I MADE A NANO REEF TANK FOR CLOWNFISH! Easy Step by Step Tutorial

This is my tiny saltwater ecosystem that I've set up a few months ago. It has all kinds of coral, fish, shrimp and a bunch of other creatures. In this video I'm going to show you how easy it is to set up and maintain a small saltwater aquarium and that it doesn't have to cost a fortune. So let's get started. For this setup I'm going to use a 35 centimeter cube with a total volume of 42 liters or 11 gallons. I've already attached a background to the tank as well as a foam mat underneath the tank. The foam mat helps to distribute the weight evenly and the background is there just so I don't see the wires and tubing behind the tank. I don't like having visible equipment in the tank so I'm going for an external canister filter with a built-in heater. That way everything is nicely hidden in the cabinet. The last piece of equipment is the light. I'm going to use this smart LED strip which is not too expensive, has app control and looks great in my opinion. There will be links below to everything that I'm using for this build so make sure to check that out. Now let's build the hardscape. I want to create a natural looking structure for the corals to sit on and I want to create some hiding places for the fish and shrimp so they'll feel more comfortable. I'm going to use these handmade reef rocks. These are very porous so all kinds of beneficial bacteria can live on these rocks and help with filtration. It's important to make sure that the hardscape is not going to collapse so I'm gluing all the rocks together with superglue and cotton pads. A tiny piece of cotton is placed between two rocks and then saturated with liquid superglue. Wait a few seconds and everything will be locked together. Afterwards you can easily camouflage the cotton with some sand or some rock dust. That's the hardscape done. The final result has lots of little gaps and caves and I can view it from the front as well as from the right side where my desk is. Now we can add in the sand. I highly recommend to use live sand. This stuff is packaged in saltwater and has loads of beneficial bacteria so it's just going to help cycle the tank faster and allow us to add fish and corals faster. You can add as much or as little sand as you like. I'm going for quite a thick layer because I know the inhabitants that have planned for this tank will appreciate that. Finally we can add the water. I've made my own saltwater by mixing salt with reverse osmosis water but if you don't have an RO filter you can buy saltwater in most fish shops. Now we can also set up our filter. On the left side I just have a normal filter sponge. On the right side I'm adding biological media from my other nano reef to help kickstart this filter and in the middle I'm adding a bag of carbon media. This helps to remove unwanted chemicals and keeps the water crystal clear. I've also swapped out the standard in and out flow for glass lily pipes just because I like the look of them. It is now the next day and the tank is looking really good. The water has cleared up and we can take a minute to enjoy the result of our hard work from the day before. I'm going to let the tank settle for a few more days and in the meantime I can start thinking about what my first inhabitants are going to be. I'm also going to add some beneficial bacteria every single day to make sure that the tank will be ready soon. Seven days have passed and today is a very exciting day. I'm finally going to add some life to this aquarium. I've ordered four different types of macroalgae and five different types of soft coral. Macroalgae is very similar to plants in a freshwater aquarium. They're easy to keep, grow quite fast and help soak up excess nutrients. The corals are a little bit more sensitive and stressed from shipping but in the next few days they will start opening up and showing their beautiful colors. Our little saltwater ecosystem is now three weeks old and doing really good. But as you can see we're starting to get some algae. This is completely normal and part of the start-up phase. I'm actually very excited about the algae because it means we can add our cleanup crew. First up we have two Babylonian snails and two zombie snails. They merely buried themselves into the sand and that's where they spent most of their time. If it wasn't for their siphon sticking out you wouldn't even know they were in here. Not until dinner time comes around. Even though the snails are great at cleaning the sand we need some more help with cleaning the tank. So that's why I'm also adding in hermit crabs. These little guys are really fun to watch and with their tiny claws they will clean every nook and cranny of this aquarium. It has been a little over a month since this tank was set up and it is time to add some new inhabitants. I bought a beautiful goby as well as a pistol shrimp and these two creatures have the perfect relationship. You see the pistol shrimp loves to dig tunnels. The goby will guard the entrance of the tunnel and look for food. If the goby senses danger it will flick his tail several times to alert the shrimp letting him know that there is a predator nearby. Oh and not to forget I've also added a few of these bumblebee snails. They're mostly nocturnal but they do help to remove the triters and leftover food. Okay guys today is a very exciting day. We have a new box so some new inhabitants but first let me give you guys a quick update on how the tank is doing. So I think we're almost at day 100 like 90 something. I set this tank up in July and it's now almost November. As you can see I did upgrade the tank with a little flow pump or wave maker whatever you want to call it. Kind of just felt like the external filter wasn't producing enough flow for this tank. Yeah overall it's doing really good. The corals are growing well. This one here in the center the Kenya tree is growing really big. Inhabitants doing well. Here in front we have the goby with the pistol shrimp. They were very shy in the beginning but now I see them yeah just more often. But at the same time the tank still feels a little bit empty you know. Like we have the pistol shrimp and the goby. We have these snails which of course are mostly buried into the sand. The hermit crabs are really small. I also have a peppermint shrimp in here but I never see it. It's always hidden in the back. So I kind of felt like you know we need a little bit more fish in here. That's what we have in the box over there. Okay are you guys ready? I'm so excited. My first ever clown fish. Oh they are so beautiful. I have two of them. Here's the other one. I'm gonna quickly start acclimating them. In here I have a sea urchin and in this bag we have a few more snails. Okay guys they've been acclimating for a little while. I think it's time to release them. Welcome to your new home guys. Go ahead. I'm so excited. It seems a little bit pale but let's see how fast they all color up. Of course they're both just going to be stressed out from the journey so we'll give them a little bit of time. Okay we made it to day 100. It's been quite a journey but I've been enjoying it every single step of the way. So a couple days ago we added the two clown fish. Absolutely in love with them. Let me know in the comments if we should give them a name. Normally I don't really name my fish but maybe for these guys we can make an exception. Then besides the clown fish I also added in the six trochus snails. These guys are a little bit better at cleaning the glass and cleaning the rocks. And I also added that sea urchin. Really beautiful creature. Might have not been the best idea for this tank because it keeps getting tangled in all the macroalgae. Now from that last order there was actually one creature missing which is a cleaner shrimp. Should get delivered tomorrow so I'll overlay some clips of the cleaner shrimp when it gets here. Now some people might say that this tank is a little bit overstocked. I'm not sure. Right now we have three fish. We have two shrimp. Tomorrow we'll have three shrimp. Then we have all the snails, the hermit crabs, the sea urchin. In my opinion it doesn't feel overstocked. Of course the clown fish do get quite a bit bigger but also this is not this will not be there forever. I'm already thinking about a bigger saltwater aquarium. So let me know in the comments. Do you think that this tank is overstocked or do you think it's just as good as it is? I wanted to take a little moment and talk to you guys about maintenance because I feel like most people think that taking care of a saltwater aquarium is just a lot of work. But actually this one is really easy to care for. I would say it's almost easier than all my freshwater tanks. So it's now been 100 days and in those 100 days I've only done one water change. And to be honest with you I don't feel like there's a need for water change in these saltwater tanks. Especially with this soft coral and macro algae combo. Because these corals, these macro algae, they kind of soak up all those excess nutrients. So my nitrate, my phosphate are always very low. So the only maintenance I do is scraping the glass with my algae scraper. I do that like maybe twice a week. Then every three to four weeks I will clean the glass lily pipes. I just remove them, soak them in some warm water with bleach and then just put them back. Of course after dechlorinating them. Sometimes I do have to trim the macro algae but again it doesn't grow that fast. And of course feeding the fish and the corals. I do it every day but I don't really consider that as maintenance. Okay and then lastly the full cost breakdown. I wasn't sure if I should talk about this because you know money is always a bit of a sensitive topic for some people. But I want to be transparent with you guys. I do have to say that this was not meant to be a low budget setup. If I wanted to go for a low budget setup I wouldn't have added 10 different types of corals, a bunch of different inhabitants, an app controlled light, an app controlled wave maker, external canister filter. There are definitely cheaper ways of doing this. But anyway let's get into it. So the tank itself this is a optic white rimless cube from a brand called Blauw which was 73 euros on Amazon. The external canister filter there was a filter smart 100 was 130 euros. The light the Aqua Illumination Blade Coral Grow is 180 euros. Again there's definitely way cheaper lights. Also these soft corals they actually don't really need that much light. So you can definitely go for a cheaper light if you wanted to. The wave maker this thing for some reason I mean I got it sponsored but for some reason this wave maker is 200 euros. No idea why it's so expensive. Again you can find cheaper options online. The live sand was 45 euros and the rocks I still had in my collection but I just put a smaller box on the list which was 85 euros. The glass lily pipes were 45 euros. Then the first order of macro algae and corals that I placed on day 7 that was a total of 230 euros. Then on day 21 I added some cleanup crew and those two feather duster worms that was a total of 100 euros. And then a couple days ago we had the clownfish the snails and the urchin was another 100 euros. And then tomorrow I have the cleaner shrimp coming which was 17 euros. I'm sure I'm still missing a few things just small items but this comes down to a total of 1200 euros or roughly 1300 dollars. So of course that's a lot of money but again there are cheaper ways of doing this. Also I didn't spend 1200 euros all in one go. It was done over the course of four months so then it's 300 euros every month for four months and now you have this beautiful setup that's going to last you for many years to come you know. I think actually 1200 euros for a reef tank is actually not that much especially with the corals that I've chosen. These are very affordable corals and the prices of some corals are absolutely insane. So yeah that was the total cost breakdown. Like I said in the beginning of the video there will be links to everything that I've used in the video description and I think I'll try to search for cheaper alternatives as well. So if you do want to give this a go but you don't want to spend 1200 euros then I'll try to find some more affordable options. Yeah guys I think that's it for now. Day one to 100 of this saltwater ecosystem. I'm absolutely loving it. Hope you guys loved this video as well. If you did love it then don't forget to smash the like button. As always thanks for watching. See you in the next one.