headtreads
New member
<big><b>Nano Everything</big></b>
by headtreads
I looked around this forum and don't really see any threads specific for Nano reefs and what options you can have with them. On this thread, I will discuss options such as lighting, pumps, chillers, heaters, corals, fish, food, some chemistry and anything else I can think of. My goal for this thread is for people to learn about Nano Tanks and to add to this information. The information I will be using will be from my experience, from books, internet articles, fellow reefers and working at Marine Depot.
Many aquarist find different parts of reefing more important than others. So keeping that in mind we will start from the very beginning, picking out your tank. Tank size can vary as we all know, from one gallon up to 35 gallons. Yes, up to 35. I believe any tank passed this size is a regular tank no matter what you think of it. To pick your tank out, you have to think about where you are going to put it, what you are going to put in it and most important of all, how much time are you going to invest in this. There are a few choices that you can go with such as the shape of the tank. Just like normal tanks there are half moon, bowfront, hex tanks (hexagon) cube tanks (square tanks) and rectangular tanks. After you choose your shape, you have to choose if you want glass or acrylic. There are ups and downs on both types of tank. A glass tank is a lot clearer and scratches less than an acrylic tank. However, heat dissipates from it very easily. Acrylic tanks are usually cheaper and keep in heat better, but scratch easier. There are numerous products out on the market that can take off the scratches on acrylic but many people just believe that it is too much work. Now to the good stuff, animals and equipment.
You can go freshwater or saltwater depending on your taste. Most of the information I will be providing on this article will be for both freshwater and saltwater. Although some might be a little biased since I am a reef nut. Moving on, now that you have your tank you have to choose what you are going to put in your tank. There are a few choices that you can go with. You can do a fish-only tank, a reef tank (fish and corals), sea horse tank, jellyfish tank and even an octopus tank. The two most popular is usually fish only tanks and reef tanks. It doesn't matter which one you pick, the starting point will be the same.
To have a successful tank, biological filtration is a must. After you put water in your tank, add your filters, rocks and sand if you choose, the tank will go though a cycling process. This process however will not start until you have decomposing waste and organic matter in the water. There are a few ways to do this. One is just buy live sand or live rock or even both. With live rocks however, you have to make sure that the live rock is uncured. This meaning that the rocks have not been properly treated to a point where all the decomposing matter is gone. A lot of fish stores carry this and so does internet stores. While shipping, after a few days in the open air, there will be some dead organics in the rocks that can be ready to decompose in your tank. Another way would be throwing in regular shrimp in the tank. Make sure that if you do this, that the shrimp you throw in doesn’t have seasonings and batter in it. Just pain old shrimp. I have heard from various authors that you should throw in a cooked shrimp. This possibly can be a quicker way to decompose the shrimp. You can also try additives such as Bacter Vital by Marc Weiss Company and Bio Booster by Dolphin Marine. This would significantly increase your bacteria to a point where you can add fish in a matter of days. Live sand also helps you since they come packaged with useful bacteria ready for decomposing. Be very careful however not to start putting in Sohal Tangs and Queen Angels yet. A tank to properly be cycled, can take up to 6 months to fully stabilize. Now most of us are not that patient so we push our limits and usually pull out of it fine. Now back to filtration. Biological filtration works by bacteria growing within your tank. There are several medias that you can go with to help you filter out your tank biologically. There are ceramic rings, bio balls and I've even seen shredded plastic which most people call Bio-Bale. Several debates have been going on when it comes to bio-balls. Bacteria does cling on to them quite easily, however so does everything else. After a while, they end up being nitrate magnets. The most common biological filtration would be live sand and live rock. With a fish-only tank you can get away with just live sand. Some aquarist don't put any live sand or live rocks in their tank and don't have any problems whatsoever. This is perfectly ok but without live sand or live rocks, the water will need to be changed more often. Especially in fish-only tanks, organic wastes are plentiful and nitrates are higher that the average reef tank. To counter-react this problem, some use "Denitrators", AZ-NO3, Nitro-Max and multiple filters. Biologically, when the organic waste falls to the sand, bacteria starts attacking and breaks it down. I would suggest about 3-5 inches of live sand to help you filter out nitrates. You can go with 1 to 2 pounds per gallon. Same thing goes with live rock. With live rock, you would also want to go about 1-2 pounds per gallon. I know some friends that have kept very successful tanks with only live rock and sand. Most of them are really not fond of additives so they go all natural. Now that you have the biological filtration down, we now go to chemical filtration. This would be your additives, activated carbon and phos removers. Anything that filters by the addition of chemicals is considered chemical filtration. Some examples of this would be Rowa Phos, activated carbon, Purigen by Sea Chem(highly recommended and good for nitrates, ammonia, nitrites basically a protein skimmer in a bag). Next would be mechanical filtration. This would be protein skimmers and reactors and canister filters. Reactors can be anything where filter media can be placed and by using a pump or even gravity feeding, water will go though the reactor where filtering would take place. Phos Reactors recently is becoming a very popular way of filtering. It helps with lowering nitrates, phosphates ammonia, and nitrite. You can even put it all together in one reactor. Canister filters are popular with tanks that don’t have a filter system. A lot of Nano tanks are this way so people use this method and another popular method are hang-on filters. Now on to the protein skimmer.
Protein skimmers are viewed as the engine under the hood. It actually is quite hilarious when someone asks me after I tell them I have a reef tank, they ask what skimmer do I have. It’s like saying “So you have a 350 under the hood or what?†Euro Reef and Deltec(the Chevy and the Dodge to American loyalist, and the Nissan and Hondas to imports, that’s right no Toyotas) are great skimmers and considered to be the best. Aqua C(the Toyota) is a good reliable brand, good but never takes the final leap. The problem with the Euro Reef though is they don't have small enough skimmers for Nano tanks. Aqua C came out with the Aqua C Nano Remora Hang on. This skimmer does really well if you don't have any room for one. If you are lucky enough to have a sump for your nano (which technically makes it a regular tank) your choices will be harder. How do skimmers help my tank most people ask. Well let’s start with organics. A protein skimmers main function is to get rid of organic materials in the water that can possibly decompose and cause an influx in nitrates. The main component will be the bubbles. How much bubbles a protein skimmer produces will determine how good it is. The bubbles of course are formed when air and water is mixed together. Water is pushed into the skimmer chamber with a pump, at the same time, air mixes with the water, and then good ol' micro bubbles. I am trying to just keep all the detailed explanations light since it is really not necessary to pick out a skimmer. The micro bubbles carry any organic materials to the top of the chamber where it is pushed up into the collection cup. I should also add to this that the higher you set the collection cup, the darker and thicker your skimmet will be. So many people have told me that they either need a different protein skimmer or the one they have is broken. Most of the time when skimmers are not skimming, it could be that you don’t have anything to skim or you have your skimmet too high. A collection cup set lower will have more liquidy skimmet. On a nano tank since it’s so small, if you run your protein skimmer 24 hours a day, after while, there will be very little skimmet in the cup. Depending on your bio load and how much you feed, should determine how much you skim. Now let’s talk about lighting.
There are stages in lighting depending on what you want to put in your tank. For fish only tanks, you can get away with fluorescent lighting and not have any ill effects whatsoever. Next would be VHO’s and T5 (high output fluorescent which is enough for most soft corals but too long to fit on Nano’s however. A popular choice and at a reasonable price are Power Compacts. Power Compacts come in many different sizes and have many choices in regards to wattage. This type of light is great for nano tanks because of its size and brightness. Last would be metal halides. As we all know most people would want metal halide in their tanks but is preety expensive. Even if you can afford it, you have to make sure you have room for it since nano tanks have very little space for lights. Pendants and hang on lights are used often with nano tanks. JBJ recently came out with the Hang on Viper K2 light that comes in a 70W and 150W configuration. With this light you can keep almost anything including SPS. The main problem would be the temperature though. With a metal halide hanging over such a small tank, the temperature can rise so much your animals can die in a matter of hours because they are getting cooked. This is when most people start getting confused. A lot of people try to stay away from buying a chiller so they do things that can possibly cost them more money. Things like keeping the central air on all day, making the electricity bill skyrocket. Buying so many fans you can’t even walk over to your tank since all the fans are in the way. It is a very difficult decision but for the addicted reefer, this is a great time where you can shop and study different chillers that can suit your needs. For smaller nana tanks, under 12 gallons, Coolworks came out with the Ice Probe. This is the cheapest chiller in the market but still pricey. This chiller can cool your tank about 6 degrees but to stay at a certain temperature you have to buy a temperature controller. Pacific Coast Imports also has a reasonable chiller but it actually works just like all the other chillers. The only downside I see to this chiller is you have to keep all four sides free so the chiller can vent. Most chillers are like this but this particular one will not work at all if you have anything blocking the vents. JBJ also came out with a nano chiller that is 1/20 hp geared towards their own Nano Cube series. It is a great chiller and can keep your temperature where you want it.
Pumps have been overlooked property of reef tanks. Everyone is so preoccupied with lights and protein skimmers, they don’t take in account that water flow is very important to feeding your corals. Oxygen exchange is done by pumps as well. In nano tanks, pumps can be downright annoying though. They look extremely huge inside a nano but sometimes you don’t have a choice. You can go for an external pump like Eheim but the GPH(gallon per hour) rating is so high it will blow your live rocks out of the water. That is not the main problem however. If you go with external pumps you have to find a way to mount it. You can use vinyl tubing or even small PVC(polyvinyl chloride) pipes. If you are crafty enough you can make it where the tubing or the pipes are barely seen. If you don’t want to go this way, there are pumps such as the Mini Jet by Aquarium systems that are small enough where it doesn’t look like a giant in your tank. In regards to GPH, usually for flow inside the tank, you would want anywhere from 5-10 times the GPH. So let’s say I have a 10 gallon tank, the highest I should go should be 100GPH. If you have a fish only tank, you can go lower down to 5 times. Fish also needs water flow. When you feed the fish, it starts circulating the food where it looks like they are live food that the fish have to catch. Some of these pumps that would is a good for a nano would be Aquarium Systems Micro and Mini Jet, Eheim compact pump and if you have a tank over twenty gallons, you can even use a Tunze or the fairly new Ecotech Vortech. Both of these pumps are on the top of their game. Heaters I believe are self explanatory. There are in line heaters and drop-in heaters. Make sure before you use a drop-in heater that it is fully submersible. This can end up breaking the unit or shock your fish to death or both. Next on our list would be water parameters.
The are a couple of water parameters worth checking more often than others. This would include temperature, ph, salinity/specific gravity, calcium, alkalinity and nitrates. I will go more into detail with each of these parameters but before that, here are the typical ranges you should have in your tank.
Parameters Recommendations Ocean Value
Alkalinity 2.86-4.29 meq/L 8-12dKH 142-215 2.5 meq/L 7dKH 125
Ammonia 0ppm <0.0
Boron <10 pm 0.000006 ppm
Calcium 380-450 ppm 420 ppm
Iodine 0.06 ppm 0.06 ppm
Iron
Magnesium 1200-1400 ppm 1280
Nitrate 0-10 ppm Below 0.1 ppm
Nitrite 0 ppm 8 ppm
ORP 250-400 mV 4.4 ppm
pH 7.8-8.5 8.0-8.3
Phosphate <0.03 ppm 0.005ppm
Salinity 32-35 ppt sg=1.023-1.026 34-36 sg=1.025-1.027
Silica <1 ppm <0.06-2.7 ppm
Strontium 7-9 ppm Variable
Temperature 76-82 Variable
There have been many debates regarding the proper tank temperature. With fish only tank this can range anywhere from 72 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. With corals however, it would be higher around 77 to 83. In natural reefs around the world, temperatures go up to as high as 86 degrees Fahrenheit. So anything under 86 should naturally be in the safe zone. Anything above that, you would end up with cooked animals.
Alkalinity is quite hard to explain and how it is controlled. There are many buffers out there that stabilizes ph and raises alkalinity but you still have chemical imbalances in your tank. Buffers or baking soda, raises alkalinity or lowers the waters acidity also called alkaline. Anything over a pH of 7 would be considered alkaline and under 7 would be acidic. Alkalinity is the measure to keep the pH at a certain level. A lot of people mix this up. Even more confusing is the relationship between alkalinity and calcium. I will try to keep this explanation light. Alkalinity is bicarbonate and carbonate together to keep the ph stable. At the same time, bicarbonate is need by corals to turn into carbonate in order to build calcium skeletons. So calcium would be the ingredient when carbonate is what puts it together. So this is part of the reason pH is important as well. Proper pH means proper alkalinity so corals can grow using calcium. There are many calcium additives including two part additives. Many of them tested have been very similar to each other. As long as calcium levels are being monitored, there won’t be any precipitation occurring. I have a little recommendation that should be tried if you haven’t already. CaribSea makes Purple Up, which is a calcium additive. It also contains magnesium, strontium and surprisingly iodine. Up until now, iodine was never mixed with calcium since they end up not working properly and throw your parameters off. Although I still use Lugols Solution. For six months I used Kent Liquid Calcium, six months later SeaChem turbo calcium then I tried PurpleUp. Within two weeks, my coralline algae started getting brighter and my SPS healthier. After 3 months, my corals started growing. Most reefers use calcium reactors and that is the way to go. However, with a nano, it is overkill to try to hook up a calcium reactor to it. Now in regards to Magnesium. A lot of people add magnesium when their calcium won’t rise. Technically, magnesium only contributes about 0.10% of what calcium needs to raise its levels. Most of what is needed is alkalinity and pH stability. A lot of trace element additives already come with enough of both so you don’t have to add additional magnesium and strontium.
The other parameters such as ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and phosphate. Ammonia is present right from the beginning of a tank cycle along with nitrite. This is your organic matter showing up after it turns toxic. Nitrate then turns into nitrates and this is where algae multiples. To control nitrates, you can use nitrate reactors, additives but most important of all water changes. A good water change should be about 15% every week. If you want to do it every two weeks, then do 20 percent. If your algae is really out of control, a big water change is needed. That is about 30-35%. Usually, water changes can be done once a month. The problem is, with nano tanks, water parameters change so much faster because there is less water.
Other tank equipment that I am going to touch lightly are ozonizers and UV sterilizers. Most people get mixed up with what sterilizers do. Fact 1, they do not get rid of Ich if your fish already has it. It prevents future diseases from happening. Fact two is the clarify the water. Fact 3 is they kill bacteria, even good bacteria which corals need to stay healthy. This means that UV sterilizers should mainly be used for fish only tanks. With ozonizers, there is too much chemistry involved so I will make this quick. The main purpose most use ozonizers for is to clarify the water, which it does and it does a great job. However, use caution when using it can be disastrous if overdosed for both the tank inhabitants and humans.
Nano Everything
by headtreads
I looked around this forum and don't really see any threads specific for Nano reefs and what options you can have with them. On this thread, I will discuss options such as lighting, pumps, chillers, heaters, corals, fish, food, some chemistry and anything else I can think of. My goal for this thread is for people to learn about Nano Tanks and to add to this information. The information I will be using will be from my experience, from books, internet articles, fellow reefers and working at Marine Depot.
Many aquarist find different parts of reefing more important than others. So keeping that in mind we will start from the very beginning, picking out your tank. Tank size can vary as we all know, from one gallon up to 35 gallons. Yes, up to 35. I believe any tank passed this size is a regular tank no matter what you think of it. To pick your tank out, you have to think about where you are going to put it, what you are going to put in it and most important of all, how much time are you going to invest in this. There are a few choices that you can go with such as the shape of the tank. Just like normal tanks there are half moon, bowfront, hex tanks (hexagon) cube tanks (square tanks) and rectangular tanks. After you choose your shape, you have to choose if you want glass or acrylic. There are ups and downs on both types of tank. A glass tank is a lot clearer and scratches less than an acrylic tank. However, heat dissipates from it very easily. Acrylic tanks are usually cheaper and keep in heat better, but scratch easier. There are numerous products out on the market that can take off the scratches on acrylic but many people just believe that it is too much work. Now to the good stuff, animals and equipment.
You can go freshwater or saltwater depending on your taste. Most of the information I will be providing on this article will be for both freshwater and saltwater. Although some might be a little biased since I am a reef nut. Moving on, now that you have your tank you have to choose what you are going to put in your tank. There are a few choices that you can go with. You can do a fish-only tank, a reef tank (fish and corals), sea horse tank, jellyfish tank and even an octopus tank. The two most popular is usually fish only tanks and reef tanks. It doesn't matter which one you pick, the starting point will be the same.
To have a successful tank, biological filtration is a must. After you put water in your tank, add your filters, rocks and sand if you choose, the tank will go though a cycling process. This process however will not start until you have decomposing waste and organic matter in the water. There are a few ways to do this. One is just buy live sand or live rock or even both. With live rocks however, you have to make sure that the live rock is uncured. This meaning that the rocks have not been properly treated to a point where all the decomposing matter is gone. A lot of fish stores carry this and so does internet stores. While shipping, after a few days in the open air, there will be some dead organics in the rocks that can be ready to decompose in your tank. Another way would be throwing in regular shrimp in the tank. Make sure that if you do this, that the shrimp you throw in doesn’t have seasonings and batter in it. Just pain old shrimp. I have heard from various authors that you should throw in a cooked shrimp. This possibly can be a quicker way to decompose the shrimp. You can also try additives such as Bacter Vital by Marc Weiss Company and Bio Booster by Dolphin Marine. This would significantly increase your bacteria to a point where you can add fish in a matter of days. Live sand also helps you since they come packaged with useful bacteria ready for decomposing. Be very careful however not to start putting in Sohal Tangs and Queen Angels yet. A tank to properly be cycled, can take up to 6 months to fully stabilize. Now most of us are not that patient so we push our limits and usually pull out of it fine. Now back to filtration. Biological filtration works by bacteria growing within your tank. There are several medias that you can go with to help you filter out your tank biologically. There are ceramic rings, bio balls and I've even seen shredded plastic which most people call Bio-Bale. Several debates have been going on when it comes to bio-balls. Bacteria does cling on to them quite easily, however so does everything else. After a while, they end up being nitrate magnets. The most common biological filtration would be live sand and live rock. With a fish-only tank you can get away with just live sand. Some aquarist don't put any live sand or live rocks in their tank and don't have any problems whatsoever. This is perfectly ok but without live sand or live rocks, the water will need to be changed more often. Especially in fish-only tanks, organic wastes are plentiful and nitrates are higher that the average reef tank. To counter-react this problem, some use "Denitrators", AZ-NO3, Nitro-Max and multiple filters. Biologically, when the organic waste falls to the sand, bacteria starts attacking and breaks it down. I would suggest about 3-5 inches of live sand to help you filter out nitrates. You can go with 1 to 2 pounds per gallon. Same thing goes with live rock. With live rock, you would also want to go about 1-2 pounds per gallon. I know some friends that have kept very successful tanks with only live rock and sand. Most of them are really not fond of additives so they go all natural. Now that you have the biological filtration down, we now go to chemical filtration. This would be your additives, activated carbon and phos removers. Anything that filters by the addition of chemicals is considered chemical filtration. Some examples of this would be Rowa Phos, activated carbon, Purigen by Sea Chem(highly recommended and good for nitrates, ammonia, nitrites basically a protein skimmer in a bag). Next would be mechanical filtration. This would be protein skimmers and reactors and canister filters. Reactors can be anything where filter media can be placed and by using a pump or even gravity feeding, water will go though the reactor where filtering would take place. Phos Reactors recently is becoming a very popular way of filtering. It helps with lowering nitrates, phosphates ammonia, and nitrite. You can even put it all together in one reactor. Canister filters are popular with tanks that don’t have a filter system. A lot of Nano tanks are this way so people use this method and another popular method are hang-on filters. Now on to the protein skimmer.
Protein skimmers are viewed as the engine under the hood. It actually is quite hilarious when someone asks me after I tell them I have a reef tank, they ask what skimmer do I have. It’s like saying “So you have a 350 under the hood or what?†Euro Reef and Deltec(the Chevy and the Dodge to American loyalist, and the Nissan and Hondas to imports, that’s right no Toyotas) are great skimmers and considered to be the best. Aqua C(the Toyota) is a good reliable brand, good but never takes the final leap. The problem with the Euro Reef though is they don't have small enough skimmers for Nano tanks. Aqua C came out with the Aqua C Nano Remora Hang on. This skimmer does really well if you don't have any room for one. If you are lucky enough to have a sump for your nano (which technically makes it a regular tank) your choices will be harder. How do skimmers help my tank most people ask. Well let’s start with organics. A protein skimmers main function is to get rid of organic materials in the water that can possibly decompose and cause an influx in nitrates. The main component will be the bubbles. How much bubbles a protein skimmer produces will determine how good it is. The bubbles of course are formed when air and water is mixed together. Water is pushed into the skimmer chamber with a pump, at the same time, air mixes with the water, and then good ol' micro bubbles. I am trying to just keep all the detailed explanations light since it is really not necessary to pick out a skimmer. The micro bubbles carry any organic materials to the top of the chamber where it is pushed up into the collection cup. I should also add to this that the higher you set the collection cup, the darker and thicker your skimmet will be. So many people have told me that they either need a different protein skimmer or the one they have is broken. Most of the time when skimmers are not skimming, it could be that you don’t have anything to skim or you have your skimmet too high. A collection cup set lower will have more liquidy skimmet. On a nano tank since it’s so small, if you run your protein skimmer 24 hours a day, after while, there will be very little skimmet in the cup. Depending on your bio load and how much you feed, should determine how much you skim. Now let’s talk about lighting.
There are stages in lighting depending on what you want to put in your tank. For fish only tanks, you can get away with fluorescent lighting and not have any ill effects whatsoever. Next would be VHO’s and T5 (high output fluorescent which is enough for most soft corals but too long to fit on Nano’s however. A popular choice and at a reasonable price are Power Compacts. Power Compacts come in many different sizes and have many choices in regards to wattage. This type of light is great for nano tanks because of its size and brightness. Last would be metal halides. As we all know most people would want metal halide in their tanks but is preety expensive. Even if you can afford it, you have to make sure you have room for it since nano tanks have very little space for lights. Pendants and hang on lights are used often with nano tanks. JBJ recently came out with the Hang on Viper K2 light that comes in a 70W and 150W configuration. With this light you can keep almost anything including SPS. The main problem would be the temperature though. With a metal halide hanging over such a small tank, the temperature can rise so much your animals can die in a matter of hours because they are getting cooked. This is when most people start getting confused. A lot of people try to stay away from buying a chiller so they do things that can possibly cost them more money. Things like keeping the central air on all day, making the electricity bill skyrocket. Buying so many fans you can’t even walk over to your tank since all the fans are in the way. It is a very difficult decision but for the addicted reefer, this is a great time where you can shop and study different chillers that can suit your needs. For smaller nana tanks, under 12 gallons, Coolworks came out with the Ice Probe. This is the cheapest chiller in the market but still pricey. This chiller can cool your tank about 6 degrees but to stay at a certain temperature you have to buy a temperature controller. Pacific Coast Imports also has a reasonable chiller but it actually works just like all the other chillers. The only downside I see to this chiller is you have to keep all four sides free so the chiller can vent. Most chillers are like this but this particular one will not work at all if you have anything blocking the vents. JBJ also came out with a nano chiller that is 1/20 hp geared towards their own Nano Cube series. It is a great chiller and can keep your temperature where you want it.
Pumps have been overlooked property of reef tanks. Everyone is so preoccupied with lights and protein skimmers, they don’t take in account that water flow is very important to feeding your corals. Oxygen exchange is done by pumps as well. In nano tanks, pumps can be downright annoying though. They look extremely huge inside a nano but sometimes you don’t have a choice. You can go for an external pump like Eheim but the GPH(gallon per hour) rating is so high it will blow your live rocks out of the water. That is not the main problem however. If you go with external pumps you have to find a way to mount it. You can use vinyl tubing or even small PVC(polyvinyl chloride) pipes. If you are crafty enough you can make it where the tubing or the pipes are barely seen. If you don’t want to go this way, there are pumps such as the Mini Jet by Aquarium systems that are small enough where it doesn’t look like a giant in your tank. In regards to GPH, usually for flow inside the tank, you would want anywhere from 5-10 times the GPH. So let’s say I have a 10 gallon tank, the highest I should go should be 100GPH. If you have a fish only tank, you can go lower down to 5 times. Fish also needs water flow. When you feed the fish, it starts circulating the food where it looks like they are live food that the fish have to catch. Some of these pumps that would is a good for a nano would be Aquarium Systems Micro and Mini Jet, Eheim compact pump and if you have a tank over twenty gallons, you can even use a Tunze or the fairly new Ecotech Vortech. Both of these pumps are on the top of their game. Heaters I believe are self explanatory. There are in line heaters and drop-in heaters. Make sure before you use a drop-in heater that it is fully submersible. This can end up breaking the unit or shock your fish to death or both. Next on our list would be water parameters.
The are a couple of water parameters worth checking more often than others. This would include temperature, ph, salinity/specific gravity, calcium, alkalinity and nitrates. I will go more into detail with each of these parameters but before that, here are the typical ranges you should have in your tank.
Parameters Recommendations Ocean Value
Alkalinity 2.86-4.29 meq/L 8-12dKH 142-215 2.5 meq/L 7dKH 125
Ammonia 0ppm <0.0
Boron <10 pm 0.000006 ppm
Calcium 380-450 ppm 420 ppm
Iodine 0.06 ppm 0.06 ppm
Iron
Magnesium 1200-1400 ppm 1280
Nitrate 0-10 ppm Below 0.1 ppm
Nitrite 0 ppm 8 ppm
ORP 250-400 mV 4.4 ppm
pH 7.8-8.5 8.0-8.3
Phosphate <0.03 ppm 0.005ppm
Salinity 32-35 ppt sg=1.023-1.026 34-36 sg=1.025-1.027
Silica <1 ppm <0.06-2.7 ppm
Strontium 7-9 ppm Variable
Temperature 76-82 Variable
There have been many debates regarding the proper tank temperature. With fish only tank this can range anywhere from 72 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. With corals however, it would be higher around 77 to 83. In natural reefs around the world, temperatures go up to as high as 86 degrees Fahrenheit. So anything under 86 should naturally be in the safe zone. Anything above that, you would end up with cooked animals.
Alkalinity is quite hard to explain and how it is controlled. There are many buffers out there that stabilizes ph and raises alkalinity but you still have chemical imbalances in your tank. Buffers or baking soda, raises alkalinity or lowers the waters acidity also called alkaline. Anything over a pH of 7 would be considered alkaline and under 7 would be acidic. Alkalinity is the measure to keep the pH at a certain level. A lot of people mix this up. Even more confusing is the relationship between alkalinity and calcium. I will try to keep this explanation light. Alkalinity is bicarbonate and carbonate together to keep the ph stable. At the same time, bicarbonate is need by corals to turn into carbonate in order to build calcium skeletons. So calcium would be the ingredient when carbonate is what puts it together. So this is part of the reason pH is important as well. Proper pH means proper alkalinity so corals can grow using calcium. There are many calcium additives including two part additives. Many of them tested have been very similar to each other. As long as calcium levels are being monitored, there won’t be any precipitation occurring. I have a little recommendation that should be tried if you haven’t already. CaribSea makes Purple Up, which is a calcium additive. It also contains magnesium, strontium and surprisingly iodine. Up until now, iodine was never mixed with calcium since they end up not working properly and throw your parameters off. Although I still use Lugols Solution. For six months I used Kent Liquid Calcium, six months later SeaChem turbo calcium then I tried PurpleUp. Within two weeks, my coralline algae started getting brighter and my SPS healthier. After 3 months, my corals started growing. Most reefers use calcium reactors and that is the way to go. However, with a nano, it is overkill to try to hook up a calcium reactor to it. Now in regards to Magnesium. A lot of people add magnesium when their calcium won’t rise. Technically, magnesium only contributes about 0.10% of what calcium needs to raise its levels. Most of what is needed is alkalinity and pH stability. A lot of trace element additives already come with enough of both so you don’t have to add additional magnesium and strontium.
The other parameters such as ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and phosphate. Ammonia is present right from the beginning of a tank cycle along with nitrite. This is your organic matter showing up after it turns toxic. Nitrate then turns into nitrates and this is where algae multiples. To control nitrates, you can use nitrate reactors, additives but most important of all water changes. A good water change should be about 15% every week. If you want to do it every two weeks, then do 20 percent. If your algae is really out of control, a big water change is needed. That is about 30-35%. Usually, water changes can be done once a month. The problem is, with nano tanks, water parameters change so much faster because there is less water.
Other tank equipment that I am going to touch lightly are ozonizers and UV sterilizers. Most people get mixed up with what sterilizers do. Fact 1, they do not get rid of Ich if your fish already has it. It prevents future diseases from happening. Fact two is the clarify the water. Fact 3 is they kill bacteria, even good bacteria which corals need to stay healthy. This means that UV sterilizers should mainly be used for fish only tanks. With ozonizers, there is too much chemistry involved so I will make this quick. The main purpose most use ozonizers for is to clarify the water, which it does and it does a great job. However, use caution when using it can be disastrous if overdosed for both the tank inhabitants and humans.
Nano Everything
