hey everyone time to get back into it

[bigmatt1992]

hey everyone ,

after a 6 month to long strech of time im geting back into it. I went away to college to play football got badly injured with my knee. had to come back home to find my reef tank basicly destroyed from my moms doing ( not her fault she tryed her best) after 3 knee surgurys and 6 months of therpy takeing up all my time i finaly have the free time needed to properly set up and maintain my reef tank agin ! it sure feels good to get back on to reef central and to make a post agin ive been dieing to see how everyones tanks are doing. but anyways i plan on seting up a 10 gal. reef tank with a 150 watt k2 viper hqi lamp on it with two nano sized power heads hooked up to red sea wave maker. no sump no skimmer just a good old fashion hob filter to get those nasty little particals out the water, ill eventuly turn the hob into a refuge with some cheto and other good stuff :eek1: .

thanks for reading and i hope all of your tanks are doing wonderful.

ps: somebody please tell me reefcentral.com has a mobile app lol ..........

 

[Stray32]

A few suggestions:

1. Do NOT try and make your 10 gallon rimless like you did before.

2. You will have difficulty with your levels if you are only using an HOB filter. Small tanks are much more finicky than large tanks. Perhaps you should consider getting another 10 gallon tank to use as a sump. There is enough room for a small hob skimmer, reactor, and return pump.

3. Water changes are KEY with trying to maintain a small tank and keep algae in check.

4. That light is perfect for a tank that size, but be careful with your water temp. Those vipers get pretty hot from what I have heard.

5. Most importantly - start slow. You have some experience now and hopefully some lessons learned. Patience is a major part of this hobby.

Welcome back and good luck with your new tank man.

 

[bigmatt1992]

The hbo I. Planed on using filter floss and changing it frequntly since its like 3 bucks for a big bail of it just until I get my hands on a lil clamp on led refuge light . I also plan on doing a 2 gal water change once a week pluse the tank I plan on only housing one clown and one cleaner shirmp jery low stock on this tank I'm going to havealot of live roock close to 4 pounds per gal I'm really going for a reef ledge effect. And yes slow is a very big problem for me in my past yes I know lesson lerned. Also the hqi lamp does get very very hot but with it being close to 12 inches away from the top of the water with a small fan I. Don't see heat being a problem but I've been wrong befor so I will monitor this. Sorry for the bad spelling and puncuation I'm posting this from my phone and its hard to keep going back to fix things haha . But any other question comments or concernes please feel free to let me know

 

[DgenR8]

ps: somebody please tell me reefcentral.com has a mobile app lol ..........

Tapatalk

 

[bigmatt1992]

thanks for the link larry ! i was hopeing there was something like that out there !!!!!!!!!!

 

[jverbosk]

I use a hob (plain ol' hagen aquaclear) on both of my 20 gallon nanos. They work great for getting the large particulates out, but I rinse the 3 sponge filter blocks in each tank weekly during a 20 - 40% water change (mainly to get calcium, etc back up to good levels). Better to keep the sponges in there to keep beneficial bacterial levels up in my opinion/experience.

I would recommend a small hob skimmer on a tank with higher powered lights and a large mix of corals (to suck the chemicals out of the water emitted by the corals, especially the softies). I use a CPR bakpak2 on my LPS tank with T4s, and it has worked well enough.

I've read/heard a lot about difficulty keeping levels reasonable in nanos, but I haven't run into any issues by sticking with a good reef salt mix and doing regular weekly water changes. One disclaimer is that I'm not growing any SPS corals and those may not do well at all in a setup like mine.

Good luck!

John