Would This Work?

[CathyGo]

I'm a FW person so I'm a little bit confused by all the extra equipment and stuff for SW. If I set up a 5.5 US gallon tank with a heater, light, and normal filter would that be alright or do I need to add much more filtration or a skimmer? I just want to keep it simple and small. I'm thinking maybe a few hermit crabs or a shrimp and it's stocked. I don't really want to get into corals until I have the basic maintenance down really well. Weekly water changes and frequent testing are fine with me. I have read through the FAQ Im just a little confused as to what I need for a small lightly stocked tank.

I'm going small because I'm looking to find an apartment and will hopefully be moving at some point. Most leases say no large tanks. I don't have a car so moving a large tank or even getting the equipment for it is a PITA too.

 

[CathyGo]

Just realized I have a 10 gallon tank sitting around so I might as well use it.

 

[dilbert]

All depends on stocking density and how much food enters the tank and finally how much waste products need to be removed.

The basic setup is a heater, at least one powerhead and liverock. If you wouldn't have liverock you could replace the powerhead with a filter but that would rather fit a setup for a quarantine tank.

With liverock you COULD also use an airpump plus airstone instead of a powerhead but that would work only with almost no livestock or simply to keep the liverock alive.

I use simple open-top tanks with heater and powerheads only. For the nano only, I added recently a skimmer due to hopeless overstocking ... those fish keep on growing ...

Water changes, skimmer or a sump/refugium do roughly spoken all the same job.

Lighting depends on livestock and for sessile invertebrates also how close you can put the source of light to them. So, shallow tanks can go along with less powerful lights.

Water purity depends also on livestock as in a fish-only tank the fish might eat the algae while those algae could smother and kill corals. Most corals close their polyps already if algae are around.