Say you are starting a new tank that's at least 75g. Not drilled. No room for a sump. What's your strategy to setup filtration for a stand-alone system you want running for 10+ years? As a display tank, what's the "minimum" so you don't have a ton of hardware cluttering your view, but still have a stable, vibrant ecosystem? In-tank skimmer? In-tank refugium? Bio-Pellet Reactor? Carbon? GFO? Mechanical filtration? What if there's no room for HOB?
What kind of system do you setup?
I have some nanos which I downgraded to 6 months ago, I wanted to have low maintenance cheap tanks, so reef tank doesnt take over my life. I have in each:
- an oversized return pump, with a short ~10cm hose on the inlet and there is a prefilter sponge from
amazon which just fits the hose tightly, the whole unit is very compact this way, have sponges with different density, thats the mechanical filtration and circulation.
- a heater with an inbuilt LED temperature display (Aquael), so can check that one just by looking.
- an airstone sucking air from outside so ph is stable.
- lights ofc.
- a LID so no ATO needed, I can go a month without topup with no dramatic changes in salinity.
Thats all the tech.
Other stuff to simplify maintenance:
- don't have live rock, but PVC structure for corals I want to elevate, which are cheap, easy and algae dont like it, harder to hide for bristleworms, can easily drill holes for coral plugs etc.
- large grain sand, so no blowing around happens.
- only have small snails who can right themselves and in case of dying tank can process small amount of ammonia, so have 1 cerith snail/litre and some nassarius.
- hardware is in the back left corner, now that tank is stable and have experience will add some more pvc structure in front of that corner, but I cant be bothered too much, its extra swimming space for the tank for the fish, they like going around there and pick stuff from the sponge for example.
- have some seachem pond matrix scattered around in the sand, they look ok to me.
- any media/carbon/GFO goes in separately as needed. Purely based on visual observation carbon in a bag seems to clear up yellowish water in a couple of days and handled fish sensitivity to dinos. GFO in bag decreased phosphates, though I am not using it anymore. So media in a bag seems to work for me.
- used UV for a while for dinos, they are now gone for months without running it, cyano also gone, guess cuz soft corals are spereading and have a lot of snails maybe.
- have stable close to 0 nitrates and <0.25 phosphates even though massive feeding, guess now that soft corals spreading around they suck it up and maybe pond matrix works well.
I absolutely love the simplicity of this tank, will add sps and other stuff at some point as well, but dont feel the urge to hurry tbh.
.jpg)
