Hey guys. Well, I'm 17 and I really wanted to have a cool setup for my room which didn't take up a lot of space and was affordable. My main goal was to spend no more than $150 on drygoods. This was going to take a lot of searching and a lot of eBay. I visted my LFS to get the tank...
-5.5 Gallon AGA Tank : $12.99
-Aqua Clear Mini: $23.99
Then, I headed on over to eBay to get some more essentials...
-50 Watt Heater: $11.00
-79 GPH Powerhead: $10.59
Hmm, that is about 60 bucks spent already, and I haven't even bought my lights yet...
After 2 weeks of eBay'ing I came up with these lights...
-Coralife 12" 2x18 watt 50/50 PC: $43.00
-Mounting Stands: $10.00
-Moonlight LED lite:$21.00
I'm excited about these, because 36 watts should be plenty to have some awesome softies and LPS.
So I've spent about 135 dollars so far, and I still don't have any live rock. This is a corner that I don't want to cut, becuase it'll be my main source of filtration. I checked around on eBay and ordered LR...
-10 lbs. Premium Fiji Live Rock + Shipping: $43.00
Luckily, I'm taking live sand from my 75 gallon tank, so I won't have to buy any. Although I went over my money amount, moonlights are not needed and could be cut if you are following this procedure at home. Here are some things that I stumbled across...
-Should I turn my Aqua Clear into a refugium? Is it too small? I have a Aqua Clear 300 on my 75, and I could move it, would it then be too big?
-Did I completely overlook anything?
-Should I run the sponge and carbon in the mini? Or should I completely rely on my live rock for filtration?
My Live rock should be here sometime in the next week. I don't mean to keep you all on a dry tank, it'll be wet soon, I promise. My goal is to do a 1 gallon water change every Sunday. I'll let you know more about the details later on this week.
Here is my setup so far. What do you think?
I don't have the mounting legs or the moonlights yet. I'd love to have some opinions, and at the same time guide some newbies through my experience. I'm a newbie to nano reefing, so learn from my mistakes!
Take care,
Ben