Beginner with 14 gallon peninsula

[Spendoc757]

Hey everyone, I’m new to the hobby and I recently bought a IM 14 gallon peninsula tank from a guy off Craigslist and it came with a small piece of live rock, a duster worm, and a clownfish. I wish it didn’t come with the fish because I know the tanks need to be properly cycled, which I’m still learning about. As I’m looking into all the information out there, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed lol. There so much info out there.

But with out sounding completely dumb, what’s the best way to maintain a small aquarium like a 14 gallon. I’m worried about the water evaporation also and what’s the proper way to add water back into the tank to maintain the salinity. It’s a extremely huge learning curve for me and if anyone has some tips on nano aquarium maintenance or maybe some do’s and don’ts.

 

[SPR1968]

That’s looks a great start so far

And welcome to R2R it’s great to have you with us!

 

[Kremins]

Hi and welcome to R2R.

I have an IM14 so I can say for sure you are going to want an ATO (Auto Top Off) for adding water back to the system for maintaining salinity otherwise you will have to add RO water to the sump portion of the tank throughout the day manually. I built a custom ATO using the Reef-pi system discussed in the DIY forum on here but you can pickup various ones off the shelf like the Tunze ATO that will do the trick.

 

[Taxus812]

I agree with Kremins an ATO. I like the Aquaqua Smart ATO micro. Another way to keep water in is adding a top. My wife has one that covers the back sump and display on her 7 gal and looses next to zero water.

oh and welcome to R2R be careful it is addictive. I have been into Marine Aquariums since March but learned a LOT on this site. I hope you will too

Oh an get a test kit ASAP. You will want to measure the ammonia daily sine it is cycling with a live animal.

 

[ectoaesthetics]

First off: welcome!! So nanos are great because they are easy to keep an eye on and easier to do water changes or eliminate pest in!!! Huge wins there. They are also crazy unstable! If you have a medical background let me know and I will give you an analogy that will make the whole instability think make sense instantly. But in short there is less room for things to go wrong and things go wrong faster. For instance if you buy a coral that uptakes calcium there is far less calcium in 14 gallons than in 100 gallons. And while there are more corals in 100 gallons you will see your calcium drop much faster in 14.

So what I’m getting to is stability is KEY in smaller thanks!! An ATO (the Tunze is great! And fit in almost all of my back reservoirs of my nanos) would be huge! Keeping up on water changes is also critical 10-20% is fine! I’ve kept nanos since 2001 and have loved it. Do not try to pull off an SPS nano until you really have at least a year of stability on the tank and know how to keep calc/alk stable. It’s harder than it looks in a nano.

If you do go tunze get the normal and not the nano if you have the space. The $100 more for the optical sensor might save you more than $100 in live stock.

Hit me up in PM with ANY questions. I’ve made plenty of mistakes over the years lol.

 

[Pbh-reef]

Welcome!

For now without an ato just look at the 3rd chamber in the back’s water level when the water is properly topped off. Using rodi or bottled distilled or rodi water from the drugstore or supermarket top it off at least once a day back to where it was. That’s what I did before I set up my ato on my nuvo 10 and it was fine. You top off with fresh water not saltwater since the water evaporates but the salt remains (common mistake for people to make early on!)

For cycling my advice is to get an ammonia alert badge from seachem. You can also seed the tank with bacteria like fritz turbo start or Dr Time, getting bacteria from a pet store and not Amazon/online is recommended because there is less of a chance of it having gone bad in shipping due to temp fluctuations. I personally would not worry too much about testing other parameters for now.

My next advice is to have some rodi water (fresh) and premixed saltwater on hand in case ammonia spikes and you need to do a quick water change. In a small tank most issues can be remediated by a water change. If you only have room for one kind of water store freshwater because it should take long to mix small and heat Amount of salt water (do you have a heater and small pump to mix saltwater yet?)

 

[Pbh-reef]

Also you can control the amount of ammonia in the tank by feeding less, so just try not to feed more than the clown can eat in 2 minutes more than twice a day, even once a day at the start. The worm may be a bit of an issue. Try to spot feed it frozen with a pippette once or twice a day. They aren’t very hard to keep But these worms tend to do better in more mature tanks.

 

[ectoaesthetics]

+1 on the Dr Tim’s and Fritz from @Pbh-reef

I would only feed the clown once a day for sure while the tank is cycling. If it came with the fish and rock how long did the previous owner have it all in there? You may be done with the cycle...