12 gal jbj nano

[clownfish45]

I just bought my first 12 gal jbj nano and was wondering if you can put a protein skimmer on it? Also how offen should I do water changes? And do you think 10lbs of live sand and 12lbs of rock is good?

[sir_dudeguy]

[welcome]

10lbs of sand and 12 lbs of rock will be fine. You cant keep more than a couple/3 fish in there anyways, so its not like your bioload is gonna go overboard to the point where you need a lot of rock.

As far as the skimmer...not sure, but i believe there are a few people who have modded their Nano's to fit a skimmer on them.

[Robb Slocum]

go to nanotuners.com i am sure that they have something

[clownfish45]

Thanks but what about the water changes? And I am about to set up a normal 55 gal tank and was wondering what kind and size of mh lights to put on it and if there is a way to build them myself and save some money?

[clownfish45]

Also on the water changes on the 12 gal how much water do I change and once a week or every two weeks?

[sir_dudeguy]

it depends on what type of tank you want to go with. If its fish only, then you could go a really really long time w/out water changes. If its a soft coral tank, you can still go quite a long time w/out water changes since they dont really use much of anything in my experience. I've gone a month before w/out doing water changes on my 40 breeder softy tank, which is loaded w/softies/leathers and a few lps and a couple sps and i dont even run a skimmer. As long as the levels stay good, i see no point in doing a water change.

But a general guideline for your 12 would be to do like 3g every 2 weeks or something like that.

As for the lighting on your 55...are you gonna try doing sps and stuff that needs lots of light? If so, i'd think that 2 separate 175w MH bulbs would do the trick. As for how to make them....look at the DIY forum on here. They'll be able to help you make them pretty easily i'd think.

[clownfish45]

what about cp with the mh do you need them and how many do you think? By the way the 12gal is going to be softys and the 55gal is going to be both sps and lps also clams.

[sir_dudeguy]

well the 55 would be more suited in the other forums (reef discussion) but i'll answer here anyways :)

You dont NEED anything other than the 2 MH lights for your daylight...you dont have to get PC's to go with it to add blue. However, i'll never do a tank again w/out being able to control actinics and daylights. I would say you could get by w/2x65 or 4x65w PC's and just use them all as actinics, and then maybe have a 10K, 12K, or maybe 14K daylight bulbs running on your MH.

Or you could get 20K halide bulbs and that would be blue enough to not need actinics, but then you cant control morning/evening affect.

[kcw1099]

They do have small protein skimmers that fit into the back of the nano cubes. Here is the link http://www.aquacon.com/nanotanks.html

[micromount]

whether or not that skimmer actually works,that company is one to definately stay away from. Go to vendors experiance and lookup AquaCON.

[Paladin]

And there's been a lot of bad reviews on that nano skimmer that's referenced on that page.
You can do fine without a skimmer. I do 2g water changes every week to week-and-a-half. I've been running my nanocube for over 3yrs.

[puckbs]

dunno the size of the 12g but the bakpak skimmers do a pretty good job, especially on a smaller tank, gonna put one on my 16bf

[Paladin]

the bakpaks are too large to fit in the nanocube with the hood on

[puckbs]

oh yeah, those pre-fab hoods, pitas for diy'ers....lol