New BC 29 set-up

[kracken]

I have decided after 10+ years of keeping freshwater discus tanks, to try my hand at a nano reef tank. Before I did decide I did a lot of reading on this site and found it to be very informative. Now on to my questions:

I want to keep this as simple as possible, so I would like to keep 2-3 fish, 2 clowns and 1- i dont know, any suggestions? As for corrals I want to stick with whatever is best suited for the stock lighting. Is it neccesary to replace the bio balls with a skimmer? If not, is there an advantage to using liverock frags over the balls? Ideal temp? Once the tank cycles what and when to add? I perform a water change on my discus tank every 2 weeks, and was planning to do a 10% change on my 29 at the same time, is this sufficient.

If I left anything out please let me know. Looking foreeward to your responses. Thx

Oh yea,

25lb lr
1 1/2" ls
started tank with Blu water-natural sea water

 

[skipm]

First of all :welcome to the board.
You do not need to have a protien skimmer in a nano tank unless you want one, the weekly (best) or bi-weekly (okay as long as you don't overstock and keep an eye on things) waterchanges is enough to keep your water parameters in check. The use of LR rubble in one of the chambers is done to add to the biological filtering capacity of the tank, its basically a good safeguard to make sure that your biofilter is adequate. The ideal temp is 77-78 degrees but it can be hard to maintain it that low, a temp of 80-81 is okay but the main thing you want is that temp to be as stable as possible. See what the highest your temp is and set the heater to maintain that temp throughout the day and night. A one or two degree shift is pretty normal but you don't want the shift to be any larger than that. After the tank cycles most people usually add their cleanup crew first which can consist of snails, hermits, shrimp, etc. Keep us advised on how things are coming along and feel free to ask any questions that you come up with.

 

[kracken]

Skip, thanks for the response. My tank has been up & running since Saturday, and I forgot to purchase a hydrometer. P/U one today and found my salinity too high;1.028. In your opinion how much sea water should I replace with RO. With rock & sand displacement I have roughly 18 gallons of water total. I thought by using the purified sea water I would avoid these problems. Thanks in advance.

 

[skipm]

If I remember correctly the purified seawater has a SG of 1.027 right out of the jug. Since you just set the tank up and it is cycling I think you would be okay to leaver the water like it is and adjust the salinity back to where you want it when you do your first water change. You will have to keep up with evaporation though to keep it from getting much higher.
On the "I don't know" fish a couple of popular fish for nanotanks are any of the smaller gobies like clown gobies, rainfords goby, neons, etc. Small shrimp gobies paired with their proper pistol shrimp are also popular, go with hi finned red banded gobies, yase hashe gobies, or one of the other real small shrimp gobies.

 

[kracken]

Skip,

Will be 7 days tomorrow, and the last 3 water test have showed 0-ammonia, nitrites, & just a spec of nitrates. Is it safe to add my cleaning crew? Lights have been off, and the temp is right @ 77-78. Still no sign of the dreaded brown algae.
Seems like things are progressing nicely and don't want to upset the applecart.