Jonah

I have just been Gifted a nanocube tank. It hold 35litres of water and it came with a bag of inert liverock frags a powerhead and marine lighting nothing else. (the frags are bone dry so if they ever were truly live it was a long time ago)

My initial thoughts were to just use it as a deluxe FW tank for a betta but thinking about it though these tanks are designed as SW Nanos is there anything else that I need to buy for it to make a small SW setup with say a few shrimp?

Or is Plan A) the Betta deluxe a better idea?

Hypnox

You will still need some peripheral equipment to help with setup and maintenance but they are typically built to be "plug and play" style tanks in that you fill them with salt water and you are pretty much good to go. Kinda curious what brand and type of tank it is as I have just gotten a 9 gallon nanocube setup myself. So far it's been a pretty nice tank for me outside of a few very minor mods I made to it.

- As for that peripheral equipment, you will want a hydrometer, or even better a refractometer, to test your salinity with.

- You can get RO water from most local fish stores, believe me you will want to start your tank and continue using RO water for your water changes. It will save you a ton of hassle in the long run.

- You might want to add some extra flow, my 9 gallon came with only 100GPH pump for flow and typically you want 20-30x the tank volume in flow. Flow helps combat and prevent nuisance algae's like slime and hair algae from gaining a foot hold in your tank. Prevention is always better in the long run than watching something run amok that you don't want to.

- As for fish, there are still options. They will primarily be small goby type fish like a panda goby or citrinus goby. A tank that small typically won't hold more than 1 of those smaller fish.

- With the dry rock, you can buy a small piece of live rock and it will seed your dry rock over time and make it live.

To get more information and learn from people who have been playing with tanks even tinyer than 9 gallons you could hop over to the nano-reef forums, one of the members over there has even kept a table glass as a running reef. There is lots and lots of good information, including a very comprehensive list of different fish for different small tank sizes.

Jonah

Thanks for the very fast response!

On the front of the tank its says D-D The Aquarium Solution on one side and the other Nano-Cube DX The 35litres is about 9.25US gals

Good call on the pump its rated at 300lph so less than 10x volume so I wouldn't even use that in a FW setup. And the lights need a little work to fix a dodgy connection but still all in all as its free I aint complaining.

I think I will pop over to the Nano Reef forum, having never dabbled in the dark arts of SaltWater I didnt even know that it was there till you mentioned it.

Hypnox

I guess i've never heard of that brand of aquarium. I have an Aquamedic Nanowave 9 and so far it has been a good tank. You can see pictures, some of which were uploaded today, of what I have done so far with it. The link to my album is in my signature.

Jonah

Looking at the picture it is very similar in both size and shape.

Can I just check I am not being totally stupid here.

Having read many different threads here can I just confirm that I am understanding correctly what I would need to do to get this tank up and running as a FOWLR Nano tank.

At the LFS this weekend end I need to buy

Saturday Shopping List

Hydrometer / Refractometer (lets see prices 1st lol) If I go Hydrometer I have to adjust my reading at 75 deg

Bag of live sand

The right salt (I’m sure lfs will advise they are knowledgeable)

SW test kit

RO water

Then I put the sand in the tank, the dry frags in the sump, mix water and salt and add to tank. Turn heater and pump on then leave over night.

Sunday Shopping List

Then back to lfs to pick up live rock

15-16lbs of Part Cured Live Rock (I have 2lb already of inert live rock in sump)

Patience

add the LR and then use patience, water changes and the test kit to make sure the tank cycles before thinking about adding fish and or invert?

If so I best talk sweetly to keeper of the purse.

Would I get any benefit from adding one of my spare air pumps and air stones to the tank?

And the really noobish question do I put the heater in the visible part of the tank or into the Sump part hidden at the back of the tank?

Hypnox

Gonna take this chunk by chunk.

If you are going to keep corals it's probably best to start out with something like instant ocean reef crystals. I use it and haven't had any issues with it. The list looks correct, I can tell you right now that the hydrometer will be cheaper than a refractometer, but will not be as accurate even when taking the salinity at the temp suggested by the hydrometer's manufacturer. My own hydrometer tests at .002 lower than my refractometer.

I prefer to put the mixed water in before I add sand or rocks. Be sure to clean the sand out before adding it to the tank, it will seriously reduce the sand storm you are going to get when adding it.

15-16 lbs of live rock seems like a lot to me. If you are buying very dense live rock it might take that much but my tank only has about 9 lbs in the display and it is quite considerable. I have a 15 tall tank that has 19 lbs of live rock sitting in it right now and it takes up the entire back and one side of the tank. :P

Truth.Saltwater tanks are like racecars, the faster you go the harder you crash. :P

I personally don't bother changing the water during the cycle. Changing your water can actually slow it down. Let it sit with the power heads on and have the lighting on a shortened 4 hour a day schedule for now so that the coralline algae doesn't all die off. Sometimes you also get other hitchhiking light lovers that you don't want to let die.

After the tank has cycled, in so far as ammonia and nitrites read zero, you can add the cleanup crew. I prefer to use a combination of astrea snails and nassarius snails. 10 astrea snails and 5 nassarius snails will keep your live rock and sand bed cleaned pretty well. My 9 gallon right now has about 15 astreas in it. I like to avoid hermit crabs too as they can sow a path of destruction when they feel like it. I have a single hermit in my 9 gallon and his favorite pastime right now is to throw one of my frag plugs in the sand once a week right now.


I would say to try and avoid using air stones. They cause a ton of bubbles which come to the top of the tank, pop, and cause horrendous salt creep. I prefer to rely on my power heads to cause surface movement which allows for the nitrogen exchange to take place and keeps your water oxygenated.

You can put it in either. Most prefer to hide theirs in the sump area like I did.

Looks nice.

Jonah

Thank you again for the fast response, I will take advice and cut bak on live rock, I Just thought I had read 2lbs per gal when going FOWLR will 1lb per gal be enough?

Hypnox

1 lb per gallon will be enough in my opinion. I use fiji and tonga rock typically in my tanks which is very very porous, so more room for beneficial bacteria. If you were going with something like florida live rock, which is very dense and not very porous, you would want to go more along 1.5 lb per gallon. In the end, the amount of LR you use will depend on the look of the aquascape you want. If you like huge monolithic walls you can certainly add more. I prefer there to be a bit more swimming room and run about 1lb per gallon.

Jonah

Thanks buddy ... oh and she who must be obeyed thinks its a good idea so weekend shopping trip is a go!

matt09hall

i have 3 tanks 2 30s and a 55 and i was thinking about turning over one of my 30s to a salt warter tank but i dont really know how much work or how expensive that will be... is it worth the trubble and after it is up and running how much wokr is it to keep like that...

Hypnox

The best advice i can give is to research everything. This website has a great section on teh cost of starting up a saltwater tank. The link is provided at the end of this post. With a 30 gallon you have a number of possibilities for fish already though. I've also found saltwater fish to be far more interesting than freshwater fish.

http://www.fishlore.com/SaltwaterAquariumSetup.htm