Hey guys, Jeremy here with KISS Aquatic Systems
k-i-s-s keep it simple stupid. So today we're going to talk about my
nano reef, which is about as simple and stupid as
it gets.
So it's a 20 gallon tank, been up and running for
about a year. The total cost of the setup, excluding all the livestock and the
hardscape, ran me about $200 bucks.
Yes I know it's not winning reef tank of the year anytime soon or
ever, and some high-end reef keepers may see it as little more than a glorified
refugium, but I like it. I think the tank works, I
think it looks nice. It looks a lot nicer than I thought it
would. It's got a lot of different colors.
Reds, oranges, pinks, purples, nice powdered blue,
some greens. I have eight different corals, small corals.
Seven of them are LPS stony corals, they've all done
great. Three very small fish, a young clownfish
and a pair of green banded gobies which are spawning all the time.
Tons of macroalgae, most of it just came out of the live rocks and I have no idea
what it is. And all you reefers out there may be
able to notice I have a thriving colony of rare and
valuable aiptasia. So I've been really looking forward to
making this video for a long time. I think reef keeping really is a
wonderful hobby, it's a lot of fun. It's not as
popular as I think it should be because I think a lot of people are scared and
put off by the intimidating aura that reef
keeping has. People think that it's really really
hard and complicated to set up a reef tank, that it's expensive,
that unless you throw tons of money at your system
you're never gonna be able to have any success ever
with corals, and clearly looking at my setup that's just not the case.
If you design your system intelligently, and
and very importantly stock and feed it reasonably,
you can have reasonable success reef keeping with a very simple,
very cheap system. So let's dive right in. The tank is a
20 long, which it's a nice little tank, especially for an experiment like this
or a tight place. It's got a nice footprint, it's two and a
half feet long, a foot tall, and a foot deep.
And the stand, which is not shown, it's a very
cheap and simple steel stand. I like going with the steel versus some
of the other lower cost stands because it tends to be a lot more durable.
I know some of those other low-cost particle board or composite wood stands
they do melt over time and steel does not melt which is nice.
Equipment wise, really what you see is what I got.
So it's a wave maker and a heater.
Wave maker, it's 500 gallons an hour so I have a flow rate in this tank of 25
times. Which is on the high end for for most
tanks, but I think it's appropriate for a setup
with no other filtration of any kind. Heater,
I have it set to 72, 73 degrees (F), which is basically room
temperature. So I'm not sure if it actually works or
if I even need it at all.
My lighting is... embarrassing. I have a really basic lamp fixture,
I think I got it at Target. It's one of those
those floor lamps that has five attachment points for just basic led
bulbs, and the bulbs that I use are just really
generic 6500k leds.
So not a high-end light fixture at all, not recommended by anyone ever to grow
corals or anything, but as you can see it it works. I've had
really great success, particularly with some of the red macroalgae,
seem to love that kind of lighting. And I can tell you for a fact if I'm not
careful I really can fry some corals. So as you can
see all my corals are hanging out on the bottom. So
yeah that's really it in terms of equipment.
Very important though, to make one point is
the only reason why this tank had any chance of working
is because I understood the limitations of what I was doing
and I stocked it very very lightly. So I have three very small fish.
Clownfish is still very young, an inch, inch and a half, she'll grow but
it'll take time. I have a green banded goby pair which
each of those fish top out at a little less than an inch.
So nice cute little fish, really fun if you have a nano setup and
have a bit of space. My corals are all very very small.
I think they were all $10 frags, and maybe some of them have doubled but
still very small corals. And the macroalgae, it's really all
organic growth. I mean I got a tiny bit of
of the dragon's breath you could see on the right side as a freebie,
but that whole bunch it's 95 percent organic growth and
all the stuff on all of my rock work it just appeared.
So lots of open space, very lightly stocked,
and I feed this tank almost nothing, which I think is very important again
without any other nutrient export. I don't have a skimmer,
any kind of filtration, or a sump of any kind, or refugium.
So this is it. Yeah that's really the tank.
It really does go to show that you can set up a nice reef tank
with a very simple, very low cost system as long as you're
you stay disciplined about stocking
and feeding. So thanks guys, hope it was interesting. Maybe provided
something to think about. Take care!