[Rbacchiega]

Woooooooooooo Nano contest!

Alright, so I was going to go in the 10 gallon with a budget list, but frankly, with the stuff I wanted to put in this tank and the $500 budget, it just wasn't going to work. So I guess I'm in the 10 gallon unlimited budget category. I still want to set a sort of budget for myself...otherwise this could suck the life right out of me, but here we go.
I'll be keeping a running total of money spent on the tank anyways, even though I guess it doesn't really matter.

The Basics:

I bought a 10 gallon "Frag Tank" off John (lobsterboy) a while ago. And was using it as such, but have decided to make it into a sort of ghetto cube AIO tank. With where John had divided the tank it works out that the display area is approximately 6.2 gallons with an internal "sump" housing about 3.4 gallons.

The plan is to have this tank be a small SPS oasis that will be home to a pair of Yashia Gobies. So, we all know that for SPS lots of varied flow is required. Which is why I'm throwing a Quietone 4000 High Head on this bad boy. You read right...4000High Head!

It was suggested that I use a Manifold to provide different directions of flow and with the canopy I'm planning, the manifold itself won't be seen. Using the headloss calculator on Reefcentral, the gurus there decided that I would be getting approximately 750GPH worth of flow. Look out!

Because of such a high flow rate, and the fish I'll be housing, I'm going to have to go with a sandbed (initially I wanted this to be bare bottom, but I heart Yashia's and when the opportunity presented itself for me to order them, I had to say yes). Figure Medium Grain should prevent a sandstorm.

Lighting possess a little bit of an issue. When I first started tossing around the idea of a nano (even before the contest came up) I wanted to go with Metal Halides, but frankly, I think with the evaporation and heat issue it wouldn't be worth it on such a small tank. Enter T5s. I was able to grab 2 Hagen Glo 24" 2 bulb fixtures from Doug with lights. He said they were growing SPS in a 20 gallon, so why shouldn't 4 bulbs grow SPS over a 6 gallon display??? right? So, right now I'm thinkig of going a Fiji Purple, An Aquamedic Reef Blue and 2 10,000K. But that could change.

Stand and Canopy plans are in the making, but I like the nice clean lines so I don't imagine it'll be too hard to figure out.

I think that's it for now. Pictures to come!