Setting up a 20gal any advice ?

[korone]

I am planning on setting up a 20 gal nano, consisting of: soft,polyp,and mushroom corals, 2 or 3 fish, invert and cleaners. The setup I have in mind will use live rock/sand, 2X55 PC, CPR backpack, etc. Can anyone offer some recommendations/ advice before I get started? Thanks in advance. oh...does anyone have experience with coralife or finnex pc fixtures, was going to DIY the hood but dont trust my wiring ability especially if water is involved.

 

[Anonymous]

I sell the Coralife Aqualights like they're going out of style...very popular, and very easy to use. Built-tin fans, nice color from the bulbs...you can't go wrong, really. The fixture for the 20H is a 24" 130W one, and it should be fine for soft corals.

I have the 20", 96W fixture on my 10g nano (pictures in this forum if you'd like to check it out).

Peace,

Chip

 

[brandon4291]

Sure, those will work fine for soft corals IMO. I recommend keeping the tank very clean and keeping a water change schedule -no matter- what your tank looks like week after week. I think eventually most reefkeepers consider going a little lax on the change regularity, because the system is running fine and looking great. A few weeks and months of this thinking sends your tank into a biological decline phase and I have seen it wreck nano tanks (my reefbowl) as well as larger tanks (240+) so I say change some of your water every two weeks no matter what. I don't mean wreck in the literal sense of an instant crash (although possible in some settings)--I mean developing algae in an otherwise clean system as well as notable coral health problems like microalgae infestation and general polyp retraction.

I think not waiting for imbalances to develop in a tank is some of the most important startup advice... get us pics when you get it started

brandon M.

 

[Anonymous]

everything seems ok

i had a 20G AGA long when living in NY, that's back in '97, that was skimmed by a CPR B-P without any problem, perfect choice. lighting was a 175W MH Coralife pendant.

you should have great success with such a set up.
but, as Brandon told you, keep a close schedule for water changes, and you will avoid most of new-tanks/beginners problems.

take care,

Toine

 

[Anonymous]

I've had a few Coralife fixtures and they're all pretty substandard in quality. They break very fast. For example, I bought one of the quad PC fixtures that comes w/ built in fans. Within a week the fans seemed to degrade into noisy whirring whines. And then one came loose in it's fixture, and rattled/buzzed. Then it just stopped working.

I won't buy coralife any more. A product that costs over $300 should last more than 5 months.

 

[Anonymous]

heres my 20gal setup... CPR bak pak 2r for skimming, 175W MH PFO pendant with 10000k Ushio bulb, two Power heads for circulation, visi-therm heater, 10gal fuge (still in progress, has been for months) about 25-30lbs LR, 3" Sandbed LS..go to the members tanks specs and look for Nikons Micro barrier reef..(AND NO FOR ALL YOU SMART A$$ES OUT THERE IT REALLY ISNT A BARRIER REEF!) you can see ive had my critics

 

[ricky1414]

use maxi-jet powerheads. much smaller than any others i have seen and they provide good water flow.