questoin about a 12 gallon tank.

[marinefish]

I have a 12 gallon flat back hex acrylic tank. it has a built in wet and dry filtration system. the power head that pumps the water back into the tank is a rio 400 which pumps 140 gph. I have about 15lb of live rocks and 20lb of live sand. i have a pair of clowns, two cleaner shrimp, one pistol shrimp, one yellow watchman goby, 7 scarlet hermits, two turbo snails, and one less then one inch emeral crab. my salinity is at 1.024 and the temperature stays a constant 80 degrees F. I have two retrofited power compact lights from custom sealife with a combined wattage of 64 watts ( each light is a 50/50 32watt power compact).
How often should i do a water change?
Should i add some more powerheads and if so, how many more should i add and how many gallons per hour should these power heads pump?
Should i add another filtration device in this tank?
Should I add more lights to this tank?
what other clean up crews should i add?
Thank you all in advance for your reply =)

 

[marinefish]

anyone able to help or share advice?

 

[jayster]

I am new to this as well but my understanding with the nano type system is that frequent small water changes would be helpfull. I personally would like your lighting for my tank and it seems enough to host most corals except perhaps the most demanding and clams. I do not know enough about the mechanics to comment on your filtration but good luck. You may get additional support from a site I stumbled across for the small tanker. . . Nano-Reef.com

 

[marinefish]

thank you very much jay. if ur interesed in the my lighting system. it is a retrofit from custom sealife. locally i see it beign sold for 75 dollars or around the range, but if ur in california, there is a local fish and whole saler who sells it for 40 dollars a piece with the 50/50 light bulb. i currently have two of these that adds up to 64 watts. if u want to check out the lighting system, u can look it up at customsealife.com
once again..thank you for ur help.

 

[musipilot]

Here's my theory on water changes: Know your water. You can test your water for all the main parameters, and that will dictate how often/how much you need to change. Let me add one more thing...in a perfectly stable system I would still change 10% every two weeks, just to provide "fresh" and remove anything that might be a problem that your tests cannot pick up.
Be very careful with water changes in such a small system, you must be certain to match the salinity and temperature of your new water with the existing water, since any difference will be drastic.
If your parameters are good, small changes are all I would recommend. You need to know!