Reddit reviews Wave-point 6-Inch 8-Watt Super Blue and Daylight Micro Sun LED High Output Clamp Light

I have an 8G nano I will try to answer your questions.

My current cost is somewhere around $200 including sand, rock, aquaclear 70 refugium mod, light, refugium light, seachem purigen, heater and snail clean up crew.

I would actually buy some sand and not use the beach sand. Use the ocean direct live sand original grade its a great mix of fine and thick pieces with seashells in it.

anenome is not really good for a small tank, but there are a ton of easy to care for corals, green star polyps are quick growing and hardy, mushroom corals and zoas are the common ones. Tridacnid clams are pretty and fairly easy to care for as long as they have good lighting and food and quality water parameters i.e. ammonia, nitrite and nitrate are 0. Nitrates can be a little higher for the clam, green star polyps and mushrooms but any higher than 10 is pushing it.

As far as fish go you are kind of limited with size. You can get a goby/pistol shrimp pair, a single clown fish and some cleaner shrimp, a green chromis and cleaner shrimp, royal gramma and cleaner shrimp. If you like the pistol shrimp you can get a clown, chromis or dottyback along with the pistol shrimp. go here for more info on some common nano fish. make sure to read their minimum tank size requirements

The aquaclear 70 refugium is an excellent mod I am running it with seachem purigen, a clump of chaeto and a submersible light which is staggered 1 hour difference from my display light. i.e. refugium light on at 7, display off at 8. Display on at 9, refugium light off at 10. This helps prevent pH swing during the night. You can use a aqualcear 110 if you wish. I also found that you don't really need the divider between the intake section and the main part of the filter, just use the mesh part over the out take portion and you will be all good. In my 8g I didn't replace the impeller with a smaller version I did remove a small tab on the gray plastic part that reduces flow so that you can reduce flow even more, but I keep mine at max flow output and the corals seem to love it.

My parameters with the 9 pounds of live rock and 10 pounds of live sand with the refugium mod and seachem purigen is
ph-8.2
ammonia-0
nitrite - 0
nitrate -0

I do water changes about every other week but top off daily with RODI or salt water depending on the salinity levels, which I check at night time after the lights are out.

As far as lights go there is a wide variety you can get but I have the wave point 8 watt it provides excellent output for my corals. For you I would recommend the wave point 16 watt since it is a standard 10G tank There are other lights that would work well like a DIY Led array, Par 38 bulb or other clamp on LED's.

I bought my LR from petco.com sicne my LFS didnt have good quality rock. It took my tank about 1 week to spike ammonia and nitrite, then I added the seachem purigen and chaeto to reduce the nitrate levels which were at 40ppm. I also added a clean up crew at this point which I purchased from this awesome site. Performing 50% water changes twice within a week my nitrates were undetectable. Once ammonia and nitrite are 0 and nitrate is less than 20 you can add fish, but if you want to add corals try to keep your nitrates as low as possible.

during the cycle you will see algae which will be maintained through the clean up crew and eventually will be replaced with coraline algae (the purple, red, green cool looking stuff).

Perhaps this is what you seek.

For context I've spent the last 2 weeks setting up a Fluval Spec III, the 2.6 gallon little brother to the Spec V. The rear chambers and dimensions are mostly identical except the Spec V is twice as long.

The lighting you need depends entirely on what you'll be keeping in the tank. Fish only? Softies? LPS? SPS? Figure out your stock list and then research the temperament and lighting/flow requirements of everything you want before you buy any more equipment. I'm using this light and think it will be sufficient for me since I'll only have a few softies and some birdsnest SPS, only time will tell. It has a bigger brother that might work for you depending on your needs. (I was attracted to the fact that it comes with a mounting arm.)

I highly recommend upgrading the return pump. This Aquatop pump fits perfectly in my return chamber, is almost silent, and provides several times more flow than the stock pump.

Consider buying this media basket which is specifically designed for the Fluval Spec series. It might seem a bit silly to spend $50 on some laser-cut acrylic, but welcome to the hobby I guess. If you're on a strict budget you can get by with the stock foam basket; the benefit of the 3rd party basket is it's easier to manage the chambers and is more compatible with stuff like bioballs. The big block of foam struck me as a bit silly, I cut it up and use smaller parts of it for mechanical filtration that I can rinse out as needed.

Another awesome but ultimately optional purchase is the Cobalt Easy-Therm, an excellent slim heater that will fit in the return chamber better than a glass heater will. Trust me, in such a small tank you want to hide absolutely everything you possibly can out of sight.

Good luck!

Are you comfortable with DIY type projects? Also, what do the 5g tanks you have look like? I built my wife a 2.5g pico, so I can definitely send some links your way but I want to make sure I'm not sending you useless information. For starters, though, this is the light that hers uses (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007ZK80YG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1). The light is extremely blue, but that is the spectrum that the corals use. I don't think it would be enough light for the more demanding species out there, but it would definitely work with the corals in the picture that you posted. Make sure to get the super blue and daylight version if you go with this - there is a 12" version as well but I don't know the dimensions of your tank. Also, there is no on/off switch, but so long as you keep the light on a timer, this should not become an issue.

As far as your stocking question, hers has a bunch of mushroom corals and zoanthids, as well as a blasto, with a sexy shrimp, pom pom crab, and electric blue hermit crab. You are at the extreme lower end of being able to house a single fish, depending upon your water change regime. I am planning on putting together a 5g for myself in the near future that will house a yasha goby and pistol shrimp combo, which is pushing it but still feasible, for example.

Let me know some more details about what you have in mind as far as setup and I can definitely send some links your way. Since this is your first tank, you definitely will make mistakes, but I wouldn't be completely terrified of putting together a small tank. In fact, I often find it more rewarding to look at hers than my larger one, and so long as you truly take your time, keep livestock demands low, and maintain water quality/salinity, you should be able to pull it off.

On my 1.5g pico I use a combination of the Wave-point 8W model and this 2W from HOSSEN. The smaller lamp is used as a spotlight for 4 hours on my sps. I have seen 1/3" of growth on my birdsnest and a few new polyps on zoa if it's any indication of how bad/good I'm doing with these lights.

Honestly, I would have forked out the money for a par30 bulb had I not been a dumb penny-pincher when I started.

Seconding this. I have a 6" version of this on my fluval spec, works and looks great.

Edit: Here is the one I bought

Apologies for my light-light ignorance, I've been browsing the web and found a few candidates. Would one of these be more suitable?
uno

dos

Does it say what the light strength is, for example 6000k or 7500k. Is this the light? https://www.amazon.com/Wave-point-6-Inch-8-Watt-Daylight-Output/dp/B007ZK80YG If so it seems to be a little strong and more towards reefs but you should be okay with it and it should help growth. That said the amazon sword will quickly outgrow your tank and if it's having issues try some root tabs.