Hi,
Have you kept marines before? If not, then a nano tank might not be the best place to start. The reason is that the smaller the tank, the easier it is for it to crash due to pollutants building up quicker in a small volume of water as opposed to a large one.
However, that said, its not impossible to have a nano tank as your first saltwater tank. It just means that you will have to be more attentive to your water chemistry until the tank has matured and then stick to a regular maintenance regime. Things can be made a little easier if you connect a sump to the tank, as this makes the water chemistry more stable for the reasons outlined above. It also means that you can keep equipment like heaters, skimmers and reactors out of sight and you can also house a DSB and/or refugium in there too. I have a 60L nano with a sump connected underneath. You can see it
here in my tank build. You can also read more on the sumps at
Melev's Reef
You will also need to decide on what kind of setup you want. The options are FO (Fish Only), FOWLR (Fish Only With Live Rock) or a reef tank. Probably the easiest place to start is the FOWLR. The live rock provides the filtration for the tank by housing the bacteria that feed on the ammonia and nitrites in the water, much like the function filter sponges have on freshwater tanks. Like a filter sponge, the live rock needs water circulating around it to provide oxygen to the bacteria. For this we use powerheads equal to about 10 times the tank volume, so in your case you will be looking at a pump that moves 100GPH. For a 10G tank, 6kg of live rock should be sufficient.
A FOWLR tank is essentially a reef without the corals. Once your tank is stable and the water chemistry is within acceptable parameters, then you can begin adding the eye candy. What corals you can keep will depend on your lighting. Some corals will do just fine under regular T8 - T5 lighting, while others will require metal halides. Different corals have different requirements. For example, some don't require light at all but instead need to be fed, so a good deal of research is needed into what you would like to keep and what you will need to do so. Keeping corals also means that more water chemistry factors come into play. Aside from the normal ammonia, nitrites and nitrates, things like phosphates, calcium, magnesisum, iodine and other trace elements come into play.
A good place to start is with soft corals like leather toadstools and finger corals, xenia, mushrooms and zoa's. Its also worth pointing out that some corals like zoa's are poisonous and potentially lethal. Zoa's contain palytoxin, so if you keep them I'd suggest that you wear gloves. As for fish, you will be fairly limited due to the size of the tank. You could go for clownfish or maybe a watchman goby with a pistol shrimp (watch these on youtube.com, they're awesome).
Equipment/Items you will need include:
Salt
Reverse osmosis water (pure water - Do not use tap water in a reef tank or a tank with invertebrates as the copper dissolved in it will kill them. You will also need RO water to top off your tank through evapouration. Never top off with saltwater as you will increase the SG)
Refractometer (device for measuring the SG (specific gravity) of your water. For a reef tank you want to aim for an SG of 1.026)
Circulation pumps
T5 lighting or better
2 heaters ( Its always best to have two heaters running rather than one. If one fails, you have the other as a backup)
Water testing kits (Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate first, then when wanting to add corals get test kits for Phosphates, Calcium and Magnesium - Salifert are widely accepted as the best kits to buy)
PH probe
Live rock
Sand ( Get aragonite sand as it is calcium carbonate based and will help buffer your PH - Don't bother with "live sand". Its only live if you get it from an established tank and it goes into yours ASAP. The stuff on the shelves in your LFS is long past being live)
Protein skimmer (This isn't essential on a nano tank as regular water changes help remove pollutants)
That should be enough to get you started. Reading through the journals section will provide you with more information too.
Hope that helps,
AK
