Low Maintenance 10G QT tank Plan

sen5241b

sen5241b

Reef enthusiast
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I'm trying to setup a 10G fish only tank with LR that will be super simple to take care of and yes I know nano tanks may become a pain to maintain water quality:

  • No sand just 30 pounds of LR. Sand looks nice but it can become a big detritus trap.
  • Put many small pieces of LR on bottom with larger pieces on top. We already have the LR. (30 lbs or coral collected from the beach.)
  • Under-gravel filter or water pump creating flow from underneath LR to prevent any detritus buildup
  • Water pump (intended for 30G tank) creating flow across top.
  • Heater
  • Plain old hood with florescent bulbs (advanced lighting at a later stage)
  • Hang on filter with floss and chemi-pure elite
  • Only 3 fish
  • NO large fish! (Nanos have water problems because a large fish dies in only 10G and you get an ammonia spike).
  • 50% water changes. I've heard that most of the beneficial bacteria is in the LS & LR so 50% changes do not take out 50% of the bacteria.
  • No protein skimmer.
  • A piece of chaeto, but where. Chaeto in main display is a bad idea.
  • Budget $100 to $120.

Is this workable? Can this tank setup keep nitrates below 20ppm?
 
It could keep the nitrates that low,but for a fish only,why stress over 20ppm nitrates?As long as they dont go over 40,you'd be fine.
 
+1 yote, fish are less sensitive to nitrates, just make sure they dont get to high, i think biff had her tank at well over 100ppm with nitrates for quite a while
 
Yeah, but there are some fish that do need very good water quality -like no more than nitrates 20 ppm. True?
 
Last edited:
I don't quite follow your filtration. No sand, but lr rubble on the bottom with an undergravel filter? What will that accomplish? The reason for an undergravel filter is so water is pulled thru the substrate, which is where biological filtration occurs. You have no substrate...

Chaeto only works if you are harvesting it. If your not having to prune it, it's not growing and removing nitrates.

As far as fish tolerance to nitrates, if the fish is placed in water with say 20ppm nitrate and it's left to build up, the fish can easily tolerate 80ppm or more. But, put a new fish in that water and chances are it will be dead in a week. Very common cause of many mysterious fish deaths.
 
ccCapt said:
I don't quite follow your filtration. No sand, but lr rubble on the bottom with an undergravel filter? What will that accomplish? The reason for an undergravel filter is so water is pulled thru the substrate, which is where biological filtration occurs. You have no substrate...

Chaeto only works if you are harvesting it. If your not having to prune it, it's not growing and removing nitrates.

As far as fish tolerance to nitrates, if the fish is placed in water with say 20ppm nitrate and it's left to build up, the fish can easily tolerate 80ppm or more. But, put a new fish in that water and chances are it will be dead in a week. Very common cause of many mysterious fish deaths.
Click to expand...

Once upon a time, a man drained his tank and removed all the LR to get a damsel out. After catching the fish, he poured the water back in and inadvertently stirred the sand up. Hidden in the sand was a whole lot of accumulated detritus which, when released from the sand, caused a massive ammonia spike and everything died. Thus some people decide to go with no sand. Also, under gravel filters and sand do not work together.

The idea is: with water being sucked from underneath and blasted down on top of the LR, zero detritus will settle anywhere. The carbon and floss will mop up floating detritus. The live rubble and rock (3lbs per gallon), being porous will continue to provide biological filter. The result is a low maintenance tank that needs few water changes --but then this whole thing is a bit of an experiment. (I hope to make the tank a 'showcase QT' tank.)
 
I also don't understand the undergravel filter. All it is is a trap for detritus. Nothing gets pulled out, nothing gets removed. All it does is trap detritus and crap under a panel where you and your cleaners can't reach. Which is why undergravel filters are not used in saltwater in the first place... Undergravel filters aren't strong enough to pull detritus up to the top of the tank and "blast" anything. You would have better luck just going bare bottom and high flow, and cleaning the bottom of the tank yourself. With an undergravel filter and live rock, you will still get crap stuck to, on and in the live rock.

As for the rest of your plan, I think it sounds good.

You can make or buy a small HOB fuge to keep chaeto in.
 
I agree with Biffer on the HOB fuge. I have one and it works great. Cheato grows at a tremendous rate. If you can't do a large fuge, a HOB is a great choice.
 
If you want a really stable 10g qt, put a 55g sump on it. ;)

Just put a hob filter with a little LR and do 3g or so every other day water changes.
 
FIRST LIVESTOCK ADDED

Brown diatoms started growing in there 3 weeks back but we cut back on light and reduced nitrates. Nitrates spiked to 30 ppm. We did a water change and now they are holding at 20ppm. Some very small inverts growing on LR.

Put snails and hermits in last night.
 
I've got one 10 gallon, one 15 gallon, one 20 gallon and one 26 gallon bowfront tank. Each tank was set up using LR and LS other than that, each were done differently. The 26 gallon was my first and I went very slow. I kept waiting for a cycle that never happened. I added a refugium start-up kit and a reef tank tune up kit from IPSF. This tank has been incredibly stable. It's got one HOB filter and I change the thingy weekly. It has one 400 flow thingy and several bubble stones. I used to have 3 flow thingy's but I had to remove them when I put in seahorses. I did get a nice brown bloom and called Leroy at GARF. He sent some snails and crabs that were different than the ones I got from IPSF. The browns were gone in a week and I haven't had any problems since. Recently, I added seahorses. I removed all other fish and my emerald crab but left all the other snails and hermits. I hate to admit this, but I've only done 2 water changes in this tank since it's start-up in November 1st. I check the water daily with dip strips and test weekly with the drip kit. My corals grow like weeds in there and I've got green seaweed that I have to clear out about twice a week. One of my seahorses eats like crazy from hand feedings twice a day and the other one won't eat at all. Calypso- my non eater- is surviving off pods she hunts out of the seaweed. I test regularly because I can't believe that I've got such a stable tank! My 10 gallon was set up with the IPSF kits but the sand and rocks were "leftovers" from my 26 gallon and other stuff I scrounged from my LFS. It has been incredibly stable even though at one point it had 5 fishes in it! Right now it's plagued with red slime that just won't leave but my test numbers are good. My 20 gallon was set up in a day using LS and I put in a bunch of corals and that's it. It has three fish a maroon clown, a puffer and some sort of a goby. Also, I've got a cleaner shrimp and 2 peppermints. This tank has trouble with nitrates creeping up and I do water changes weekly at least often it's 2x a week. My 15 I never added the bio stuff at the beginning I just added in stuff from my existing tank. There is only rocks, sand and one coral in that tank. I've got a few snails and hermits that snuck in on some seaweed I tossed in there. It is also having a slime problem.

I guess this was a long way to say that I'm a fan of setting up a good bio-diverse sand bed and I don't think the ugf's are necessary to have a stable environment unless you are setting up a plenium in which case everything I've read says that's the way to get stability in a tiny tank. I'm really interested to see how your experiment turns out! looks like a great cheap way to start a tank!

catherine
 
I have a lot of experience with under gravel filters from my days of freshwater and you should know that it is impossible to move enough water through them to move solids back to the surface. Even if that were not the case, you would quickly go through pumps. the point of the under gravel filter is to trap wast as it is pulled thorugh the substrate so that you can gravel vac it later, hence the name "UNDER-GRAVEL". without substrate you will just end up with a load of waste below your filter where you will have to move eveything to clean it. the real problem is that without the substrate you will not have the surface area upon which the bacteria will grow which means you will not have enough bacteria to process the waste. Im not saying it wont work, rather, it absolutley will not work as well as a system with a skimmer. You are right that the under gravel filter will not work with sand but the reason we use sand is for the larger surface area it provides. You dont need sand, but without it you need to compensate for it's absence. If you carefully read the article you posted, it says that maintenence is required. personally I would rather change skimmer cups and do water changes than to mess with a gravel vaccuum. The system you are proposing will work but the longer it runs, the harder it is going to get to maintain your water quality until eventually nothing will live in it. just my :twocents: + :twocents: + :twocents: + :twocents:.
 
In many tanks, detritus settles somewhere, decays and eventually becomes nitrates.

My original idea was to get very strong flow under the LR ----enough o keep any dead spots from forming under the LR and this way ALL detritus would stay in the water column until it gets caught in floss or carbon. Generally, you use air pumps to get a low flow pull from UGFs but I might try pushing with a powerful pump. I never intended to use a gravel vac with the system.
 
I've decided to use my copper 10 gal tank as my QT tank. Any new fish I introduce to my 40 gal tank will get treated with copper, PraziPro and Formalin. Since all three can be used at the same time, it will take them three weeks in quarantine.
 
My copper tank has nothing in it but a heater, a mag HOB micron filter and a small power head for circulation. I've been running it for three weeks and have zero ammonia, nitrates and nitrites. I attribute this to the micron filter which I clean ever three days. The current resident is a large Percula clown who will get out of QT in one week. You can't get much simpler then this.
 

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