any suggestions for a 1/2 gallon nano
 

hey guys,
i just picked up a 1/2 gallon betta bowl frrom petco and turned it into a nano reef. i must say, looking nice so far, i have a 30 gallon running already so i just took a bunch of sand from my refugion. i filled up the tank half way with live sand, pulled about 3 pounds of lr from my display n tossed it in the nano. i also tossed some macro to help with filtering amonia and nitrates.
for lighting i have a 50/50 10w pc and a 65k 10w pc. should i get more lighting? i have gsp a kenya tree and some zoos in it right now. everything looks fine except for the zoos. what do you guys think?? any suggestions??
im open to any opinions sice i am fairly new to the nano tanks.
oooo yea, water vollume is about .25 gallons. i know this very small and is very sentative to fluctuation. again, i am open to suggestions.

I wouldn't even entertain the thought....should I have it....

1/2 sand and 3 pounds of liverock?

if you filled up the tank 1/2 way with sand...you were left with .25 gallons. then 3 pounds of liverock means you may have a few drops of water in there.....

Hmmmmmm...I dont know why you would want to do this, and I thinks bad idea......I am affraid you have opened yourself up here, but I have a few suggestions-maybe you could find some info on tide pool creatures, or try to keep some very tiny stuff like a bio globe sorta- mostly suff like you would find on live rock-very small snails,copods,bristle worms,feather dusting worms, common brown buttons, tiny stars. Anything that make it here on live rock is pretty hardy. I have a small anemone I found warfing in Port Aransas that I have had for 4 years or so, I was still learning when I got it and now I believe this little thing is indestructable. Gulf hermits are also very hard to kill, but they get large. Anything you keep you will have to feed and food will muck up a set up like that real quick, I would try to make it a self sufficient cycle if you can with rock grazers. Anything is worth a shot if that is really what you want to spend your time on but you have to know that a situation like that isnt ever gooing to be ok for most things esspecially for the long term. I may go to the coast in the next couple of weeks if you are interested in one of those anemones let me know and I will try to find one.

hey, thanks for the info guys and justasfastasican, i am very interested in the anenomie. are you willing to ship it though? becuase im in california let e know how it goes so far everything looks to be doing just fine in the tank. the corals are opened p really nicely they like it better in my nano than they did in my display. again thanks for the info guys.

hey,
Maybe thats how you killed the frags that I sent you:lol:
:rollface: :rollface: :rollface: :rollface: :rollface: :rollface::rollface: :rollface: :rollface:

ouch...

you could try amphipods or marine ghost shrimp (altho they have a tendency to jump out). tiny blue legs and ceriths are nice too.

ime the main issue/problem is the salinity fluctuations. brandon over at RDO seals his systems but that's too much diy for me. an auto top-off is good but takes a lot of real estate for such a small tank.

at another volume level (between pico and nano) maintaining temperature is the issue as there aren't many good small heaters available. your system is small enough that if you keep the room comfortable it should be good. you'll have to worry more about cooling. (of course, this also depends on where you live, Malaysia vs. Michigan)

the light should be fine but you may want to opt for sea lettuce versus a macroalgae. as much as i hate to admit it, waterchanges are probably the best maintenance for picos.

i agree you probably have too much sand. you may want to opt for less sand and just one piece of LR shaped just right. an AZoo tiny hob filter is also a good addition for flow and aeration. hth

there isnt really much you can do with a .5 gallon nano. IMO, i think 5 gallons should be the smallest, and thats pushing it. Anything under 20g needs a lot of maintaining, SG checking, nitrate checking, and death count checking. One dead snail could wipe out an entire tank. Return the .5 gallon, and get a 6 gallon, you'll have more fun and a little more room for livestock.

I tried something along this line and was really unhappy about how it all turned out. I had to get a reptile heating pad to keep the tank warm, which as a drag. Then I had to top it every day, and really should have topped it off more then one each day. But the real problem was that when it came time to clean it (it was an acrylic tank) I couldn't. Anything that I put in the tank to clean the sides was large enough to cause a displacement that spilled water out of the tank.

It looked pretty for about two weeks and then it looked like crap until I took it down.

Cheers...Michael :beer:

I just put one of the Red Sea Deco Tanks (0.75ga) on my desk at work. My lab is 75F year round, so no heater. I went with a 1/2 aragonite sand bed and a 4lb rock from my FOWLR. Cycled it for a couple of weeks and just dropped some softies in today. They all opened up within 30min of going in. I did cover most of the top with some saran to prevent evap. I only have to add a cup of RO every 3-4 days.

So far, so good