(Very) Low-cost nano reef with inverts: is it possible?

[lanpennmm]

Hello everyone, how is it going?

Well, I currently have a small aquarium (30 liters, 7.92 gallons, 15.74 inches length x 11.81 inches height x 9.84 inches width) and I thought of an idea involving a tank with only invertebrates. I find the hermit crabs (Paguroidea) very cool.

The last thing I read about having reef tanks was probably in 2012-2013, on a Brazilian forum (Aquahobby), and the closest to it, for me, was having some brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) cultures (more important now, since I'm doing a term paper about artemia culturing).

I live in a small town, Mococa (you can check more about the city climate here; the climate here is probably Cwa-Cwb by Köppen classification) and, when I had aquariums (I'm in this world since 2012, although only freshwater), during the hottest days, the water temperature reached to 80.6 - 82.4 ºF (during the season I even removed the aquarium lid) and, during winter, around 75.2 - 78.8 ºF (when I used the aquarium heater) and pH was slightly alkaline. I also read some good books related to Marine Biology and I find even fiddle crabs cool.

Okay, I'll try to summarize the questions:

(1) I have a sponge filter (Xinyou® xy-2835) and an air pump from Tetra® (for 10-30 gallons). Would I need a strong water pump/wave maker? The sponge filter and the live rocks would be enough for filtration or I should have also a skimmer? Indeed, my air pump can create a powerful water current.
(2) How many paguros could the tank support? Should I need a cooler? Any other inverts suggestion?
(3) I have 11 lb of aragonite. Is this enough?
(4) Besides the pH, ammonia, and nitrite tests, what are the other tests that I should have?

Anyway, probably I'll need also the heater (here in Brazil we use cheap brands because the brands from Germany and US are very expensive) and some good aquarium lighting.

I hope you can understand my questions and I'm sorry in case of this thread is a bit confusing (besides the fact I'm still improving my English... well, I also use Grammarly).

Thanks for your attention!

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Hello everyone, how is it going?

Well, I currently have a small aquarium (30 liters, 7.92 gallons, 15.74 inches length x 11.81 inches height x 9.84 inches width) and I thought of an idea involving a tank with only invertebrates. I find the hermit crabs (Paguroidea) very cool.

The last thing I read about having reef tanks was probably in 2012-2013, on a Brazilian forum (Aquahobby), and the closest to it, for me, was having some brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) cultures (more important now, since I'm doing a term paper about artemia culturing).

I live in a small town, Mococa (you can check more about the city climate here; the climate here is probably Cwa-Cwb by Köppen classification) and, when I had aquariums (I'm in this world since 2012, although only freshwater), during the hottest days, the water temperature reached to 80.6 - 82.4 ºF (during the season I even removed the aquarium lid) and, during winter, around 75.2 - 78.8 ºF (when I used the aquarium heater) and pH was slightly alkaline. I also read some good books related to Marine Biology and I find even fiddle crabs cool.

Okay, I'll try to summarize the questions:

(1) I have a sponge filter (Xinyou® xy-2835) and an air pump from Tetra® (for 10-30 gallons). Would I need a strong water pump/wave maker? The sponge filter and the live rocks would be enough for filtration or I should have also a skimmer? Indeed, my air pump can create a powerful water current.
(2) How many paguros could the tank support? Should I need a cooler? Any other inverts suggestion?
(3) I have 11 lb of aragonite. Is this enough?
(4) Besides the pH, ammonia, and nitrite tests, what are the other tests that I should have?

Anyway, probably I'll need also the heater (here in Brazil we use cheap brands because the brands from Germany and US are very expensive) and some good aquarium lighting.

I hope you can understand my questions and I'm sorry in case of this thread is a bit confusing (besides the fact I'm still improving my English... well, I also use Grammarly).

Thanks for your attention!

I'm definitely not an expert, so hopefully some more experienced folks will chime in for you here, but these are my thoughts:

1 ) I don't think you would need a stronger pump or a wave maker - I think the filter and air pump would be sufficient for flow. I'd guess the filter and live rock would be enough for filtration, but you could always grab a small skimmer and run it if/as needed to be safe.

2 ) Do you have a specific species or two of hermit crabs that you would like to keep? Because some hermit crabs are really small and some are really big, some are tropical hermit crabs (which could handle 82.4F temperatures) and some are temperate/coldwater (which might die at 82.4F), etc. So, the specific species you want to keep would really impact how many hermit crabs your tank could hold, if you would need a cooler, etc. For other inverts, you could probably keep some small echinoderms (brittle starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, etc.) with the hermit crabs pretty safely.

3 ) 11lbs of aragonite would probably be fine (so, I'd guess that it's enough).

4 ) With regards to what you should test for, you don't need to worry about Nitrite with saltwater aquariums, so what I'd recommend testing for is discussed below (I wrote it for someone keeping a shrimp tank, but it would apply for hermit crabs too):

Since you already have a system for temperature, I’d guess you would mostly just need to keep an eye on Ammonia (there shouldn’t be any Ammonia in your tank), Nitrate, and Phosphate (I’ve heard these can cause issues for invertebrates if they get too high). To be safe, I’d suggest keeping an eye on Calcium, Alkalinity, and pH as well (I doubt any of these will give you issues or go out of their recommended ranges as long as you’re changing the water regularly, but if calcium and/or pH drop too much it can cause problems with shell growth, molting, etc. for your shrimp).

Table 1. Parameters critical to control in reef aquaria.

Table 2. Other parameters in reef aquaria that aquarists may want to control.

Most people suggest Salifert, Redsea, or Hanna brands for testing parameters - Hanna is electronic and more expensive (and people recommend against their calcium tester, though the rest are good). API is cheap, but it’s strongly recommended against because it’s also not very good for saltwater testing.

To keep the parameters in their proper ranges, you can generally get by with just filtration and water changes, but some people use dosing (typically for tanks with lots of coral that use up a lot of the parameters) or refugiums/algae reactors too (these use up Nitrate and Phosphate to help keep the levels from rising too high). If you need help keeping parameters in range, I’d look through some threads here on Reef2Reef or make a new thread about it in the “New to Saltwater & Reef Aquariums? Post Here” forum here on Reef2Reef and ask for advice.

 

[lanpennmm]

Well, I would prefer smaller hermit crabs because my tank's smaller. Indeed, I must know the species of hermit crabs that are sold here in Brazil.

How about the Clibanarius antillensis?

Anyway, thanks!

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Well, I would prefer smaller hermit crabs because my tank's smaller. Indeed, I must know the species of hermit crabs that are sold here in Brazil.

How about the Clibanarius antillensis?

Anyway, thanks!

They're a good, smaller size, and, based on their distribution, they should be able to handle 75-82F without any issues whatsoever. I'm not sure how many the tank could support, but I'd guess you could have a decent group of adult specimens in the tank without issues.

I'm really not experienced with hermit crabs, so I don't know exactly how many, but hopefully someone more experienced can give you a good, ballpark number that would work for your tank.

 

[BryznNguyen]

I recently set up a pico with some inverts and a clownfish the cost was about like $500 dollars, so about $400ish without the clownfish. Dont know what your budget is

 

[AquaDaniel]

Sounds like very small bio load if it’s just hermit crabs! I think your filtration is good. You definitely don’t need strong wave maker. Are you gonna keep any corals?

 

[lanpennmm]

They're a good, smaller size, and, based on their distribution, they should be able to handle 75-82F without any issues whatsoever. I'm not sure how many the tank could support, but I'd guess you could have a decent group of adult specimens in the tank without issues.

I'm really not experienced with hermit crabs, so I don't know exactly how many, but hopefully someone more experienced can give you a good, ballpark number that would work for your tank.

The gastropods Cerithium atratum and Tegula viridula would be suitable? I even thought of putting turbo snails integrated with my brine shrimp culture, although in this case would be another subject.

I recently set up a pico with some inverts and a clownfish the cost was about like $500 dollars, so about $400ish without the clownfish. Dont know what your budget is

Here in Brazil this probably would cost between two and three Brazilian minimum wages.

Sounds like very small bio load if it’s just hermit crabs! I think your filtration is good. You definitely don’t need strong wave maker. Are you gonna keep any corals?

Good question, I don't know if they would be suitable for a very low-tech nano reef like this. However, I know that soft corals are more resistant.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I have a 5 gallon invert tank, it has a coral banded shrimp, emerald crab, 3 hermit crabs, and a couple of snails. Its about 14 months old now, it has a small heater, a very small powerhead, about 8 lbs of rock, and cheap bottle ATO from amazon. The light is a cheap clip-on light from amazon.

Small weekly water changes are all I do, its very easy to maintain and fun to watch.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

The gastropods Cerithium atratum and Tegula viridula would be suitable? I even thought of putting turbo snails integrated with my brine shrimp culture, although in this case would be another subject.

Sorry for the slow reply - I’m not entirely sure what Tegula viridula (which, to my knowledge is now called Agathistoma viridulum) eats, but it and Cerithium atratum would be fine tank mates from a tank conditions perspective. You may already know this, but it seems those two species are the preferred shells of the hermits you’re looking to keep (this is good in one sense, but it may raise the odds of the hermits attacking them for their shells - if the hermits are one of the species that is capable of doing so [see below]).

Its possible that the hermits are seeking out baby snails (whether or not hermits are capable of killing snails for their shells seems to vary by size and species, with larger species being much more capable than smaller ones - some smaller species are borderline incapable of actually killing a snail for its shell), but they most likely just look around for any shell that might work.

 

[lanpennmm]

At some moment the paguros will need to change the shell. Without any snails, what should be done? Or the paguros are sold always as adults?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

At some moment the paguros will need to change the shell. Without any snails, what should be done? Or the paguros are sold always as adults?

They most likely would need to change shells - having the snails there may work (if the hermits can get the shells from them), or you can add a bunch of shells to the tank for the hermits to choose from (most people do this to try and keep the hermits from going after their snails). If you can get a bunch of shells of various sizes from these specific snails to put into the tank, that would be my personal recommendation; otherwise, I would add whatever shells you can find that would be about right size-wise for the hermits to use at some point throughout their life, and I would add the live snails too.

 

[lanpennmm]

I forgot to ask: Is RO water obligatory for this tank setup? I found some water conditioners, like these:
- Fluker's Saltwater Concentrate/Water Conditioner for Hermit Crabs, 2oz
- Instant Ocean Marine Conditioner 250 mL, Makes Tap Water Safe for Aquariums

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

I forgot to ask: Is RO water obligatory for this tank setup? I found some water conditioners, like these:
- Fluker's Saltwater Concentrate/Water Conditioner for Hermit Crabs, 2oz
- Instant Ocean Marine Conditioner 250 mL, Makes Tap Water Safe for Aquariums

RO/DI is strongly preferred as it ensures good water/that there's not going to be dangerous stuff in the water (like copper) which would kill your hermits and snails. The water conditioners may or may not help with some potential issues, but not all of them.

If your source water is good enough, you can get away with not using RO/DI water, but - personally speaking - I'd use RO/DI either way just to be safe.

 

[lanpennmm]

Does these hermit crabs breed in aquarium?

Indeed the shrimp are vulnerable to copper. By anecdotal evidence (since I had red cherries and malawa shrimp) I never had this kind of problem with water from here, but it's good to pay attention.

Unfortunately, the RO/DI filter here's extremely expensive, maybe it's better to go to a freshwater setup.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Does these hermit crabs breed in aquarium?

Indeed the shrimp are vulnerable to copper. By anecdotal evidence (since I had red cherries and malawa shrimp) I never had this kind of problem with water from here, but it's good to pay attention.

Unfortunately, the RO/DI filter here's extremely expensive, maybe it's better to go to a freshwater setup.

They might breed, but the young go through a pelagic stage and then need proper, tiny shells to settle, so the young almost certainly won't survive to adulthood (rearing hermit crab larvae is very difficult from everything I've read).

If you're able to keep shrimp without problems, then you could always give saltwater a test run and see if you could keep a hermit crab with your source water. Again, some people have source water that works for keeping livestock while others don't - the RO/DI is really just a way of ensuring that the water will work regardless of your source water quality. Alternatively, some people just buy distilled water (like the kinds you can find in grocery stores or supermarkets) and use that (too my understanding, distilled water is just as good as RO/DI). The distilled water may be a good option for you to explore you have any readily available for you.

 

[bnord]

recently put together a 13.5 over Christmas, in part to see how low I could go - all the equipment was $315 - MOL 100 for 4 small fish (tiny file fish, pair of CB gobies and a tail-spot) and all the softies from other tanks in the collection

so it is doable - best of luck

 

[lanpennmm]

Interesting.
Well, I forgot to ask: how many lbs of live rock would I need for this tank size?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Interesting.
Well, I forgot to ask: how many lbs of live rock would I need for this tank size?

Hopefully some more experienced folks will answer this for you as well, but this is my answer:

The general rule of thumb people list is 1-2lbs per gallon, but it comes with a lot of caveats (you can read through the thread linked below for some ideas on the caveats). That said, because you're looking at inverts only and a small bioload, you probably don't much (if any) rock, so I'd suggest anywhere from 3-12lbs dependent mostly on what you think looks best in your tank.

QUESTION OF THE DAY - "Live Rock Per Gallon Rule" - Under, Over or Just Right?

Today is our QOTD where we feature saltwater aquarium methods, ideas, tricks, equipment, livestock etc. where YOU the viewer will decide if the subject of the topic is deserving of the Underrated, Overrated or Just Right rating! f you have ideas for topics please message me! Today we are going...

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