[rawest]

hello i've always had fresh water tanks and now im thinking of taking the jump into salt water with building a nano tank. the idea is to house a green mandarin. upon reasearch i found out that they relish on pods eating every few minutes and require a large system unless culturing pods. it'd be nice to accomplish this but the fear is losing the system. or making costly amiture mistakes. if someone well experianced or educated in the matter i would greatly appericate advice. some questions and concerns i have is what other live stock would be ok to keep with the mandarin and not be compiton for food. crabs, stars, etc.. my plan is to either do 10 gal nano but if i have to im perpared to do 20 long with a ten gal fuge as well as cuturig pods in jars.

as i said i dont want to run into foolish problems losing fish and my system. i have the glass but desifering the mass disorganization of information about this topic to plan the next steps. do i go ten gal with store bought overflow filer unit. the subcurrent surface skimming aquarium filter recomended from my local pet store. for a fish live rock set up. i figure it'd be fine for a damsel, blenny and some crab. but how good is it to run a set up like that without a protien skimmer. the filter in which recomended is three stages fiber prefilter, activated carbon and bio balls with duals hoses that can be moved and directed as disired.