Hi all,
I recently purchased a 10 gallon nano cube. The tank has been set up for ~ 2 years. The guy took the
lr and put in a bucket with
sw, took the critters and put in a bucket with water, and left the sand with a little water in the tank. Move home went smooth (only ~ hour home). At any rate, this being my first
sw tank, i'll give a list of all the tank inhibatants, equip, etc, let me know the good/bad of what I have or what should be done to change it. Then I have a few questions.
First off tank specs:
10 gallon aga
current usa 40 watt 50/50 lighting fixture (set on a timer to light from 9 am till 9 pm) (moonlight on a timer from 8:30 pm till 1 am)
aquatec small
hob filter running a phosphate pad and a small pouch of Bio-Chemzorb.
Lee's small protein skimmer (the smallest available)
17 pounds
lr
17 pounds of
ls with
cc on the bottom. (aparently he had it set up for
cc, then a year ago he took most of the
cc out and put
ls in it)
50 watt heater
60
gph pump
Tank inhibatants
blue damsel
pinkish colored psudochromis
3 tubro snails
1 unknown hermit crab
small clam
Coral banded shrimp
90+ yellow polyps
120+ star polyps
Green ricordea mushroom thats splitting right now.
Does the above setup sound good? I talked to a very knowledagable
lfs guy that deals only with
fw and
sw fish. He seemed to think the filtration/skimming was overkill and the lees protein skimmer was junk. Even tho I'm not the smartest person in
SW yet, I have to disagree with him there, because he was trying to tell me that 10 gallon tank is real hard to care for. Trust me, i've done 4 + months of reading forums every day.. It can be done. I think he was trying to sell me a bigger tank, which wasn't going to happen.
At any rate, does the above list sound ok? Is there anything bad with that setup? Or something I should get rid of or something I should get to keep it better?
My questions:
I have some dosing stuff like calcium, iodine, essentail elements, strontium/molybdenum. I just dose very little once a week with a
pwc.
1. I was thinking about buying the kent aquadose automatic drip system. If i mix some kalkwasser solution in it and have it auto drip, will that affect my tank parameters that much? Or would i be further ahead just topping off with distilled water?
2. The aquarium pharm tap water filter system seen here:
http://www.bigalsonline.com/catalog/...;pcid1=;pcid2=
is a very cheap version of a
ro unit. It claims to be a d/i system. Would this be good to get if I don't have the money to spend on a
ro unit for now? Instead of buying distilled water?
3. I have a calcium/
alk test kit (liquid). Once I get the hang of testing/dosing accordingly to keep my calcium levels attained, will I need to invest in some buffering compound to keep my
alk where it is now? like
DKH by kent or something?
Is there anything i'm missing or anything else that is important that I should know? I know the basic to intermediate things to keeping corals/fish in a
sw tank and know how important keeping good water quality along with not overdosing is. If anyone feels like I am lacking information about something, feel free to tell me. Its just a 10 gallon tank, but I figured it would be something to get my hands wet so to speak. If mistakes are made, I will learn from them, however, I'd rather not make any mistakes, thus I come looking for answers. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
TIA
-Stewie
The skimmer is fairly large, but it does fit. 
Linear Mode
