Minimalist Zoa Tank Experiment

[WesW]

I've been out of town a lot lately and my display tank has really suffered. I'm planning to travel more in the future and I'm thinking about breaking down my DT. I'd really like to keep some kind of small tank going and I do love zoas, so a cheap minimalist zoa tank seems like a good option. Before I get rid of my SPS and LPS I'd like to try this experiment first.

Starting from scratch, what is the cheapest setup that would require the least amount of maintenance you guys can think of that would support zoas? If you were doing this what equipment (up to 20 gallon tank, lights, filtration, circulation, temperature control, rock, substrate, etc) would you buy? What is the minimal amount of maintenance (water changes, cleaning, etc) you could get away with? I have some ideas to share but I want to hear you guys' input first. Thanks!

 

[jleoni]

If you were going to be out of town a lot for extended periods of time, you are going to need an extra large stand. This would allow you to "hide" a large top off water reservoir for an autotop off system. Other wise no matter how much filtration and other things you do, if the system runs dry the pumps, filters heaters and all will be irrelevant.

 

[Chameleon]

i'd do led lighting that way you minimize evap and the ato can last a long time. also you definitely need an ato if going out of town for extended periods.
as for tank maybe just a 10 or 20 gallon with a small tunze powerhead and a sandbed of about 2 inches with finer sand. if you want minimal equipment then make sure you have plenty of live rock. maybe get one of them tunze 9004 skimmers if you can find a good deal on one and setup a drain for your collection cup so you dont necessarily have to empty it all the time. a 50w heater would be good. an inexpenisve temperature controller would be a good failsafe for heater malfunctions if you plan on being away for extended periods. their are many ways to do this but that is where i would start. i would get a few damsels or a clownfish pair or both for fish.

 

[markkazdad]

It sounds like you need to better define:
- how long do you want to be able to be away
- if used equipment is OK, how long do you want to spend accumulating it, and how pretty and quiet do you want it to be?

I spent $67 on equipment on my Nano in 90 build buying things from NARC members. That doesn't include a used Tunze 9002 skimmer and JBJ ATO I will add now that the contest is over, any kind of controller, or battery backup.

You should be able to find something like a Nano Cube or Biocube for $200 or less. Our Nano Cube 28 did OK with no top off over a 10-day vacation, and needed less than a gallon when we returned.

 

[pickupman66]

FWIW, my 5 gallon nano with pretty much zoas only. LED lights... I evap about 8 oz of water a day. Invest in a ATO (i plan to get a $39 kit plus Aqualifter pump).

look into a Aquaclear 50 or 70. you can mod to a fuge or easily run them with Chemipure elite and Purigen to keep the water in good shape.

 

[WesW]

If you were going to be out of town a lot for extended periods of time, you are going to need an extra large stand. This would allow you to "hide" a large top off water reservoir for an autotop off system. Other wise no matter how much filtration and other things you do, if the system runs dry the pumps, filters heaters and all will be irrelevant.

Good call. I am thinking about using a 55 gallon barrel as my top off water reservoir. I've done something similar for aero gardens and used the top of an entertainment center as the stand because it could fit the barrel nicely. I may go that route or I may do some drilling, putting the drum in a closet or downstairs below the tank. I like the thought of having it downstairs but it would need a considerably stronger pump.

 

[WesW]

i'd do led lighting that way you minimize evap and the ato can last a long time. also you definitely need an ato if going out of town for extended periods.

LED lights sounds good to me. I've had luck with cheap chinese GU10 LED's on my frag tanks but they are a little limited. I really want to be able to dim the LEDs and possibly mix in some colors besides blue and white but I don't think it would be worth paying double just for that. I need to research LED options more.

as for tank maybe just a 10 or 20 gallon with a small tunze powerhead and a sandbed of about 2 inches with finer sand. if you want minimal equipment then make sure you have plenty of live rock.

I have a 20 gallon tank I got from a petco sale that I'm leaning towards using. Do you think 2 inches of sand would help with filtration? I've always heard sand beds need to be 6 inches or deeper to affect filtration. So far I have 15 pounds of dry rock but I probably need to double that.

a 50w heater would be good. an inexpenisve temperature controller would be a good failsafe for heater malfunctions if you plan on being away for extended periods. their are many ways to do this but that is where i would start. i would get a few damsels or a clownfish pair or both for fish.

I'm planning to make my own controller to automate as much as possible. I've already made an ATO controller although I need to revisit the code after a recent near disaster. I've also made temperature controllers for a kegerator, a cheese fridge, and an egg incubator so combining the two shouldn't be too difficult. I would love to automate water changes but I'll start simple and hopefully add that later.

i would get a few damsels or a clownfish pair or both for fish.

I'm thinking about not having any fish to decrease the bioload and needed maintenance. Would I be missing out on anything except for aesthetics by not having fish?

 

[WesW]

It sounds like you need to better define:
- how long do you want to be able to be away
- if used equipment is OK, how long do you want to spend accumulating it, and how pretty and quiet do you want it to be?

The longest I'm away for work is 10 days but it would be nice to overshoot so that the tank could be fine for two weeks. I want to use new equipment for anything that will touch water. My DT is completely overrun with pests, bubble algae, and green hair algae right now so I'm going to be extremely careful with what I put into the tank.

That is awesome that you were able to put together a tank for $67!

 

[WesW]

FWIW, my 5 gallon nano with pretty much zoas only. LED lights... I evap about 8 oz of water a day. Invest in a ATO (i plan to get a $39 kit plus Aqualifter pump).

look into a Aquaclear 50 or 70. you can mod to a fuge or easily run them with Chemipure elite and Purigen to keep the water in good shape.

I have a modded Aquaclear 70 on a frag tank that has worked pretty well so I might try one on this project.

For this thread I'm leaning heavily towards using my 20 gallon tank but I've been really tempted to also do a 3 to 5 gallon column tank. Possibly with a 20 gallon sump, a 55 gallon drum for the ATO, and a 55 gallon drum of saltwater for automated water changes. Assuming the controller I make doesn't have many hiccups I think that could be an extremely low maintenance setup.

 

[markkazdad]

The Aqueon Evolve 8 may still be on clearance at Petsmart for under $80, and it's on petco.com for $89 with free shipping. The Evolve 4 was less than $50 (though I got the last good one at Jones Valley Petsmart a few weeks ago). Even though it was marketed as "clearance to clear stock", I wouldn't put them to restock. If you buy one in-store, make sure you inspect it for crazing and other defects and check that the lid has the little tab on the front (earlier revisions made before about April 2012 did not and the lid tends to fall in the tank easily, so they added the third tab).

Lots of builds and mod threads on various forums. You'd want a better light, I think.

 

[WesW]

I mentioned earlier that I am having serious nuisance issues in my DT and so I want to be obsessively careful what goes into this tank. I have been cycling a 20 gallon tank with 15 pounds of very porous dry rock and a bare bottom for about a month now. For ammonia I add a pinch of flake food every now and then. It has a used mag 3 running at all times for circulation. I trust the mag 3 because it had been dry for a while and then I ran it in a vinegar solution for a long time but it is probably the only used piece of equipment I want touching water. To minimize the chances of nuisance algae getting in the tank I'm planning on using a scalpel to cut zoa frags and glue them directly to frag plugs which will then be placed into holes in the dry rock.

As part of this experiment I'm tempted to try two common zoa frags of a couple polyps each in this setup with the addition of two 25 watt heaters and a couple GU10 LEDs. Can zoas live off light alone or do they have to be fed? If they can live off light alone then I would think this setup would have an extremely low bioload and would need very minimum filtration. What do you guys think?

 

[WesW]

The Aqueon Evolve 8 may still be on clearance at Petsmart for under $80, and it's on petco.com for $89 with free shipping. The Evolve 4 was less than $50 (though I got the last good one at Jones Valley Petsmart a few weeks ago). Even though it was marketed as "clearance to clear stock", I wouldn't put them to restock. If you buy one in-store, make sure you inspect it for crazing and other defects and check that the lid has the little tab on the front (earlier revisions made before about April 2012 did not and the lid tends to fall in the tank easily, so they added the third tab).

Lots of builds and mod threads on various forums. You'd want a better light, I think.

I do like the look of the evolves. Thanks for the heads up on the sale. I'll check it out.

 

[markkazdad]

If you check out the stores, can you report back what you find? I haven't opened up our Evolve 4 kit yet; may rather get an 8.

My Evolve 2 is doing well supporting CUC and an emerald crab. I don't get the light turned on very regularly (some days not at all) because of sleeping during the day. But after a year, the pump is still quiet and since there are no corals in there, I have just done a 50% water change about every 6 weeks and top off every 2-3 days from a gallon jug I keep next to it.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I like my 29 gallon Oceanic tank. It has a 150W metal halide bulb on it and still uses less than 10 gallons of top off water over 2 weeks period. I have a DIY ATO on it. Many corals grow fine in it. A small tank with a decent light fixture will do fine with zoa and softies for 2 to 3 weeks without much care as long as you have a skimmer and an ATO.

As for your algae problem in your DT, how about putting a rabbitfish such as a foxface and a dollabela seahare? They are great algae cleaners. A foxface is practically the only thing that can keep valonia mowed down. A decent size dollabela seahare loves to munch on a variety of algae such as turf, hair, and even dictyota macroalgae. They will clean up your tankful of algae very quickly. A pincushion sea urchin (Lytechinus variegatus) also does a bang-up job on algae, but it will carry frags around on its back and drop them unexpectedly in inaccesible areas. Just don't feed them while you are trying to get them to clean up the tank.

 

[Chameleon]

I think you will want a fish...one or two wont hurt if you have live rock, and it will provide food for corals...but its up to you.
Also I would forgo the auto water change setup. Too much of a disaster potential in my mind. You could do an inexpensive diy 3w led build or you could go with one of those ready made chinese 120w fixtures. If you want to spend more an AI nano isn't a bad option.

 

[Chameleon]

I would make doing a water change easy though...

 

[HAMsmith]

I run an Evolve 8 with zoas, mushrooms, xenia, duncan, leather, snails, and hermits. I upgraded the light to a cheap LED. Everything else is stock.

Maintenance is basically zero. Evaporation is very low.

I did try this set up with a yellow tailed damsel and had all kinds of cyano issues. Without a fish no algae issues of any kind.

 

[markkazdad]

HAMsmith, any more info on the cheap LED you used? Would it be too big for the Evolve 4 or Evolve 2?

 

[HAMsmith]

Aquarium Clip On LED Light from $34.90 with 9 x 1W LED

I used that one. It is a little bit disco but the corals grow under it just fine and the price is right. It is a perfect fit on the Evolve 8 at around 10.5" wide x 5" deep. Would probably work well on a 4 but may be a bit large for the 2.