Thoughts on my new nano tank?

[Meklo]

Hey everyone! I'm new here and so far everyone seems very nice and helpful. I look forward to getting to know some of you. I haven't had a saltwater tank in about 5-6 years and I feel a bit rusty. So, maybe you guys can help calm my nerves?

I have an idea of a tank I want to put together and I hope you will give me your opinions. Honestly, I am not sure it varies much from a lot of the other build threads that I see on various forums. If anyone has any ideas, thoughts, or suggestions on anything I would love to hear them.

I am purely in the research phase and I haven't purchased anything. I want to get a pretty good idea of how I am going to tackle this before I start. Also, living in Alaska makes it a little harder to get somethings cheaply.

-The tank is an oceanic 29 gallon biocube hqi.

-I want to replace the pump with a rio 6hf (I've had success with this brand before and it has a little better flow than the stock pump).

-I plan to use the AquaticLife Skimmer 115. I can't find a better skimmer that will fit.

-I will be using the middle chamber as a refugium. I've thought about buying the fuge basket from InTank, but I am not sure it is necessary at the moment.

-I will also ad a Hydor Koralia 425.

Has anyone ordered live rock from marine depot? They have some for sale that is really cheap and aren't robbing me on the shipping. Most of the reviews are very good. Anyone have experience?

After I get everything setup I am probably going to buy a reefkeeper lite to help control everything (wavemaker, lighting, etc...)

As far as stock goes nothing is written in stone.... I plan to have a small amount of fish. Nothing too big. I won't be cramming a bunch of corals in there either. I like giving them room to grow. In the end though, I would like both lps and sps. Although I plan to limit the sps to only a few pieces. I want to start off slowly before adding anything extremely sensitive. I've never had a nano tank before and I want to get a feel for the setup before I dive into that.

I am looking for a fairly simple setup. I just want to ease into things again and play around. I know that I will upgrade in the future, its inevitable, so I just want to see how things pan out. Anyway, thanks for reading all of this and sharing your ideas.

 

[bskerrichard27]

Seems to be a good start to me

 

[Meklo]

Thanks. I was looking to see what everyone thought. Never hurts to hear people's advice!

 

[carey]

Hiya! Welcome to the forum!

i have a 29g biocube and LOVE the intank media basket and fuge. I also have that skimmer on my 20g tank, not a bad little skimmer.

I don't think you can fit it in the back compartment if you get the media basket. In fact, if you plan on doing your weekly water changes you can easily get by with no skimmer at all.

 

[Meklo]

Thank Carey!

I am not sure exactly how I want to deal with that just yet. I would like to run the skimmer. I have had trouble finding out exactly what the dimensions are on the second chamber of the hqi model. It differs from the normal biocube. So, I am not sure how much room I have. The video InTank shows of the installation is of the normal biocube model. I have considered a few different things. Ideally I would love to have a bit of rubble rock or some filter media...something, with the macroalgea. I contacted InTank and hopefully they might shed some light on it. I may just have to wait and cross that bridge when I come to it. I can probably DIY something.

 

[Meklo]

I heard back from InTank today. Apparently the second chamber on both biocubes are exactly the same. I was wrong before. The only difference is the lighting bracket on the hqi model.

Btw, they got back me to quickly and seem very helpful.