hello, i have been keeping fish for about my whole life getting involved in cleaning and actually setting up my own tanks and finaly decided tyo start with saltwater! Since christmas is coming up and since im to young to have enough money to buy a good saltwater setup i was wonedring about the nano cubes. ive been looking at them for a while and was wondering if they were a goiod start into the world of saltwater. I was thinking about the 12 gallon deluxe edition. I have a few questions though. Could i keep many fish in there since it is very small? What types of LR are best for the nano cube? Should i not buy a nano cube for any reason and maybe start off with a different unit? Are skimmers needed? and r/o units needed? thanks for any help you can give me!
Need Some Help On Nanos!
- Thread starter Bomberman
- Start date
Ben L
New Member
The only thing that i would say is that like with any set up small volumes of water are harder to control especially when they are salt water. Also they will over heat really easilly especially if your using high output light for growing on frags, and if you have any coral in their prolonged exposeure to high tempecan be fatal, but at the same time ive never set up a tank that small so best see what those with more experience say these were just general points.
If you can convince your parents to spring for a good quality cube with good lights and fan cooling, you should be all set. Most combo cube systems come just about ready to go. Some have extra uneccessary stuff, some dont.
Skimmers are not necessary in a system as small as 12g and very difficult to configure properly even if you did try it. Skimmers are very likely to malfunction and spill water on the floor and/or spray harmful microbubbles back into the tank in a nano.
You can get just about any LR you want. I try and avoid the real branching type (usually from tonga) just cause it doesnt stack well. Other than that, as long as the pieces are small enough to fit in the tank you'll be fine
.
RO water is needed ESPECIALLY in a nano. If you cant afford to purchase a unit yourself, you can usually buy it from a LFS by the gallon. RO units last for a LONG time though, so they usually end up paying for themselves, but the upfront cost can be formidable.
As for fish you're probably looking at 2, maybe 3 fish in a 12g and your choices are a little bit limited due to the small water volume. You can however usually stock a lot of corals in the setup and other inverts
Skimmers are not necessary in a system as small as 12g and very difficult to configure properly even if you did try it. Skimmers are very likely to malfunction and spill water on the floor and/or spray harmful microbubbles back into the tank in a nano.
You can get just about any LR you want. I try and avoid the real branching type (usually from tonga) just cause it doesnt stack well. Other than that, as long as the pieces are small enough to fit in the tank you'll be fine
.RO water is needed ESPECIALLY in a nano. If you cant afford to purchase a unit yourself, you can usually buy it from a LFS by the gallon. RO units last for a LONG time though, so they usually end up paying for themselves, but the upfront cost can be formidable.
As for fish you're probably looking at 2, maybe 3 fish in a 12g and your choices are a little bit limited due to the small water volume. You can however usually stock a lot of corals in the setup and other inverts
rhysiboy
Fish Addict
really you should use either live aragonite sand (comes with all good bacteria on and helps the cycle) or just plain aragonite. i dont think gravel is recomended often because it doesnt have buffering capacity. erm im not sure where you heard gravel is cycle free but i think thats a load of twoddle. im in exactly the same boat as you because im changing my freshwater tank into saltwater for christmas (which my parents are financing) so im also on a budget. have a butchers at the stickies-well worth a read
lol sorry i ment sand not gravel so used to using freshwater terms!! grrr lol i hope your tank comes out great in time for christmas! and hey what type of setyup are you going to do? your own or a pre one like the nano cube? and if your doing your own will it be cheaper?
rhysiboy
Fish Addict
nope i have a 17 us gallon aqua one tnak that is currently fresh so im changing it and gonna put a false wall in the back to give room for my filter. im just basicly gonna make it into something that resembles a nano cube because my mum wont let me buy another new tank.
Siamese Fighter05
Fish Herder
If your budget can fetch it get your own RO unit and make your own water, (If your in the UK try www.osmotics.co.uk for a good unit on the cheap). If not then it's weekly/monthly trips to LFS to buy ready made RO at about 45p a gallon, If you do a weekly 10% Change then you can just get the 2 gallons so you have some top off water (Keep this in a seperate container as it doesn't need salt!)
Live-Arag by Carribsea says something about cycle free and is the substrate i used. It helps buffer up your PH as well so i'd reccomend it. I think the bags hold 20lbs so you'll only need to use just over half of it for a reccomended 1.5" substrate layre.
HTH
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