.  It's like, you may have it under control, but that doesn't mean it's 100% out of the picture.  I've had mine "under control" once with Excel, but as soon as I stopped the spot treatment and introduced more powerful lighting, the bastards came back.

[Couesfanatic]

I'm not going to argue with you. I've eliminated both. It is possible. 

[Seadragon]

2 minutes ago, Couesfanatic said:

I'm not going to argue with you. I've eliminated both. It is possible. 

 

Same here.  I've eliminated pond snails too by not introducing them in the first place.  As for the BBA, if I cared about freshwater tanks anymore, I'd use the same method.  Just a million times easier and works 100% of the time.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

[Clown79]

14 hours ago, Couesfanatic said:

I'm not going to argue with you. I've eliminated both. It is possible. 

Ya, it is possible. 

 

After yrs of FW and SW tanks, it is possible to get rid of problems it just takes evaluation of cause and correction...some manual work.

[Seadragon]

47 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

Ya, it is possible. 

 

After yrs of FW and SW tanks, it is possible to get rid of problems it just takes evaluation of cause and correction...some manual work.

I agree with that.  Every problem usually takes money, time, and energy to fix and even then some problems can become too big for most hobbyists.  Some of us just want to deal with problems before they exist.  That’s over 30 years of experience talking.

[Tamberav]

 ❤️ 🐛

[Jens_Reef]

I got everything on order to start my build. I went whit the Waterbox Cube 20.

 

Now I have one quick question.

I have a stand I like u use that we have. The water box is 45cm front to back and the stand 39cm.

Is there any problem using it? Maybe using a wooden plate whit the size from the Waterbox under it?

 

What are you're thoughts?

 

 

[Tired]

You do not want the aquarium overlapping the stand. A THICK slab of something on top would work, yes. 

[Clown79]

Definitely either a thick slab of even wood of the proper dimensions or smooth marble.

 

The tanks edges should all be supported

[Jens_Reef]

Thanks guys!

i am thinking about putting behind the stand a wooden structure to support the corners of the tank and connect it to the stand. Would this work? 

 

A slab of wood under the tank would not be that great of a look I guess and the wooden structure i am thinking about cannot be seen whit the tank on it.

 

When everything is in for the build I will take pictures and put it in the journal/build thread.

[Clown79]

32 minutes ago, Jens_Reef said:

Thanks guys!

i am thinking about putting behind the stand a wooden structure to support the corners of the tank and connect it to the stand. Would this work? 

 

A slab of wood under the tank would not be that great of a look I guess and the wooden structure i am thinking about cannot be seen whit the tank on it.

 

When everything is in for the build I will take pictures and put it in the journal/build thread.

I'm not really sure I understand the design.

 

I just know the tank needs to be fully supported under each corner.

 

[Jens_Reef]

So guys this plan fell in to the water.

Had the waterbox cube for a month in order and still did not got one so I got it out of order and while being busy of work did not look into anything else.

 

Now I am home from work I have enough time to look in to some stuff.

A local shop has the Dennerle nano scaper tank (55L/15g) on sale. I like this one a lot because it has a bit of a lagoon style look. (And this one is in stock😛)

But I don't really know what is the best idea for filtration?

 

My Ideas:

- intank filtration like an AIO take up a lot on space or can this be done?

- A nano sump out of PVC plastic (acrylic)

- My own attempt to make a place on the back sump like the one from Oceanbox (Links below)

 

How would U setup a filtration for a tank like this?

My goal is to have everything on order this week.

 

 

[Clown79]

If you don't want to lose real estate in the tank to do aio then an hob or sump would be the other options.

Not sure if you can drill the tank.

 

Easiest solution is hob.

[gltoland]

I use a skimmer on my 20g.  We all over feed.  I empty it every other day so I say it's needed.