Setting Up My FIRST EVER NANO REEF TANK! Part 1: Equipment & Startup 

Don't worry I still have loads of freshwater content coming as well 😂 Everything I've used so far Tank US: bit.ly/3Le1cfO EU: bit.ly/3LCR1CX Light US: bit.ly/3oTrj42 EU: bit.ly/3LiuJoM Sand US: amzn.to/3ZtDlOe (similar) EU: amzn.to/3TTFphf Refractometer US: amzn.to/3JPFKgB EU: amzn.to/42Pa7fF Equipment I like to use (affiliate links) Tank US: bit.ly/3EbkdxH EU: bit.ly/3S3y9ht Light US: bit.ly/3S2WxjC EU: bit.ly/3z6R16F Filter US: bit.ly/3yxFttR EU: bit.ly/3eoYxUn Clear Filter Pipes US: bit.ly/3RsFJkT EU: bit.ly/3AL5oyv Substrate US: bit.ly/3bux8yR EU: bit.ly/3qhHDt4 Wood (similar) US: bit.ly/3VmDUJ0 EU: bit.ly/3MwgKfm Rocks (similar) US: bit.ly/3yAO7Yk EU: bit.ly/3Tn0tLX Dwarf Hairgrass (Eleocharis parvula) US: bit.ly/3VsJIR5 Umbrella Hair Grass (Eleocharis Vivipara) US: bit.ly/3MpO9br Riccardia moss US: bit.ly/3SR3Zy9 Juncus repens US: bit.ly/3yyJjmo Crypt parva US: bit.ly/3Cs0APn Crypt lutea US: bit.ly/3yBGDo7 Crypt walkeri US: bit.ly/3rSxBzu 🚨Watch this next!🚨 Inspiration playlist! ru-vid.com/group/PLrlvf56gZy-ipL3105SdfKsUBrMUSttoh CO2 buying guide! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dIVrr1yS3sU.html How to SETUP your CO2! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qSHZ4F2PI2o.html Simple fertilizer dosing! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-I_KBOUM1RXM.html 👉🏻Cool Aquascaping T-shirts: mosscotton.com/ Code: mjaqua10 👉🏻Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to my RU-vid channel: RU-vid.com/mjaquascaping 👉🏻 Use Code ''MJAMSTERDAM'' for 10% off Fzone products #plantedtank #aquascape #mjaquascaping

put your heater in the second compartment. That way you don’t have to worry about it running dry and possibly setting your house or apartment on fire. Also consider investing in an auto top off or ATO that will prevent your pump from running dry.

Hi! 💁🏻‍♀️ I'm really happy for this new series. Almost a year and a half ago, thanks to your videos, I bought my first freshwater aquarium and started with aquascaping. Since then, I have 5 aquariums. I have been reading and watching videos on YT for a saltwater aquarium for 2 months now. Coincidentally, I was even at the specialty salt water store in Quebec this morning. According to my research and the information I was given, I would need the Waterboxe 15 or 25 for the choices of fish I would like, a Hermit Bernad and two shrimp. According to my research, I would need 3000 Canadian dollars for the Waterboxe with the furniture, all the accessories, the sand, the rocks, the lamp, the skimmer and the widget to add movement to the water. No fish or coral included in this price. I want to cry. So I'll save up and buy one item at a time. It will probably take me 2-3 years to complete this project, still without living inside. This will give me time to look at your mistakes and especially your successes. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you much happiness and success in this project. 🪸 Have fun! Bonjour from Québec! 💁🏻‍♀️🇨🇦/🇫🇷

Natural seawater has a salinity of 35ppt not 33ppt. You may want to adjust this.

Very excited for your new journey into saltwater aquascapes! Thanks for showing us your 'mistakes' too, which is interesting and very educational. 😊

I setup my saltwater tank a few weeks back❤. I love your content and still watch them even though I don't have a freshwater tank anymore

You keep making quality videos, keep it up! I’m so excited to see what aquatic creatures you’ll put in the saltwater tanks!

Enjoy the journey

This is really cool. I love the way saltwater tanks look, but I've never tried one. I do love to look a the corals when I'm at a fish store. They're so beautiful and kind of magical looking.

Congratulations on your new reef tank and happy to see your micro algae arrived. The Aqua Forest Bio Sand was interesting and the painted rock to look like it has coralline algae is beautiful. The light from BRS is also fantastic.

Welcome to saltwater!

Thanks for the nice video. I'm glad you're starting saltwater aquarium

Reef aquariums are a fantastic world

Love this new series, made my first salt water tank half a year ago, so will be checking it with interest.

Love your content and watching your saltwater journey with interest! Your filter upgrades are fine, just move the heater to the middle compartment and you won't have the risk of it running dry.

Really nice set up!

I'd suggest a 20% water change weekly, keep that sand clean, watch evaporation, don't add many fish, and have fun! Also, you will need way more flow than you are used to. Wanna turn over the water volume 20-40 times an hour for mixed reef.

This is an awesome video. Thank you for sharing your learnings with us 😊

Looks great!

great setup

Welcome to salt! Your freshwater tanks look awesome!

Nice looking set up

Well done

This is awesome!

Excited for the future of your reef/saltwater journey! I'm currently in the beginning of my freshwater adventure, only having 5 mystery snails, but will soon have 3 more from a person gifting them to me, and soon some shrimp, since my tank is nearing the end of its cycling phase! Recently found my passion in the aquarium world, and would like to hopefully open my own store one day. I think I posted once before about it, but I have to say thank you, again, for showing your saltwater journey, as marine life has always peaked my interest. Wanted to be a marine biologist for the longest time, but as I have pretty severe thalassophobia, I'll have to settle with nano aquarium life, which is more than okay with me, since I adore aquatic life!

Great solution logic

FINALLY! More on saltwater please!

I can't wait for fish, so excited for you.

Off to a great start!

Glad to see more Saltwater tanks! I started my first reef 2 years ago, with a 10 gallon, now I have a Waterbox 45.2 lol

Very nice

Cant wait to follow this as i have just purchased waterbox 10 a few months back 😂 feel like i know nothing yet but hopefully gets easier

Looking good!

How fun! I just recently set up my 1st reef nano tank as well! I used the same AF biosand and also glued the rocks together with cotton and superglue. It has held up well for 5 months now. I used an old Dennerle 10 liter. An aquaclear 50 fits perfectly on it's rear and i filled that with a bag of that Life Bio Fil and a bag of purigen and a heater. I also run an eheim 350skim where i removed the skimmer and added some filter floss in it to polish the water. My light is actually a Chihiros A201 Marine version with a blue and a white channel. It has been running for about 5 months now, and i added corals and limpets 1 month ago. wich also itroduced copepods and mysis shrimps. Really excited to see you do this as well

Yay! I love it!

Merci pour cette belle vidéo

Good luck.😁👍

I'm not sure if you are unaware, but one of the biggest ways to keep algae under control is to avoid detritus, and detritus settling. Lots flow is the first, the filter sock is second, rising it out as often as possible. Third is the layout of the scape, detritus getting stuck under rocks where flow can't access it is bad.

Id recommend adding marine copepods to both reef tanks. Why? Copepods will reduce possible diotome outbreaks and will serve as a good backup food source for the animals.

I think its been mentioned elsewhere in the comments however i would consider moving the heater either to the middle compartment or inside the tank directly mext to your outflow (not ideal i know) so that it is in a space that has the most constant and consistent water level and doesnt run dry. Good luck on the reef tank, in sure it wjll be tons of fun

The man whose should to made a reef tank, builded reef tank. I am sure you will show lots of good vision for reefers.

Diatoms when cycling a new marine setup thats normal !! I recommend a uv sterilizer and add more bio media have enough space in the back for a small refugium.. Clean up crew wont do anything if you dont have fish the problem is in the water not mature enough . phytoplankton is key i recommend adding as well hope you find this useful great setup cheers 🍻..

looks really good you can use corals right from the start like soft coral, you can get snails and a shrimp if you get algae that shouldn't be a problem If you go with some soft corals you won't get much algae either.

Great tank choice, mate! I also own a Waterbox (it‘s the 25 peninsula). Even after two years I‘m still impressed by the functionality and build quality of it. My only concern is the space you are left with to work on the tank. There are just a few centimeters of room between the shelf and the tank. Not ideal but I’m sure you will make it work!

Best of luck ❤🇮🇳

Awesome

Congratulations with you saltwater adventure 😊 i startet a saltwater aquarium last october, its just a simpel setup in JUWEL 190L but with some Lps corals.

Sniffing the sand made me laugh way harder than it should have

I’m about to convert my 60 litre fresh water to salt water reef, looking forward to these videos from you 😃

I hear when cycling tank its best done with lights out !

thnx ..setting mine up aswell :}

It's imperative that the heater is not in the return pump section of the filter

Exciting times. It's great to share the journey with you as you venture into the world of saltwater set ups. Thank you for sharing your mistakes, it's always valuable content to see can go wrong. Good luck with your salty tanks. Looking forward to the seahorses 😉

Hej Mark, im really excited with your new projects. Thx for sharing with us, you do great work. 😊

Вы рискуете стать настоящим моряком! Боюсь, ваши пресные танки превратятся в морские 😁

So excited for you reef tank/saltwater contents.

Gr8 video, thanks Can i use any type of super glue for rocks ?

That's Iwagumi style reef tank! Beautiful indeed. A question though, the salt used in the macro algae tank is same as the salt used in the reef tank?

@MJAquascaping, Wanneer komt deel 2? Het wachten duurt lang😅... Aangezien mijn handen jeuken voor een schappelijke zoutwater aquarium, naast 12 jaar zoetwater ervaring. Had in engels gekund maar hou dit even Nederlands. Scape to the moon and back❤

I just broke down my Waterbox 20g Cube yesterday. I’ve been using it for freshwater planted setups since I got it. I have been thinking I may set it up in the near future for saltwater. Maybe do the micro algae and some shrimp…

Super excited as a reef hobbyists

I have this tank! I would humbly suggest that there is nothing wrong with your filtration upgrades, I personally don't use the filter sock either. The pump chamber is always the first to go down because of evaporation. Perhaps that is what you experienced?

I calibrate my refractometer every 6 weeks or so with a reference solution thats 35ppt. This makes sure I get the same salinity every time.

Yyyyeeeesssss!!

I’ve been watching your vids for a week or two now and had a question. I love the look of lily pipes but I don’t really see any surface agitation. How do you go about keeping good gas exchange levels with so little surface movement?

Hell yeah! I wanna see the fishes and other lifeforms in there 😁 good work keep it up

Leuk avontuur! Benieuwd hoe het uitpakt, want zit er zelf ook aan te denken om naast mijn zoetwateraquarium een nano reef op te zetten als ik mijn vriendin kan overtuigen :) Heb daarom één vraagje over het geluid. Komt er veel geluid uit de pomp van het water? Zou je dit kunnen laten horen in je part 2?

Maybe try a bare bottom setup in the future. The sand can really mess with the water parameters, especially with the huge flat rock. It will probably rot beneath

This is a week old, so I doubt you'll see this comment, but maybe it will help some other new reefers. Salinity should be kept at 35ppt. That's the same as natural sea water. You need to calibrate your refractometer with each use using a bottle of 35ppt calibration solution. Every sump will force evaporation from the return chamber. The water level in the tank cannot change until the sump empties first. You absolutely need an auto top off in salt. Saltwater fish absorb electrolytes via osmosis and require stable salinity to maintain those levels or they will go into shock and die. Salt does not evaporate, so as water in your tank leaves, the remaining water becomes saltier. An ATO is a critical piece of life support, the same as a heater or bio filtration. There's a lot more going on in salt water tanks than just nitrifying bacteria. You can learn more about this by researching the microbiome, but a great and simple start would be to add some ocean substrate or reef rubble. Most reef keepers just buy sand and rock directly from the ocean when starting the tank. This is what is referred to as "ocean rock" "gulf rock" "live rock" ect, but you can just add some reef rubble in a bag in the sump, or a couple scoops of reef mud like Aqua Forest's Life Source to seed the aquarium. At the first diatom bloom, add live copepods. I cannot stress this enough. This will be the single greatest member of your clean up crew and one of the best things you can do for your tank, next to seeding it with ocean bacteria. The goal is to avoid headaches before they start. Finally, join Reef2Reef. It is the absolute best forum and source of saltwater information. It is where all of the professional chemists and marine biologist hang out, which this hobby attracts a lot of. Do not seek out advice from social media sites like reddit or facebook. Most of the replies you will get are from people with equal or lesser knowledge than you already possess. Anyway, welcome to the world of salt and Happy Reefing!

Ik zou als ik jou was ook eens gaan kijken naar nano eiwitafschuimertje en een klein stromingspompje (bijv. een Sicce Nano Voyager pompje).

Luv your work, but can i ask a Q ? why didnt u lay your sand first then rocks so they sit better ?? idk, Im knew with saltwater, just trying to learn as much as i can.

I had to take down my reef system cuz of school😕. Waiting patiently to get my waterbox 20 back in action

I was cringing watching you 'alter' the filter. I would have not done that without some research and when you said the water level was not right in the last chamber I was smelling burnt heater already. I'm glad you were sharing that failure and as someone who lost a lot of things in a house fire many years ago I'm glad that didn't happen to you. It's very hard to recover afterwards. Lucky break. I'll be watching with great interest this process. Good luck!

Can you tell us your seven favorite plants both in terms of economy and appearance?

reef tanks realy need a ato system.

We both have the same tank and light for our first coral reef tank. I really don't think you need any sort of powerhead for this set up! I do recommend gorgonians, there are real nice ones in Europe and they are easy to keep

Hey MJ, looks great! How is the reef tank doing? Are you doing an update video soon?

Cant wait to see your saltwater videos in the future i have a salt water aquarium with nothing in it because i just don’t have the money but it’s definitely a dream to get it running

I think you should be careful with the cyanoacrylate on the rock, over time it peels off, although I don't know how it works with cotton😅😅😅😅😅😅😅

Cool video! That much salt?

Where did you get your big multi tier rack? I can’t find anything with enough weight limit for tanks

the biggest drawback in a saltwater aquarium are bristle worms, if you have 1 you have 100 after 1 month and you can throw everything away.

Thanks MJ for your video. Any saltwater tank filtration I have seen is way too much for me. Too many gadgets 😂. Good for you going outside the box. Best of luck!

Back to fresh water...sometime could you talk about the Aquario Neo Flo lily pipes with the surface diffuser. I find it is hard to keep it consistently rotating and not sink down. I play with making adjustments to the little piece that affects the flow into the skimmer attachment until I get it rotating nicely but in a few days or less it is sinking again :( I also wonder if my surface evaporation / water level changing is part of the problem.

Anybody knows what is the brand of the furniture where he has his aquascape tanks?

nice projects, for the new reef aquarium you are going to need more movement of water, look for a small wave generator that points to the surface and thus have better gas exchange and circulation. Be careful with the stone that you have stuck to the back glass, ideally you would have a little space for the water to pass through. I have your same aquarium but in a 76L version, I have a smart ato to fill the water, you avoid a lot of work. I hope to see the evolution soon, keep it up!

Is there part two

Marine is not my vibe because it's too expensive to maintain. It's a higher level for you, so I wish you good luck 🎬👍😎

Interesting to see. A quick question if I may: what's the brand of the superglue? So far, I've only been able to locate gel-type superglue, but I am looking for liquid superglue. Thanks in advance and good luck with these projects.

The problem with anything containing "live bacteria" is that the bacteria you actually want are quite sensitive... temperatures too low or too high are fatal to them. And you never know what happened during shipping and distribution of the product.

No skimmer?

Hi, What measurements does the aquarium have?

the shelf is gonna rott quick, isnt it? bc of the saltwater

Any chance you got some kind of time travel machine or something? Really just want to see how these saltwater tanks are doing in like six months.

Just set up my first nano almost identical to yours.. Just at the "ugly" stage.

How is my planted aquaria?

It would be really helpful if you could explain roughly how much it would cost to start up a simple tank like..Tom from New Jersey ♡♡♡♡

I don't know if bio-balls will be good enough bio media for tank that small. I've seen tanks like this on Seachem Phosguard and Matrix and bigger tanks with other media like live rock or others. Maybe consider adding small bag of matrix, it should help stabilise and bio divers this aquarium (especially considering it a reef tank)

Im doing terrible😢 had sushi last night family dinner in san francisco. Dont tell the fish😅

Everything is good except the part that you kept the heater in the return chamber is a BIG NO NO as water will evaporate and leave that chamber run dry so BEST place to keep the heater in your second chamber as water level will always remain consistent in there and not run the heater dry. Please make sure you change that and also let your viewers know the same in the next update as that one problem can avoid a FIRE hazard in your home.