stocking suggestion for 12g nano

[lotsoftats]

looking for suggestions on stocking my new 12g nano.....broke down and sold my 90 over the winter...never could get anything to grow and thrive in that tank....Think I had a batch of bad LR...no matter what i did it would never stabalize....But enough about that......I will get a bigger tank just trying to start small.....not having a tank was driving me crazy......So anyways.

Suggestions for:

fish........CUC......I am also looking at upgrading the light to a 13" odyssea 2x24w pc fixture or maybe a 70w metal halide if I can find one cheap. It has 2 x 18w 6400k pc's in it right now...Here are some pics still need to clean the filter.

 

[jackal4eva]

Big fan of neon gobies in these little tanks - a pair of them are always neat to have.

 

[andywe]

12g is real small.
1 small fish or 2 tiny fish

Coral;s. maybe some small Zoas, small mushrooms, most softies with slow growth.

Wy change the lights? it's a small tank and I ahve excellent success with PC's on Nano's/ I would got to a 10k though instead of 6500.

Just my thoughts.

 

[supertech99]

Stock depends highly on filtration/husbandry on a nano I kept 2 small clowns and a chromis unsuccessfully in a 10 gal for a while (had poor filtration) but am currently keeping a damsel and a firefish successfully in a 5.5gal. Clown gobies are fragile shippers so expect a loss due to not eating if you go that way. I bet you could do 2 small fish in there, kinda depends on how often you want to change the water.

 

[sandalscout]

I'm of the mindset that fish make small nano hard to keepdue to filtration needs. My 2.5gallon has softies and even and LPS colony and I don't do a thing to it, except topoff every once in a while. It hasn't had a water change in over a year, and only has 1 crab in it (doing fine), all corals looks good, everything is super stable, but if I had anymore inverts or any fish, I'm not sure it would be.

 

[supertech99]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15156397#post15156397 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by andywe
12g is real small.
1 small fish or 2 tiny fish

Coral;s. maybe some small Zoas, small mushrooms, most softies with slow growth.

Wy change the lights? it's a small tank and I ahve excellent success with PC's on Nano's/ I would got to a 10k though instead of 6500.

Just my thoughts.

+2 on the pc's and ditching the 6500. I used the sunpaq dual atinic pc bulbs in the past and the color is pleasing to the eye and my softcorals LOVED it!

 

[james3370]

my biocube 8 has a purple pseudo & fuji damsel along w/ a purple lobster....all are suppose to be agressive but they get along great. in fact, during lights out, the fuji & pseudo tend to hide out in the same cave & i've never seen the lobster be agressive to either fish. when i drop flakes in, he comes out to feed & if one of the fish even comes near, he darts back behind the rock

my brain coral is on the sandbed & closes up to about 3" across, but during lights on, it opens up to about 7-8" across & would probably get bigger but it hits the front glass & rock behind, so sometimes it swells upward too LOL

kenya tree is about 2" tall during lights out & grows to about 6-7" tall. so tall, that it recently fragged itself of a long limb, so i glued that to a piece of rubble & put it on the other side of the tank.

mine has stock lighting. i topoff maybe every other day (daily if i run my ghetto-rigged fan in the feeding door LOL) & i do 1.5g water change every 2-3 weeks

 

[james3370]

here's a few months ago (clickable thumbnails):




in the previous pics, i had moved the tank around & plugged the actinic into the wrong plug, so they weren't coming on when they should. i have since fixed that as you can tell by the nice purple hue the tank now has....here is just now:

 

[lotsoftats]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15156506#post15156506 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by supertech99
Stock depends highly on filtration/husbandry on a nano I kept 2 small clowns and a chromis unsuccessfully in a 10 gal for a while (had poor filtration) but am currently keeping a damsel and a firefish successfully in a 5.5gal. Clown gobies are fragile shippers so expect a loss due to not eating if you go that way. I bet you could do 2 small fish in there, kinda depends on how often you want to change the water.

supertech....I am considering drilling the back of the tank and adding a 15g sump and a 10g refugium to the system...so 37g total but that would probably drop to 30 with rock and sand...so what are my options if I go this way.....I was thinking cleaner shrimp a couple pep shrimp and maybe a pair of clowns...the rest coral....mike

 

[supertech99]

sump and fuge is the way to go! but if your going to that trouble you may want to just sell the all in one and start from scratch with a 10 gal or a acrylic tank. just my .02 i always wanted to do a mini sump project. someday iam gonna build a 5.5 display with a 5.5 sump, i think that would be fun! Check out the diy threads b4 you go too crazy!

 

[lotsoftats]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15159371#post15159371 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by supertech99
sump and fuge is the way to go! but if your going to that trouble you may want to just sell the all in one and start from scratch with a 10 gal or a acrylic tank. just my .02 i always wanted to do a mini sump project. someday iam gonna build a 5.5 display with a 5.5 sump, i think that would be fun! Check out the diy threads b4 you go too crazy!

Not truly a AIO in all the filtration is removable from the tank...so I could just remove the filtration and start drilling....lol

I actually picked up a 15g glass tank tonight to use for the sump....next the fuge.

 

[DMBillies]

I have to say I wouldn't convert the AIO... you could probably sell it and buy everything you'd need to convert a bigger non-RR tank to a reef ready and get the sump/plumbing/lighting.

You drill it and you are killing some of the eventual resale value of the nano too (most people who want nanos want the trouble free aspect of them... not a gaping hole in the back).

20 gallon tanks are a dime a dozen and you can probably find even slightly bigger tanks poking around on here... anyway, that's just my opinion there.

On stocking, we've had a green clown goby in our nano for better than 2 years at this point. Great little fish. Not a whole lot of movement though... they like to perch... like a lot of the smaller fish, including neon gobies.

Honestly, I'd look into a goby/shrimp combo for a tank of that size. They don't swim much either, but they are very interesting to watch, the gobies are usually some of the more colorful small fish (maybe because they have a little protector), they should be happy in a tank that small, and it wouldn't be a huge bio-load. In my experience, they haven't been hard to keep either... but they may be more sensitive than other options.

Also, FWIW, I know of someone that accidentally got two clownfish to breed in a very small tank (I can't remember, but it was no more than 12 gallons). Clowns are super easy to keep happy and apparently happy enough to even breed in a small tank. Of course, they are bigger fish (unless you really start with small guys), so you might have more trouble with coral if you go with them, but they definitely would provide the movement you might want in the tank (that's really the only reason I care about fish... a thriving reef with no fish just doesn't look right).