Thinking of setting up 10g mini reef....

AnnetteG

AnnetteG

getting back to basics
Sep 24, 2007
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I've got a spare 10 at the moment and I've been wanting to make a nano reef, but I don't have the budget for an actual nano tank yet. What would I need to pick up to turn this little tank into a mini reef? Right now, it's got black carib moon sand in it and a fixture that will take 2 20 watt bulbs. Are there bulbs I can buy that would work in there and support a mini reef? What filter do I need? Do I have to have a protein skimmer?

Should I buy live rock, and if so, how much? Or, could I get away with mixing in a small bag of live sand and putting in some non live normal rock, something like, tx holey rock or something.

Once that's done, what sort of critters can I have in there? I'd like plenty of inverts, some types of shrimp or crab and maybe a couple of small clown fish or a 6 line wrasse or a jawfish.

Gimme a recipe for success please! (this isn't something I'm going to run out and do tomorrow, I'm just daydreaming right now...and some of you are probably thinking, didn't she just have 100 pounds of live rock and a 110 gal tank that was already SW and could have been set up that way again but she sold the live rock and didn't do SW? LOL Maybe not, but if you do remember that, I just wanna put my toe in the SW, not go swimming in it yet. :p:
 
Welcome to Nanos :)

Looks like you are off to a decent start. The current fixture you have supports 40watts total so that should be good enough for some mushrooms, couple of softies and maybe some zoanthids. Bulbs really won't make the difference, its dependent upon your fixture type (# of watts, PC, VHO, T5s Metal halides) that determines which type of corals you can support. I would just buy marine spectrum bulbs (10k and higher) for your fixture and you should be fine.

If you go with at least 10lbs of live rock then you won't need a filter. I would recommend live rock. You can do at least 10lbs of real live rock and can add any extra base rock (dead rock) amount. Your water movement will be provided by powerheads. I would at least get two rated at 70-100GPH (or more) each. You can have a small filter on that tank if you would like. I actually have one in case I ever want to add carbon.

I wouldn't worry about live sand. Live rock is much better.

In my opinion you don't need a skimmer on a tank that size.

As for fish, you might be able to get away with a single goby or a clownfish. The other fish you mentioned are too big.

You can add a decent amount of shrimp (recommend cleaner shrimp) and crabs (small and non-aggressive).
 
Read my signature for my setup. I plan on adding more base rock in the future that will turn into LR eventually. I currently have 2 itty bitty clowns in my tank and they seem to be doing great. But that isn't a long term plan right now because I would love to setup a 20L as a reef. I have 8 lbs of LR that I could sell you for $40 shipped. It has alto of die off now so it will need curing again or you could put it straight in the tank and let it cycle the tank. Thats what I did and my tank was cycled in 5 days!

Walmart has a nice 170gph powerhead that is only $19 that I picked up. Nice and quite and my clown loves to ride the waves it creates.

The light that I have was recommended to me by another experienced reefer and is AMAZING and was rather cheap. I'm very glad I bought it. So much so I plan on getting the 48" one for my cichlid tank after I switch out the actinic bulb. You could get away with bulbs for your hood but if your gonna do a reef do it right. Atleast thats what I decided because I wanted to limit my selection of marine life based on tank size not lighting requirements.
 
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I agree with FeatherDuster, you would want to go with LR over live sand as the rock and easily seed the sand to make it "live." Your best bet would be to just grab some argonite sand and throw in some live rock rubble.

Your lighting will depend on what types of corals you want to keep. If you want to keep any type of SPS coral then you will need powerful lighting like individually reflected T5s or MHs, although I don't usually see those on a 10 gallon.
 
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