new nano

Of course there are always exceptions to the rule. I am an example of that in my own way, with 13 fish in a 29G reef tank. I bet that person in the TOTM has done countless hours of research on every aspect of the tank to get it looking that good, where as a newbie, that is who we are talking about here, would not be able to come close to a tank like that for quite some time.

With a newbie + sump, it makes tanks so much easier to maintain and keeps people interested in them alot longer. It only takes 1 crash to lose a reefer. I went through 2 crashes early on before I decided to get a sump.. since then, I have never had more than a minor diatom outbreak when I added more lighting.
 
Ace25 said:
Of course there are always exceptions to the rule. I am an example of that in my own way, with 13 fish in a 29G reef tank. I bet that person in the TOTM has done countless hours of research on every aspect of the tank to get it looking that good, where as a newbie, that is who we are talking about here, would not be able to come close to a tank like that for quite some time.

With a newbie + sump, it makes tanks so much easier to maintain and keeps people interested in them alot longer. It only takes 1 crash to lose a reefer. I went through 2 crashes early on before I decided to get a sump.. since then, I have never had more than a minor diatom outbreak when I added more lighting.
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the owner of that tank is a 14 year old girl. I do agree that a sump does make your tank more stable as it increases the tanks volume but it also depends on how your use it. Whether you just use it to stash equipment away from the tank or utilize it by adding a deep sand bed/live rock/macro algae/lighting, the latter being more of a help in my eyes but there are a lot of successful tanks ran sumpless, it just means you have to be more vigalent in your testing of params, not overstocking/feeding and keep up regular maintenance in the way of water changes/cleaning/dosing. My tank acutally does better now I have cut my water changes down to every 2 weeks
 
That TOTM was a tank owned by a 14yr old girl who's FATHER set it up, had all the knowledge, etc and taught the daughter.
It was such a thrill to wake up on Christmas morning and see the tank in my bedroom, i still dont know how Dad managed to keep it a secret from me. There were five pieces of coral, my two clown fish and a Blood Shrimp, it all looked very different from how it does now even though the rock work is still the same.

Twice a week I swap the filter sponges in chamber 1 and rinse out the old ones.

I also top up about 100 mls of RO water once a week.The hood fits the tank really well and there is very little water loss.

Once a month I change all of the Rowaphos, carbon and Polyfilter. I also take out half of the Chaeto at the same time, and rake over the top of the sand,the corals seems to like this.

Every three months I clean the pumps and the return nozzles.

I also do the following water tests and keep the results on an excel spread sheet.

Every week, Calcium, Alkalinity, Ph and temperature.
Every month Strontium, Iodide, Magnesium, Nitrate and Phosphate.
I am lucky that Dad helps me with the maintenance and tests otherwise it would take forever.
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My 29G reef:
2245871512_745a37262b.jpg


My Sump:
2239774128_41de93e479.jpg
 
the bottom line is that a sump is not a necessary piece of equipment.. nobody is questioning its usefulness.. but setting up a tank without a sump is not wrong and there are tons of people who do it successfully.

I know alot of the experts here run large tanks but if you check out nano-reef.com, there are plenty of people running small, low-tech, succesful tanks. as long as you understand that there are limitations, and adjust appropriately, it is not a big deal.

that said, the original poster doesn't seem like he has a realistic idea of what it takes to run a reef tank.
 
My sumpless 98 litre:

DSC00033.jpg


Over tank fuge: Live rock rubble, aragamud sand, cheato, caulupera, lit 24/7:
DSC00019.jpg


Skimmer:
DSC00020.jpg


DSC00053.jpg

DSC00056.jpg

DSC00057.jpg

DSC00061.jpg
 
I really like that last pic.. Really cool.

Anyway.. you obviously have a fuge/skimmer though. Those are probably the 2 most important parts in a sump. You just have 1/2 a sump and located on the back/side of your tank instead of underneath.
 
I must admit if I got a larger tank I would get a sump as they are ideal for items such as top offs and reactors, but as far as nano's go I still say they can be done very well without. So I will put my handbag away and start being nice again lol
 
I agree. I am sure there are 1000's of really nice nano's out there that are sumpless. It just comes down to, if you had the option in the beginning, would you tell someone to get a sump or go without until later on? I always tell people to go with a sump just because it makes everything so much easier to start with and people don't get overwhelmed during the first few algae blooms and the tank matures.

Is it required, no, just cuts your maint work on the tank by 1/10 though.
 
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