Budget 10g nano

[Gobi-Wan]

Lately I have been wondering if it would be possible to make a low maintenance, low cost reef out of a standard 10g tank. The idea would be to partition a quarter or third of the tank off with a baffle and create all the filtration in that part of the tank. It would become kind of a small "peninsula" style. Then do something really simple in the display like some kind of monoculture with a fish or two. Something easy. Pulsating xenia came to mind, since I love watching them but am too afraid to introduce them to my 75g tank. I have also thought about a single anemone and clownfish pair, but that would probably be too high maintenance for what I want. I am thinking about something that could be put on a desk at work, with an auto feeder and be left over the weekend. Just curious if anyone else had any ideas like this, because when I had the idea I thought for SURE someone has done this... then research turned up nothing. What combination of livestock and filtration would work well for a very basic reef like this? Or has it been tried already and failed?

 

[James M]

You can most definitely do this . A built in filter sounds like a good idea .

 

[Diamond1]

Check this out it might be something worth looking into. It's more of a drop in solution to what your after than it is a DIY but it looks pretty cool.
Also you would be surprised how much you can stuff into a 10 gallon tank coral wise. I had one for a couple years with a clown, a tailspot blenny and a bunch of corals.

https://www.fijicube.com/products/in-sump-10-gallon

 

[Gobi-Wan]

Check this out it might be something worth looking into. It's more of a drop in solution to what your after than it is a DIY but it looks pretty cool.
Also you would be surprised how much you can stuff into a 10 gallon tank coral wise. I had one for a couple years with a clown, a tailspot blenny and a bunch of corals.

https://www.fijicube.com/products/in-sump-10-gallon

That's exactly what I'd like to build diy! Just curious exactly what equipment I need. In other words, for a simple reef, do I need skimming? Do I need carbon? I was thinking, what corals can I keep healthy with only, say, carbon and GFO I could make compartments for, live rock and sand for bio? Would I be overrun with algae?

 

[Diamond1]

I've run tanks with and without skimmers but if I had a choice I would always run a skimmer. Without a skimmer, plan on doing weekly water changes of at least 25%.
As for GFO and carbon I only run carbon once in a while and if you only plan on keeping softies I wouldn't worry to much about gfo. Most softies like a little bit of nutrients and can stand water that's not pristine. As long as your doing regular water changes you should be OK. If your thinking about LPS or SPS then GFO wouldn't be a bad idea.
If you do want to run carbon and GFO you could always just put some in a bag and drop it into a higher flow area of the filter section and change it out as needed.
You could use something like marinepure in your inlet section to add some biological filtration but with enough live rock in the display even that won't be absolutely needed.
I would also run filter floss in the inlet section to help keep the big particles from settling in the sump. That would need to be changed frequently or at the very least cleaned when you do your water changes.

You could set up the sump chamber in 3 sections
The first section as the inlet with mechanical filtration (filter floss, carbon GFO, etc...)
The second section for the skimmer and you could put your heater in there
The third section for the return pump. That section only needs to be big enough to hold your return pump.

 

[Gobi-Wan]

I've run tanks with and without skimmers but if I had a choice I would always run a skimmer. Without a skimmer, plan on doing weekly water changes of at least 25%.
As for GFO and carbon I only run carbon once in a while and if you only plan on keeping softies I wouldn't worry to much about gfo. Most softies like a little bit of nutrients and can stand water that's not pristine. As long as your doing regular water changes you should be OK. If your thinking about LPS or SPS then GFO wouldn't be a bad idea.
If you do want to run carbon and GFO you could always just put some in a bag and drop it into a higher flow area of the filter section and change it out as needed.
You could use something like marinepure in your inlet section to add some biological filtration but with enough live rock in the display even that won't be absolutely needed.
I would also run filter floss in the inlet section to help keep the big particles from settling in the sump. That would need to be changed frequently or at the very least cleaned when you do your water changes.

You could set up the sump chamber in 3 sections
The first section as the inlet with mechanical filtration (filter floss, carbon GFO, etc...)
The second section for the skimmer and you could put your heater in there
The third section for the return pump. That section only needs to be big enough to hold your return pump.

Excellent. The nice thing about a 10 gallon is... a huge water change is super easy. Thanks for the advice!

 

[Diamond1]

No problem. Another thing to keep in mind with a 10 gallon tank is that parameter swings can happen pretty fast in such a small tank and keeping them in check is key to being succesful.