New Nano Tank!

Well, I just got hold of the tank that will be taking up space in the living room of my new house, its a 39x16x10" tank, interesting shape I know, very shallow which means I can save alot on lighting and it will fit perfectly into a space in the new place.

Stock from both my 15G and 12G Nanos will go into the tank that will be filtered using the new Tunze Reefpack 200 which consists of a surface skimmer/filter and a protein skimmer.

I am planning on raising the live-rock off the bottom of the tank with egg-crate, but equally I would like some sand in the tank, As I believe that deap sand beds do work if you have a thick enough layer. Does anyone have any ideas on how to support the rock so that it gets maximum water flow, but equally have an area of deep sand in the tank somewhere? I was thinking perhaps I would make a small 2" divider and divide off a foot of the tank at one end to put the sand bed in, then have the rock next to it using up the other 27".

Lighting will almost certainly be provided by a dual compact T5 55W unit that I am hoping to get quite cheap, and It will sit nicely on a stand from a Fluval DUO DEEP 1000 that my friend has.

I will of course keep a diary like I did with my original Nano, but I hope this to be even better as I have more room to play with and the low-profile shape should look good..

Pics will follow as soon as the tank is in situ (8th August probably).

Ben

Awesome, cant wait to see it . If you want to prop your rocks up off the glass and still allow for a deeper sand bed, you could either stack a few layers of eggcrate, or I've seen people use a bunch of PVC pipes chopped off to say 2" or however deep you want the sand bed and then have the rocks rest on those "pillars" of pipe.

Basically I just want to set it up in such a way that I don't get any sediment build up underneath or around the live rock. I was thinking of just using a sheet of egg crate, with thin struts underneath that to keep it all suspended off the bottom of the tank, then have a spray bar spraying underneath the egg-crate to give lots of flow around all of the live rock.

Ben

Why dont you try those coral racks? im sure you could get a custom one or someting?

Bret

Well the tank is really too shallow for any kind of racking, the live rock will be in a fairly flat formation, but it means I can fit plenty of corals in.

Ben

Dont know how this would work, but ive heard of people making a DSB out of a cannister filter. A remote DSB in a bucket... LOL. Many possibilities, depends on how much effort you wanna go to for a nano I guess. If you didnt want to go to all that effort, placing a 2+ inch devider halfing the tank from front to back, keeping substrate in the rear compartment may be the way to go! Sounds like an interesting project!

Have you used the Tunze reef pack before? Ive seen them, just dont know that many people using them. Im interested in them, so ill wait till you strart the journal and see how they go.

Never used any Tunze equipment at home before, but we use alot of it at work and its generally very impressive, and this little skimmer is also quite quiet which is good.

The cannister filter is a good idea, although I'm not sure it would work with the 2213s I have spare, I would need a Eheim Pro style filter with both inlet and outlet at the top of the cannister.

Still not sure which way to go on this one..

Ben

Could you devide up the tank floor front to back like this>

If you have a sump the return could flow into this area where the egg crate is to get max flow over/through the LR

Well here I am, moved into new house and with a nice new marine tank to fiddle with!...



And heres the new fishy additions, the snake pipes...





And some nice Zoanthids I picked up...



Ben

Wow, great job setting that up Ben, looks fantastic

Thanks, better pics, specs etc will follow soon...

That snake pipe looks sleepy...

Looks very good as usual mate, looking forward to pics

Dont those snake pipes have to eat live food?

Awsome tank!

Well they've been feeding on frozen plankton, and I do still have quite alot of copeopods on my rock so they should be ok!

Thanks for the comments.

Ben