10 Gal nano reef! re-arranged

the salinity is up to 1.023. is that good? a salinity of 1.025 seems a little high. its in the red zone on my hydrometer.

 

hey cira, what do you have for flow in the tank? i dont see any type of filtration or powerheads in the pictures. flow is very important in a saltwater tank.

 

That is because most hydros want to keep you in the .21-.23 range because the is what most people think is the best for fish. Coral need it to be at .25 because at that level it helps give them all the trace elements much more radially. Your fish will have no proplem at that level and as well your corilline algae will grow a lot quicker as well.

 

hey dude if you read my signature you can see. i have a 30 gal. filter. that provides plenty water flow. you cant see the in-tank?

 

would you need a skimmer for a tank this small? and yes, i'm interested in what you use for flow too, is a HOB filter enough?

 

I'm betting so, I had a 20 tall with a filter rated for a 60g on it and it would turn the sand over across most of the tank by itself

 

ya ermano my flow is my filter its a 30 gallon bio-wheel. it provides flow for the whole tank. why dont any of you read my signature when you have questions like that? and no a skimmer is not needed and i dont have one. it would be good to have but not at all necessary. i just add a chemical weekly that contains all the minerals that would be received with a skimmer.

 

no i cannot, especially your sig pic, i cant see anything in there.

hey kid, were all here to learn and give knowledge the best we can. if i dont see something in your tank your sig means nothing, for all I know you could have just put that down for whatever reason. Lets see a pic of your filter. And I too have a 10 gallon mini reef, i would not suggest a skimmer as their is no need with frequent water changes. what do you plan to put in there? the clownfish will slowly outgrow that tank, your pretty much limited to small gobies and the like in the long run in such a small ecosystem.

 

We do read the signature. Sometimes the signatures are incomplete. When someone was counseling me on flow, they asked about it because they did not see it in my sig. That is because I forgot to put it in there. It affected the response. In your case, before you added corals, the flow was minimal, but OK by fish only standards. Now, you are going to need to increase it a bit sometime.

If I had to guess, I would bet your biowheel has about 110GPH as a rating. That is 11x. Not enough. You should, even in a small reef tank, be running 40x to 50x turnover compared to gallonage. So your target would be around 400 to 500GPH. I have a fish only tank with 110GPH coming out of my AquaClear 30 and 240GPH provided by a Koralia-nano. So mine is only at 35x. I am going to add one more Koralia-nano to give me another 240GPH (total of 590GPH or 59x). Believe it or not, that is not too much.

Now, the skimmer arguement. This one rages on. I am a big believer of skimmers. Others on the forum are not. Others are in between. I do not have one on my 10g. I do water changes more often to control the waste build up and run an airstone to compensate for the lack of oxygenation that a skimmer provides. You can get a really inexpensive skimmer for your set up and it will not cost you an arm and a leg. It does help. That is why we suggest it.

+1 I agree.

Its a good start. You need to get it up to 1.025. The corals will like it there. They like it there better than where you have it.....and the fish don't care. Don't pay attention to the red line on the hydrometer.

And that brings me to a question. What kind of hydrometer are you using? Is it the swing-arm type? Or the floater type....

 

IM SO MAD!! A LEAK IS GETTING THE BEST OF ME!! thinking of 2 options (i would like your opinion). one, buy a bio-cube and sell my lights and filter, or get a plain old 20 gal. and keep my stuff. i know your going to say that my light isnt enough for the 20 gal but it really doesnt look that much bigger. like it isnt that much taller. i am also happy because i really would love to upgrade though. i would love a bigger tank. opinions!