Are small tanks really harder to maintain?

[kdino]

not harder to maintain in a sense, but they are harder to keep stable and be successful. with that said, my first reef tank was a 5 gallon nano, ive also had a29 gallon, 2 gallon, another 5 gallon and a 10 gallon before my current 75, no one harder or easier than the next, just different scales of maintenance to keep things stable and on the growth path to happiness!

 

[Beth Villmow]

I hear all the time that small tanks are harder to maintain because of less water volume, any mess ups and your screwed. But with a large tank isn’t it harder to come back from a mess up because there’s soo much water. With a smaller tank you also don’t have to use as much of a product like for example to treat a 300 gallon reed for red cyano you have to use a whole box of chemi clean but for a 10 gallon it will last for a while. Also wouldn’t a water change be easier in a 10 gallon. What do you think? Is it easer or hard to run a nano tank?

I think it would be harder because all the nutrients in the water would be used up more quickly. I have a 75 gallon and I'm always doing water changes.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Stability is easier in a larger tank, but there are other difficulties that balance that out... I'd say easiest tanks to maintain are actually between 40-90 gallons

 

[brandon429]

this is my friends goldfish bowl reef, smallest of small examples. 8 yrs old, top shelf sps only.




water changes only, 90%, using any salt brand but they're on reef crystals currently. instant ocean the prior years. the key in really small reefs is stopping evaporation, then fancy topoff isn't required. these are not total sealed tanks, they're 90% evaporation controlled and are topped off about every 5-8 days depending on input bubble rates.

there is no dosing. the feed is specifically benepets reef powder as the sole feed. a reef vase is the easiest to maintain reef of any size or design since you are only messing with it once a week and it doesnt use anything but a vase, fitted lid, bubbler, heater and light. few fail points.

 

[John Ni]

here

 

[John Ni]

Here is my mixed 10g tank. 2 years in the making. Nano tanks do struggle in the beginning but alot easy if you stay for the ride.

 

[rynosreef]

It’s hard to say... I think a lot depends on the experience level of the reefer. I do think a larger water volume definitely helps stability. I’ve had larger tanks in the past, but now just have a 25 gallon AIO which mostly runs off the equipment I had on the larger tanks. If this was my first tank, I’d likely not have the know-how or accumulated equipment to keep a small tank stable. But so far it’s been running like a champ and it’s definitely easier maintenance-wise and easier on the wallet haha

 

[reefiniteasy]

Just develop a maintenance schedule! Learn what your nano needs and when. I do weekly water change as I know NO3 is about to go above 10ppm and PO4 is about to turn the tank green. It’s like clockwork. I don’t have to test those too much anymore. KNOW YOUR TANK! However, now that I added a skimmer I’m starting over. Trying to extend my water changes.

 

[YumaMan]

My first reef tank was a 5 gallon nano. After 5 years going strong it became a stunningly beautiful tank, until I expanded the hobby to larger and larger tanks. Last November I had a severe cyano algae outbreak in my 120 gal reef -- because of my occupation I simply could not keep up with the treatments and the large amounts of water changes, and so the tank crashed. Smaller tanks are easier to maintain because things will invariably go wrong in a reef, and when they do, smaller mishaps are easier to manage.

 

[Leonelreo]

Nanos are easier. You only need these 2 words: CHANGE WEEKLY.

 

[Mrod]

I have had a 16 gallon for years and I believe it all depends on what you are trying to keep.
When I had softies and lps was easy. You could neglect and then when needed do water changes and everything survived and in some cases did even better with higher nutrients.
When I tried SPS-acros it became very challenging as when parameter change as all said it is much less forgiving and losses occurred.

Financially much less expensive to have a nano. Top off never a problem with ato. Water changes easy to do.

My advice is if you want sps and especially acros reconsider unless you are planning to be on top of it religiously with testing, dosing and water changes.

With softies/lps I think you would have no problem.

 

[Lingwendil]

As somebody who has kept nano tanks since the beginning of them. I will say its a definitive NO . I will put it like this if you were on American Gladiator and playing Joust , a nano is like having a 1 foot round platform to stand on , and regular reef tanks are like having a 5 foot platform to stand on , nano doesn't give you time/space to react , reg reef gives you a bit more leway before you get knocked out things happen slower due to the volume. Unless your that guy .......

Eh, not really. If you pay attention it's about the same. If anything preventative maintenance is easier with a nano as it's quicker to deal with issues before they become a real problem.

You just need to be on top of what your doing with daily maintenance.

Exactly.

once you get it dialed in it’s pretty much on auto-pilot.

+1. Once it's going There's not much to do other than top off, water changes, filter pad swaps/wringing out, and cosmetic stuff once you get that equilibrium going.


I've been keeping fish since as far back as I can remember, and nano reefing since 2004, remember those days? Nano-Reef.com was bustling and busy, practically nothing for us reefers that was small other than the JBJ Nano cubes, freshwater stuff, and some oddball imported gear. Almost everything was DIY or repurposed larger gear shoehorned into smaller tanks. People were drilling 10 gallon AGA tanks and running sumps! 70 watt HQI halides on 5 gallon tanks, stuffed with clams and acro! Shoehorning as many power compact fluorescents as we could everywhere! DIY HOB protein skimmers (remember wetworx/Undertheradar on Nano-Reef?) that actually worked well! Because of those days I became a pretty minimalist reefer- I'm not into running a ton of equipment, fancy filter media, or reactors. A nano setup makes it way too easy to do it this way with great results. Nutrient export is taken care of with a ball of chaeto that you occasionally prune, and weekly large water changes. Top off manually every so often with a Big Gulp cup full of RO water. Using calcium too quick? Dissolve some kalk in the RO you top off with. Trace elements depleting too fast? Bigger water changes, with the occasional supplement based on testing for some situations. Pests can get out of control fast, yes, but it's way too easy to be selective in what/where you buy, and a quarantine setup is a great, easy way to prevent this. A simple 5 or 10 gallon With a simple filter and some LR is plenty for this. Throw it in the stand underneath another tank if you don't have the space.

By far the highest concern I have ever had in the time I've been reefing is heat. Everything else comes down to simply paying attention and knowing what you're doing. Even heat is easier to deal with as long as you keep the room cool enough. Now that most everything is LED and the usual trend is topless even that's no big deal to handle.

 

[stacksoner]

Of all the concerns to be brought up about keeping a nano I’m surprised the cost of an ato is an issue. In the grand scheme of saltwater keeping I don’t see an ato as expensive. I use an autoaqua smart nano which is about $135. It’s an important and clever bit of kit and I don’t begrudge the price at all. Even on a nano you can spend many hundreds of $ on lighting so what’s a bit more on an ato.

I think there might be a misconception that people who want a nano tank want to do it as cheap as possible but you’ve only got to look through this forum to see that’s not true. I think most people keep them like any size tank, things are just scaled down - fewer lights, smaller pumps etc which in turn happens to make it cheaper to set up than larger tanks.

I went for a nano because of space limitations. I could upgrade from my Fluval Evo 13.5 but with the space I have available it would still be classed as a nano.

This is a very good point. I think that required maintenance of a tank is 100% a function of what you're keeping in it. If you're trying to have an SPS tank that's featured on this site, you're in for a major commitment no matter how big or small your tank is.

Most nano tank owners stock with corals that are relatively hardy, which by definition makes a respective system that much easier to maintain.

 

[phatduckk]

One small mistakes and my 10g nano went to hell. Your margin for error is just thin. However, when on cruise control they’re super easy.

i should have let it be

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Daily set and forget, bigger way easier but when you run into problems and need to dose certain things or adjust levels quickly then a large tank becomes difficult. Large water changes are nothing with a small tank but multiple 30% water changes on my 300 is exhausting.

My 60G frag system takes more of my time in day to day management than my 300G. To be fair, my 300G has a calcium reactor and my frag has dosing pumps. I have a love hate with my DOS pumps and feel I can’t trust them as they lost prime on several occasions, not a huge fan.

 

[Birdbrains?]

I do a lot of water changes but that is all that my type of setup requires, so I guess that I am saving time on dosing and stuff. The small water column makes it really easy to affect values directly, like it does not need a sump to prevent nightly pH swings but it all depends on the individual set up.

A fixed pet habitat is not at all prone to so-called crashes. A mini"reef" tank probably is somewhat harder to keep completely stable with growing corals' changing nutritional needs.

 

[fcmatt]

Small tanks and sps are not hard at first. It is when the coral grows out and is sucking down alk and ca at a rate which is a delicate balancing act with very very little room for a mistake. Then it all goes downhill with a little slip up combined with the usual newbieness small tank owners have. They then rush to correct and make it worse.

That is why if I had to recommend a tank size for a newb it would be 50 to 60 gallons minimum. More room for growth and mistakes are not as bad.

 

[Leslie Tabor]

In my almost 400 gal tank, I would REALLY have to screw up to cause a big problem...in my tiny tank I set up for a minute for clownfish fry, just not having CD an ATO was a disaster.

Now I do agree that maintaining my big tank is a bit more effort/expensive. More salt, more DI resin have meant increased expense. But I feel that is a different type of "difficult" than adding a teaspoon too much of NoPox or dosing Cal/Alk etc.