For anyone looking to start up a nano reef tank, the opportunities are almost endless.

In the upcoming blogs, we’ll concentrate on the aquarium we’ve used in-store at Somefin Fishy for our own Nano reef.

We’ll focus on showing you how to make sure the tank is healthy and looks fantastic in equal measure. In the blog, we’ll go through what we’ve used, from salts/supplements, livestock & live rock to any extra equipment, lighting and covers.

Which Nano Reef Tank?

Our choice of aquarium is the “Aqua One Aqua Nano 40”. It’s compact (holding 55L) and already contains a built-in filtration system together with a pump, heater and lighting unit. In our opinion, the style of filtration on this aquarium is pivotal to its success; the setup also contains a glass cover which we’ll come to replace further into the build.

Essential Additions 

When you buy the Aqua Nano 40 from us, we always recommend a few pieces of additional equipment to make your tank thrive and give the best possible conditions for your fish and invertebrates.

Ceramic Media 

To promote a healthy tank, we always recommend extra ceramic filtration media. There’s an extensive selection on the market, but our favoured media by miles is “Alfa Grog”. 

Afla grog is an excellent filtration media for the nano tank as its rough edges significantly increase its surface area to volume ratio. Why is this important? It allows for the growth of masses of bacteria, which are essential for the tank’s biological filtration. Effective biological filtration is the most important step in having a healthy environment for your tank’s inhabitants, and Alfa Grog comes top of the list.

Choosing the ideal substrate

You can use a limited range of substrate for the nano reef tank as you want to ensure the water conditions are maintained.

The choices come down to Coral Sand, or Limpopo Sand. We’ve used 4kg of the Unipac Limpopo Sand for our nano reef build. It looks great and are beneficial in helping with the water parameters.

Whats the deal with the water

Unless you’re making your own water, you’ll need Jerry Cans which can be purchased in store to transport water; we recommend long-term, one 25L Jerry Can and one 10L Jerry Can storing both saltwater and R.O water for this size of an aquarium.. 

The water can be made at home with a Reverse Osmosis Machine, or pre-mixes can be purchased in-store; we use the AquaSalt Pro Reef Salts and Tropical Marin V2 Refractometer to measure our mixes to a salinity of 1.025.

More information will follow on our upcoming blogs on our Nano reef build, watch this space and happy fish keeping!!!