Aquascaping

How to Setup a Nano Aquarium?

How to Setup a Nano Aquarium?

Before setting up a nano aquarium, one must decide if he or she wants to have a planted aquarium, a fish only aquarium and a salt water aquarium. Because, the size of the aquarium, equipment, lighting, maintenance and everything around the aquarium changes with this decision.

What is a Nano Aquarium?

A nano aquarium is an aquarium with size below 60cm length 45cm width and 45cm height. Or simply we can say an aquarium of 1.5 feet cube and below can be termed as a Nano Aquarium.

Ideal Steps Involved in Setting up a Nano Aquarium

  1. Deciding the Size
    Based on the available space, desired theme of aquarium and investment you may deicide first on the size of the aquarium. A 45cm cube tank is ideal for planted tanks or dwaft cichlid or marine tanks while tanks as small as 15cm can be beautifully converted into an aquascape. One must also keep in mind that, the smaller the aquarium, the difficult it is to maintain it, as a small shift in water parameter will affect the tank due to low water volume.
  2. Filter and related equipment
    Once you have decided on the size, its time to decide on the filtration system. 45cm cube can accomodate canister filters like Shiruba XB 308 , 30cm cube tank can take sunsun 603B and other small tanks can be run with hang on back filters. If you are keeping only fishes in small quantity, and do not care about the looks , one can go for even an internal filter.
  3. Aquarium Light
    For fish Only Tanks: A large number of options are available at cheap prices. Never go for fancy blue or muti colour light that are cheap as it will result in algae issues. Choose lights like fireglow that is 6500 kelvin.
    For Planted Tanks: Depending on the size and scape, you have options like fireglow, fireglow plus, azur lights, chihiros A2, A2 Max, Chihiros WRGB, WRGB2, Chihiros WRGB PRO, Led Star, Twinstar, ONF, Chihiros C2 RGB and the list continues. For low tech tanks go for normal lights like fireglow or chihiros A2. For high tech tanks, always choose high intensity RGB lights.
    For Salt Water Tanks: Do thorough research and get the right light for your requirements .
  4. Cycling the tank
    Cycling any tank is critical and cycling a nano tank is very crucial. The low volume of water and low filter media capacity of nano filters makes it very important for us to thoroughly cycle the tank over 3weeks to 1.5 months. Introduce live stocks only after this.
  5. Maintenance
    Nano tanks are vulnerable to even slight water condition changes resulting in huge parameter changes. Do 50 percent water change every week without fail. Clean the glass and hardscape and any algae also weekly. Most importantly clean the filter and substrate once in a month. Do heavy substrate vacuum.

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