I am on my first reef. I went with a 20 gallon nano mix reef. I, like you(i'm sure), did a ton of research in the beginning. Going through feeds, forums and checking out profiles and builds. You look at the huge 200 and 300 gallons running pumps, skimmer, powerheads, reactors, crazy huge sumps that could put some nanos to shame. But, what I started noticing is there is a difference between big and small. Because this hobby has an almost limitless price range, most big tanks add all these extra peripherals(i'm a computer nut) to the equation to reduce or eliminate water changes. Nano's like you said, need trace elements. And who wants to blow through the wallet for reactors and dosing pumps? So I decided that this little 20 gallon could be cheaper than I initially thought.
To make sure I was right about saving some money, I started researching filtration. Do I need a filter? What about skimming? Do i need to skim or run some mechanical filtration? The debates on those very questions sometimes exceed 50 pages of reading in forums. Eventually I found my answer. I could be wrong but it seems simple enough. NANO mix reef = skimmer optional, no mechanical. NANO fish only = With mechanical and skimming optional. I say this because my nutrient export of 3.5 gallons water a week, keeps my tank perfect. It's a 20 gallon nano with chinese led, aquamaxx hob-1, 2 jebao rw-4, heater, hydor ATO, 3 inch sand bed, 22 lbs live rock. 2 ocel clowns, 1 firefish, pistol shrimp and red banded goby, cleaner shrimp, bristolworms, asterina stars and those little bittlestars. Please note: that some variants of zoa grow slower than others. My eagle eyes grow 10 to 1 rasta zoanthids.
A long story short, tanks been up for almost a year. No crashes, no sickness, exceptional growth and I couldn't happier. Except I'm not producing enough algae for the snails. I'm working on that.
