Nanos or very small tank

Wes888

Reef enthusiast
I've never run any small system. Even all of my 10g baby fish tanks are all connected with a 125g sump with huge UV and stuff. Since I have excessive amount of small clowns, I want to put a very small tank on my desk so that I can look at them while I work. I know small system is gonna have a big issue with water evaporating and parameter swing. What's the easiest way (least effort) to maintain a small tank in a work environment?
 
water evaporation i dont see it beign that big a hastle since your only gonna look at a fish only tank , right? so no special lighting may be required thats too hot

as far as least effort the only probs i had when i set up my 10 was at the beggining during the cycle and a few weeks after when the parameters were a little haywire but once thats done , its just like any normal tank IMHO , speaking from my personal experience of course, it is not very forgiving as far as water changes go so i do keep up with those every sunday , i do normally a 1-1.5 gallon water change, i dont use a skimmer and the hob on it only runs carbon through a filter bag

feeding is a little tricky cause you can easily overfeed , i found that just scrapping off a little from a frozen cube once or twice with a knife is enough

********DISCLAIMER**********
*this is not advice take it for what you may, my personnal experience may not be typical, and results may vary, this experience comes from a person keeping 3 fish in a 10 gallon ,dwarf lion , clown, and mandarin goby*
 
I've got the Fluval Edge at my office. You can see the build thread.
I just ordered some led's which will fix my lighting issue for corals. The stock lights are a gross color and not meant to be around saltwater so even if you swap out the bulbs they will still blow prematurely. Other than the lighting though, it has worked out great. I try to do water changes once every two weeks but that recently has been more like once a month if that. I keep two 5g containers under my desk, one for fresh and one for saltwater, both of which i bring in from home. I top off a couple times a week.
 
I see. it doesn't sound like too bad on maintenance.

Just finished reading your Fluval Edge post. Lovely tank!
 
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I had 3 gal pico and the maintenance wasnt bad, other than daily tops off. The issue was that it was very hard to leave with someone else because if something went wrong, it would go bad fast and they had no idea that something was going wrong or how to fix it. The other issue with leaving it with someone was feeding, it was so easy to over feed that it caused me serious issues.
 
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