What would be the best........

[jdnumis]

bang for your buck, all in one desk tank? I am thinking of putting a little desk reef tank together.

I am open to suggestions.

Thanks Guys/Gals and happy Monday!

~James

 

[thirty5]

I will def follow this thread!!! I have been thinking the same thing.....

 

[fishman1069]

I had a lil 10 gal rimless tank that I got from aquarium village that was a sweet tank. I used a gutted aquaclear 50 hob filter with rock rubble and a 13" 2 bulb t5 fixture and a koralia nano. It was a sweet lil zoa garden. You don't have to go AIO. Jmo

 

[thirty5]

I had a lil 10 gal rimless tank that I got from aquarium village that was a sweet tank. I used a gutted aquaclear 50 hob filter with rock rubble and a 13" 2 bulb t5 fixture and a koralia nano. It was a sweet lil zoa garden. You don't have to go AIO. Jmo

happen to have a pic?

 

[jdnumis]

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[jdnumis]

Don't they sell little 3 gallon AIO's?

 

[jdnumis]

I was actually thinking about this

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=15493

How do you guys feel about it?

 

[jdnumis]

I was actually thinking about.....

I was actually thinking about this

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=15493

How do you guys feel about it?

 

[fishman1069]

Thats a cool lil tank but IMO it way to small lol I would love to post a pic of the 10 gal I had but my phone wont let me :/

 

[jdnumis]

I thought that would be a perfect

Thats a cool lil tank but IMO it way to small lol I would love to post a pic of the 10 gal I had but my phone wont let me :/

desk tank. Small but enough for a mini reef(softies of course)

 

[Paolissimo]

You can keep some simple sps, i have birdnest, montiporas and pocillipora in mine. The rest are softies. Suggestion, if you gonna have xenia, put it in the back wall where you can scrape it off. I made the mistake of putting it in the center, and now it pretty much taking over. Also with mine, the surface of the water gets very dirty. My major issues have been keeping the surface of the water clean, and salinity, although salinity has been my mistake for not calibrating the water properly at home. I don't have a controller, but it would help a lot, especially for the salinity. Get your self a good refractometer, if you are not gonna have a controller. I made my own ATO, and I been meaning to put a simple tutorial in here, but haven't gotten around in doing it. I also keep a nice chunk of cheato in my filter.

 

[jdnumis]

WOW that looks great. What size is that?

 

[MeanGreenEyes]

I bought my daughter a Tom deco 3g pico and am running it stock w/ a Rio 50 pump pointed toward the surface for extra circulation and love it b/c there is very little evaporation due to included lid...it's a perfect little softie beginner reef for her. I also have two 5.5g's running with modded aquaclear filter's to run cheato. I'm running Chinese gu10 LED'S over them and love the growth. The year old 5.5g has mp10, a/c 70 w/ fuge mod, canister filter that I clean weekly to run reactor style w/ CPE, GFO, Purgien & carbon (this is cleaned faithfully every week during water change) There are actually a couple pico threads I highly recommend but don't know if I can link them here...pm me if interested in looking them up.

 

[Paolissimo]

WOW that looks great. What size is that?

That's a 3gal pico, from foster and smith. For filter I used a skilter filter (minus the skimmer part, due to the fact that it creates tons of microbubbles)that i had laying around. Nothing special about the filter, except that I put cheato in the filter with some rubble, and I use the light that came with the 3gal pico to lit up the the cheato. It stays on all the times. The main tank light I use, are as follow: one ecoexotic stunner, and one ecoexotic panorama. Ato is battery operated. I suggest you buy cured liverock with coralline algae. 2 Sexy shrimp because they are tiny and cool to look at, one hermit crab, and two turbo snails. I also have tons of little snails from reef cleaners that came from my main tank.

 

[james1990]

im running the 9gal Eheim aquastyles rimless cube and I think its the best "desk" tank. its 12'W 12'L 14'H. the filter is very easy to maintain and the light is really nice. cant beat the price too