New with 12 g Nano. Have qs

[Tony]

hi everyone. Seems to be alot of people out there with these tanks. I have a few questions that i hope some poeple can help with.
1) are bigger nano tanks better?
2) the guy i bought my tank from seems to be the only guy telling me truthful info. he gave me some grasses to help eat up nitrates. any opinions onthat.
3) i have 2 shrimp, 3 hemit crabs, a damsel, and a gobe. i want a clown. shoudl i leave it be for now?
i think that is enough to answer, hope to hear.

 

[drty811]

welcome to nanotank

1) its a matter of opinion.
2)depends on the plant. alot of ppl are using refugiums along with chemical filteration.
3)you can add the clown but he'll definitly be territorial over the damsel.
HTH

 

[TimSchmidt]

1. Better is a relative term. Larger tanks have more water, making it so that water parameter changes are not so traumatic on the tank.

2. Generally good things to have. I would ask that guy what the name of the grass is. Probably either calpura or chaeto (I misspelled both those words I'm sure of it ) However calpura has a chance of going sexual and returning all those nitrates to the water.

3. What size tank do you have and how long has it been up? Do you have live rock and live sand, what type of filtration do you have? Kind of hard to say without that info.

If you have some free time there is a search button near the top of the page. You can use that to answer some of your questions if we don't asnwer fast enough for you :mrgreen:

Hope this helps.

 

[cbrownfish]

I completely agree with Tim. Not only can calupera melt away and spike your levels in a hurry, it can create the need for an underwater john deere if it is not monitored and plucked on a regular basis. Depending on the size of the "nano" tank, 3 fish could be overstocking it. At 20 gallons, you are borderline with 3.....especially considering the territorial nature of the clown (damsel species) and damsel.

 

[Tony]

the tank haas been up for a little over a month. the person i bought from gave me live rock and sand and also the water from his big tank. saved a lot of setup time. everything has been going great so far. lots of neat things happening in there, especially when the lights go out. The only bad thing that happened was when i got a shrimp as a gift. I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with Big Als aquariums here in the Toronto area. I received a Coral banded Shrimp as a gift from there. Really cool looking shrimp. After doing a slow transfer i put him in and he swam around for a bit, stopped and conquered some territory and then after an hour he was dead. :cryinga: They didnt even offer any reason to me why he died. Kind of freaked me out for a few days thinking my tank was doomed. :anxious I also have some soft coral, an anemone who seems to like doing its own thing, some polyps and the grass just grows, i rip half of it out and it keeps growing. im not terribly sure as to how much i should be doing in terms of water changes as i usually add about an inch every three days. i keep the temp around room temp. 21 degrees. I feed once a day. any comments??

 

[cbrownfish]

I would say that the temp could be a major issue for you in the long run. Saltwater tanks should be in the 26-28 degree celsius range (78-82 F). That could have contributed to the shrimp's demise. They also need lots of places to hide......adding some rock rubble could help if you only have a larger chunk of rock. Based on the animals you have in the tank, I would probably hold off on any new additions. I would add a heater.

Oh also, are you topping off with fresh water? If you are topping off with salt, you salinity level can go sky high on you.

 

[Tony]

hey sorry ive been away for a day. the fish are doing well. i top up the tank every other day with Distlled water. seems to be good for holding the salinity at the right level. i will double check my temps to make sure that it shuld be higher. thanks for for the help every one.
Tony