My wife is wanting to setup a nano tank. I was wondering what the best one is(except the current solana) it would cost more than my 180 lol

What size are you looking for?

20 or so..

I have to say my Aquapod 24 is an awesome nano. I just did some DIY tricks on the filter for under 15 bucks and its perfect.

What did you mod?

Whats your price range? I had a friend in med school who wanted an all in one so I built a false wall for the tank and from what he says the filteration works great. Might want to consider this with some T-5's. Fairly cheap and would work out well. If you like the clean look of the nanos then I would suggest the Aquapod. Its a great lil tank. I had some problems with the Biocubes at a store I worked at with the filteration and it blowing microbubbles. My gf neglected the heck out of her AP and it never crashed and worked well. There is a thread with a discussion of the best nano. Ill try to dig it up.

Thanks a lot... I have been doing some reading on them...think that's the road I am going to travel

Just noticed dam cyano in my 180, even after I have finally got RO water again! I have done about 90gallons of WC's over the last week, and cyano is appearing :(

What did you mod?

I decided to mod the filter. It comes with bio balls, ceramic media, and 2 huge blue sponges for mechanical filtration. Only problem was, the sponges were a pain in the @ss to get out and you had to squeeze them and this released a lot of gunk into the back chambers and thus back in to the DT. Well this is how I built my filter mod...

I started by closing off all of the intakes on the filter except for the one on the very top, only leaving open the top grate to get a nice overflow action.
You can see the grates im talking about on the right side of the AP in this pic.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b255/h2jeko/Aquapod/APstocklights.jpg

I went to Home Depot and bought the light grating for about 10 bucks. Its wayyyyy more than you need, but im putting the left over to good use building frag racks.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b255/h2jeko/Aquapod/grate2.jpg

I then just used pliers to break off the back strip. I made this 4 blocks wide by 24 blocks long. After breaking off the sections, I used a box cutter to cut and smooth down any edges .

The shelves are 4 blocks wide x 5 blocks long and the supports are 2 blocks wide by 4 blocks long.

Shelf

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b255/h2jeko/Aquapod/mainshelf.jpg

Support

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b255/h2jeko/Aquapod/2x4side.jpg

I just used zipties to attach the shelf to the back support

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b255/h2jeko/Aquapod/shelfback.jpg

I started off with attaching two supports to each shelf which is what you see in the final pic. But ended up with having only one support attached under the shelf in the middle. This made it a lot easier to install.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b255/h2jeko/Aquapod/endresult.jpg

I ended up getting Morning Glory low loft pillow stuffing for around 5 bucks at Wal-Mart for a huuuuuge bag. It will last you a long time. Make sure you DONT buy the flame retardant kind, it leeches toxins in the water... for once get the flamable material.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b255/h2jeko/141628.jpg

This is what it will look like in the end..

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b255/h2jeko/Aquapod/123456.jpg

I just use about a fist full of the filter floss and its a breeze to change. I replace it every 3 to 4 days and on every sunday when I do my water change. I ended up with 2 shelves on my finished mod. First one for the filter floss and second for my chemi-pure.

I hope I explained it okay.

Thanks!!

You are very welcome. I hope you do choose the AP, great little AIOs

Thanks!!

Great lil DIY, You should post that on a thread in the DIY section.

I personally like the biocube. Lots of good info for filter and lighting mods on nano-reef.