Minimum height for Frag tank

JohnM99

Premium Member
Building a frag tank for a shelf with limited headroom - was thinking of making it only 8" high (or deep) - 48" L x 22" W. Putting in a T5 fixture for lighting.

Would I be OK with this? Or should I make it 9 or 10"? Anyone here with an 8" deep frag tank?

Thanks
John
 
8" tall works quite well for smaller fragments and corals that don't have a ton of vertical growing room. If you are going bare bottom, you should have ample room. Even with an inch of sand you would have 5-6 inches of water. Nice thing is that you can run lower wattage MH bulbs and or get better color and growth do to light intesnsity of such a shallow tank. I personally like a 10-12 inch tank. I have several rimless half inch acrlyic 11 inch tall tanks and love them. One of my tanks has eurobracy and a cross brace. I don't like how it blocks some of the light, but i do like that the eurobracy keeps the water from easily slashing or dripping out of the tank when my hands are in there.

Chears!

Garrett
 
Yes - bare bottom, no sand, on slightly elevated eggrate, about 20x flow w. SCWD 1".
Rimless would be great
 
If you want less electricity used a lower height is always best for lighting to pentrate through the water. I think 4 54watt T-5s would work great.
 
make your light height adjustable, get a par meter to measure the par level, and adjust the light height so that you get the right par level for what ever coral you are trying to grow. This way you know how much light is getting into the tank. You might find that you can keep acros by lowering the light and keep mushrooms by raising the light. But you dont know how high to place the light with out a par meter. You could guess how high or listen to other peoples trial and errors or buythe par meter and figure it out quickly yourself. Plus the light meter over time will tell you when the lights are going bad.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15444314#post15444314 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by garrettm85
I personally like a 10-12 inch tank. I have several rimless half inch acrlyic 11 inch tall tanks and love them. One of my tanks has eurobracy and a cross brace. I don't like how it blocks some of the light, but i do like that the eurobracy keeps the water from easily slashing or dripping out of the tank when my hands are in there.

I have thought about making a 10" glass so I could have 8" of water with eurobracing to keep the water in. So with eggcrate and standoffs I think I will have plenty of water. Was thinking of using this size for the frags and a 18" for colony growout.
 
I think minimum I feel is 6 inches. But I'd say 12 inches just incase you want to sell it in the future since thats a standard size.
 
i have an 8" deep rimless. it works great for corals that dont grow vertical, like acans, zoas, palys, montis. you dont have to use egg crate. i like to use frag rocks, made by ocean wonders, their gel glue is amazing also. the rocks are flat on bottom, so you dont need crate for plugs to sit in. plus as soon as you fire this guy up, you will have algae all over that egg crate for a few weeks, and thats a pain. i use about 3/4" florida crushed coral as substrate. it doesnt blow around. i love my tank, and if anyone has an 8" that they want to sell i would buy it for sure :)
 
3-4 inch deep zoa tank.

4 NO striplights give good par over a 4 ft by 2 ft area using the cheep GE bulbs
 
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