Building 2.5g zoa garden

[dumbderk]

Well I have always admired these tiny little nano's floating around with neat setups like a mini nano and decided I am going to go the same route. I am going to start setting up a 2.5g tank and it will be mainly a zoa garden with a porcelein crab and an awesome mini maxi, I will be running 6 leds on this made from rapidled.com it will probably be 2 cool white and 4 royal blue, and it will most likely have my favorite zoas of all time the utter chaos or different ones that will just make the tank pop. I will start this all up on either thursday or friday, I am not sure yet.

I do have some questions though

since I will probably just use this as a frag tank for a little while should I really use much filtration

The order of things to go in will most likely be live rock, sand, water, zoas, mini maxi, porcelein crab, and possibly an achilles tang baby...... lol jk but yea probably something very small that perches like a clown goby or something of that sort.

will I need a heater on something this small?

Do I need a powerhead or will the water from the filter be enough?

Is my lighting going to be adequate or sub par?

As for water changes go what would I be looking at by frequency and volume?

Are these tanks like crash fests?

[larryandlaura]

Rick aka whitetiger should be on later. He has tons of nanos and will help you out.

[Heidi]

They are much harder to keep I have witnessed :). I too just bought a little 3 gallon tank to do a little something something with! Can't wait to hear the nano people chime in cause I too need some of the same questions answered. My friend told me that the salinity is really difficult to keep stable because if you have a half o inch of evaporation that's bbbaaaaadddd. I have though about only doing some macro algae and a small gang of dwarf seahorses :) we will see
Heidi

[dumbderk]

Basically looking for the most cost efficient lighting I can get for this tank, it is only going to be a 2.5g so I don't want to trick it out to much but as for the lighting I want it to be able to sustain a mini maxi carpet nem. Anyone got a clue on what would be best?

[Badfish]

I just took down both my 2.5 pico, I was happy with what I was able to keep and how well they did. I had 2 different lights, one had just 2 CF 50/50 10w bulbs and the other I got all Fancy schmancy and used LEDs.

Here's the build thread that shows what was able to keep.
http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/members-reefs/badfishs-reefer-madness-13333/

[dumbderk]

Well I bought the tank rock, light, and sand to go in the tank, water I used from my tank seeded the 1.5lbs of sand with .5 pounds of sand from my tank. I like the way the rockwork looks at the moment but you know how that goes.

http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af94/dumbderk/nanotank001.jpg

Picture of eagle eye zoas or tester coral for tank
http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af94/dumbderk/nanotank002.jpg

Mushroom in tank
http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af94/dumbderk/nanotank003.jpg

More corals to come :)

[Sir Patrick]

Lookin good man!