I just set up a 10g for my youngest son and will say 100% the best setup is what I followed. Aquaclear hob using intank media basket (or can use factory tray and modify. There’s good videos on YouTube how to do this wo spending the extra $50 on the intank tray.) however I got the intank cause I wanted to use as a fuge and it blacks out the front of the filter for lighting. I spent like $14 on a 12w akne grow light and used 4 small dabs of super glue to glue it onto the back of the filter. For lighting I went with the 3.0 fluval sea nano 20w. There are some better lights in price range and even little cheaper but not as adjustable on spectrum etc.. can hit 600 par up top and do sps if you want or tune it down to 60% and do softies low and Lps medium just fine. I went with the aq70 and using the impeller from a aq30 to reduce flow but have bigger filter for fuge. I went live rock from lfs and carrib sea oolight fine grain sand. I like deeper fine grain sandbeds myself as they keep things from sinking into the sand and rotting but little harder to get flow right wo blowing everything around. I recommend something a little bigger in grain for most like pink figi. Using a 50w fluval titanium heater left over from when this was a freshwater glow fish nightlight tank for my other kids room. I just started adding corals so nothing fancy to see but has been an easy stable setup thus far and I’m kverfeeding it big time with 1 full cube per day but running steady at 5ppm and .1-.2 pho’s. Will add few pics but fuge light just turned off and dt light Disney come in for few more hours so lighting won’t be good..
That’s just poly fill stuffing in first chamber, under the cheto is a bag of crushed coral in second chamber just to help keep better stability and give some younger pods a place to live. The white sponge in front of the cheto is my only complaint with the intank design. Holes are too big and allow clumps of cheto out so I had to place a this slice of the factory filter sponge in front to keep the cheto out of the display.
Heater is way big for tank (size wise) but keeps tank within 1* swing and we run house at 76* day and 68* at night so it’s a work horse. Only thing I might change down the road is pulling the crushed coral out and the decider between chambers 2-3 and giving more room for the cheto but I won’t do that till this little ball can’t keep up tank demands. Little amazon light timer is best and easiest I’ve ever used. Simple easy setup and works perfect for the fuge lighting. I also use pico overflow box designed for the filter with no intake stem on the filter. I cut it down a little as it was way too tall for a 10g tank and glued piece of lexan to bottom to reseal it. It’s a point of sale and wish I spent the extra $10 and got the oceanbox version with magnets. It looks better and works better. I might just build my own out of lexan later so it’s clear and less obtrusive but some sort of overflow is a must with this setup or you’ll have all kinds of stuff floating on surface of water. And no way to remove it other then old school paper towel trick.
This same setup will work easily up to a 40g breeder setup only difference in bigger tanks is needing to add small wave makers to keep flow up.
