The world’s greatest nano tank!

[ray-the-pilot]

Well, at least I think so! What do you think?
The aquarium I wanted was a Nemo reef tank with anemone. I was designing this tank for my grandchildren.
I started planning the project and doing research beginning 2/2009. I put the tank up, filled it, added substrate and live rock on 5/28/09. I let everything cycle and added fish (a pair of tank bred Perculae) on 6/30/09.
I went away for 2 1/2 weeks in late July and when I returned I had a diatom problem which I cleared up with scrupulous sanitation and the addition of a UV filter.
I added “Annie,” a Green Bubble Tip anemone, on 9/27/09.

As you can see from the photo, she still has her youthful green and ruddy brown color. She eats regularly. I feed her every 4-5 days with chunks of fish. She’s grown about 20% based on the disk size and number of tentacles. You can see that the female clown has fully bonded to her and “sleeps” in her during lights out. She has built a nest under Annie by sweeping out the substrate. I have seen eggs but they never last more than 24 hours.








Here are the tank specs:

Size 10 gal store brand
Coralife CF 24 watt 50-50
Eheim 2213 Filter with whatever it came with inside
Current Gamma 8 watt UV sterilizer
A few pounds of Fiji Live Rock
A few pounds of live substrate
Oceanic Salt adjusted to a SG of 1.0226 @ 78F

[jenglish]

Looks good

I am a bit concerned that tank conditions will fluctuate too much in a 10 gallon, and that the light may not be bright enough. Keep a close eye on it's color. If it gets too light it may be in trouble. It looks a little lighter than normal but that could be the picture or my monitor.

[ray-the-pilot]

Originally Posted by jenglish

Looks good

I am a bit concerned that tank conditions will fluctuate too much in a 10 gallon, and that the light may not be bright enough. Keep a close eye on it's color. If it gets too light it may be in trouble. It looks a little lighter than normal but that could be the picture or my monitor.

Hey thanks for the input! I have a 48 watt coralife back up that I was planning to use if I noticed any color problem.
Do you have any Green Bubble Tip Anemonies? Because I am interesed in what you feed them. Mine takes pretty much anything but some foods, like shrimp, seem to make her sick.

[jenglish]

I don't have one, I plan on getting one after I make some system changes and finiancial problems keep getting in the way. I have done a lot of reading researching them planning and dreaming

Any meaty seafood if generally tolerated, make sure it is not larger than the mouth of the nem. In the wild, a large meal is a rarity and nems feed off plankton so smaller is typically better. They get the majority of their energy from photosynthesis. Remove any shells, skin, bones, etc that the nem can't digest and it will be easier on them.

[ibanez2k]

Congrats on the tank! It's looking pretty good I think. It appears your watching what your doing at least. The ones that fail in this hobby seem to be the ones that aren't interested in putting the time and effort in for success. Your tank looks like you are on the right track. A challenge of a tank for sure but it looks like you're doing very well with it. Keep up on regular water changes so your water quality stays top notch and definately top off as often as you can, at least every day. Salinity fluctuations can be harder to manage in smaller tanks. Good luck with it! It looks great!

[ray-the-pilot]

Originally Posted by ibanez2k

Keep up on regular water changes so your water quality stays top notch and definately top off as often as you can, at least every day. Salinity fluctuations can be harder to manage in smaller tanks. Good luck with it! It looks great!

Water change is one of the secrets!
When I was researching this tank I knew right away that there wasn’t going to be any biofiltration system that could maintain a stable tank environment in a tank this small.
I have a lot of experience with planted tanks. In that world, they put tons of fertilizers ie. nitrates, phosphates etc. into the water daily but keep everything in check by doing massive weekly water changes, like 50% per week. That was my plan!
I do 2x25% water changes each week. The beauty of a 10 gal tank is that I only have to make 5 gal of water each week!
Ok I am very careful about making up my water. I have 2 scales, a 10 Kg scale that measures to a gram and a 250 gm scale that measures to 0.1 grams. I know from experience that if I weigh exactly 9,000 g of RO water and add exactly 312.8 g of Oceanic salt, the SG will be 1.0224. I never have to check the SG unless I buy a new lot of salt. I pull the RO water the night before and weigh and add the salt. I then have to warm it up until it is within 1 deg C of my tank water (27 – 29 deg. C).
OK I know that making up water this carefully is a pain but the benefit is that I do not even think about water quality. I never check pH, PO4, NO4, Ca, Mg, etc. Even the SG changes from evaporation are smoothed out by frequent water changes. I have a micro balance as well and can accurately measure the SG of my tank water. It is so constant that I don’t bother to check it any more.
I think of my system as being connected to an infinite supply of perfectly pure sea water that is always at the same conditions as my tank, which I can just tap whenever I need some!
Maybe I’m crazy, but I think my water is more stable than any 500 gal tank on these boards!

[Loverotties]

Very Good!

[ray-the-pilot]

Originally Posted by Loverotties

Very Good!

BTW there is more to it than just good water!

[cutietwo]

Everything looks good, amazing you are able to keep an anemone in a 10 gal, usually it's recommended for 30 gallons or more. That's great your clowns are laying eggs and you have not even had them a year...i've had my female for a year and a half and my male for about 3 months. Hopefully i'll see eggs soon too

[ray-the-pilot]

Originally Posted by cutietwo

Everything looks good, amazing you are able to keep an anemone in a 10 gal, usually it's recommended for 30 gallons or more. That's great your clowns are laying eggs and you have not even had them a year...i've had my female for a year and a half and my male for about 3 months. Hopefully i'll see eggs soon too

I hope your clowns spawn as well!

One thing I did even before I set up my tank was some research on Clown spawning behavior. I discovered that Clown Fish can change sex. When they are born they are all sexless juveniles living in a well ordered group with a dominant female at the top of the chain, followed by a male. All other fish are unsexed juveniles.

If the female dies the male changes sex and becomes the dominant female and the most dominant juvenile becomes the male. From this I discovered that you can get a guaranteed mating pair by observing the behavior of the fish when you buy them.

While at my LFS I discovered that he had a tank of Clowns. I watched them for a while and decided that one fish was dominant and another was second dominant. Then I went to the owner and said that I was interested in a pair of Clowns. He looked at them and selected the same fish that I did! It is actually pretty easy.

Now I am not saying that you do not have a male and female clown fish but you certainly do not have a mating pair yet since they did not do any selection before you put them together. In fact you could have two females (unlikely but possible) and females do not change back to males. The most likely thing is that the oldest fish is a female and the newest is a juvenile, who figures out that he is a male in time.

BTW It is obviously possible to keep an anemone in a ten gallon tank but it requires a lot of commitment. You need to do a lot of research and have a desire for perfection to be successful! I do not recommend it for a beginner!

[jenglish]

The size difference you want to look for is 20%. In a group of clowns, fish stay roughly 20% smaller than the next fish above them in the heirarchy. Even if you were to pick any two fish out of a group of juvies, as long as there is a significant size difference you should eventually end up with a male and female.


I really hope this nem does well and it looks good so far, but lets not get too far ahead of ourselves on a nem that has been in a tank for a little over a month. They have very slow metabolisms and even in insufficient conditions will sometimes look good for a few months before showing signs of decline. I have seen them kept in 15 gallon tanks before until they outgrew them, so I know it is possible.

[ray-the-pilot]

Originally Posted by jenglish

I really hope this nem does well and it looks good so far, but lets not get too far ahead of ourselves on a nem that has been in a tank for a little over a month. They have very slow metabolisms and even in insufficient conditions will sometimes look good for a few months before showing signs of decline. I have seen them kept in 15 gallon tanks before until they outgrew them, so I know it is possible.

You seem a little negative about this project.

I am very interested in why you think that there may be insuffcient conditions?

I cannot accept that my anemone knows how big a tank she is in; since, she has never moved from the spot I placed her in on day 1. Therefore, you need to explain to me what "insufficient" is in terms of some parameter like "light" or "water quality". I think I've looked at these pretty well but I am interested in what you think; since, I may have overlooked something.

What are your thoughts?

I am very interested in talking to anyone who has kept a green bubble tip for an extended period of time. Do you know anyone?

[Doug1]

I think guarded skeptism would be more accurate than negative.
Your E quad is fairly new to the tank and by your own admission you are religious about water changes, et al, but if you abandon your maintenance routine the tank WILL go downhill faster than a 500g tank, empirecally small tanks do when ignored or mistakes are made.
While your anem may be doing well now , typically when they go into decline it often takes 6 months or so , it's not always an over night thing, unless they get sucked into a power head.
Not saying that yours will, you seem to be on top of things but hopefully it will be growing and thriving 6 months down the road, and you need to consider a larger home for it.

[wharyat]

1 24W PC bulb is just simply not enough light for an anemone to thrive.

E quads naturally live in shallow reef environments; (comparatively) high organics and very intense light.


You didn't mention what you have for water flow. Anemones will require a medium amount of water flow, in your case, I'd say around 400GPH of low velocity flow.

And yes, I've kept a number of anemones over the years.

[ray-the-pilot]

Originally Posted by wharyat

1 24W PC bulb is just simply not enough light for an anemone to thrive.

E quads naturally live in shallow reef environments; (comparatively) high organics and very intense light.


You didn't mention what you have for water flow. Anemones will require a medium amount of water flow, in your case, I'd say around 400GPH of low velocity flow.

And yes, I've kept a number of anemones over the years.

Hey thanks for the input!

OK I think you may be right about the lighting (but I’m not convinced). I have a 96 watt Coralife 50-50 CF (I mistakenly thought it was only 48 watt in one of my previous posts). I put that on my tank and it clearly is too intense. The nem and all the other inverts, like polyps, collapsed into balls under that much light. I attenuated the light with aluminum strips to about 50% and now the nem is shrunk back slightly but the polyps are at full extent as far as I can tell. At this light level, the other photosynthetic plants in the tank are pearling (giving off O2), which impiles that there is plenty of light for algae.

As far as your flow rate numbers go I’m a little confused by what you mean. I am "totally" not relying on biofiltration to maintain my water quality therefore flow through my filter is not a question.

As far as velocity is concerned it is set such that the substrate from the back of the tank is moved gradually to the front. This is part of my sanitation program. I am currently running at 100 GPH. If I ramped up the flow rate to 400 gal per hour all my substrate will end up in my filter. That is way too high.

Organics is an interesting thought! I never considered that but it does make sense. I know how to increase the organics in my system and I may try that. The risk is that I may have an increase in photosynthetic microbiology.

Thanks for the help!

BTW how long did you keep any nem? I’m interested in their eating cycle. Can you help with that?