• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

30 gallon merc tank

A 10 gallon should work albeit tightly and you may have to (as corpusse suggests) put only the skimmer pump inside if the skimmer is too large (many skimmer bodies can be put in or outside) but I think the Coralife I have in the photo would fit in a 10 and still allow the 7" filter sock (atleast I hope it will. I am going to have to use a 10 for Monty's tank because of the stand height, I had planned on using a 25). The sump in the photo is 35ish gallon and was the primary display until we upgraded to a 65ish tank.

I buy mesh bags (I like a fairly large mesh with a zipper (like this) but a velcro closure will work, do not get drawstring bags) and charcoal and put the charcoal in the bag, rinsing and replacing as part of your maintenance routine. You want charcoal made from coal, not coconut or wood. The coal charcoal is often marked for aquariums but check what it is made from before buying. Getting the pelletized helps reduce dust (you have to rinse it regardless) and is supposed to have more exposed surface are because it does not pack down when wet). I keep two for each tank and rotate them (rinsing well each week and letting them sit in RO water) and replace the charcoal about once every two months.
 
go to bulkreefsupply.com

you can buy a big bucket of activated carbon. the rox .08 carbon is by far the cleanest I've ever seen. Does not cloud the water at all even without rinsing. dwhatley you might want to try it too. I use this stuff in my reef tank. In my other tanks I've never felt the need to run carbon but if you're going to run it one of their media reactors is very handy. It's more expensive then a mesh bag but the flow hitting the carbon is much steadier and you get better use out of it.
 
ok i think i have got everything figured out but not sure so i need to build a sump buy an overflow a standard commercial 7" 100 micron filter sock, some charcoal, mesh bags, a return pump, a skimmer, and some form of a red light, and a ro/di unit.
 
Have you figured out your top yet? Mercs are not as tricky as most of the other species but you do need to be sure there is no straight side for them to clamber up and over.
 
Mine ate crabs from ccriters.com, just make a note when ordering that you are feeding a merc and they will send nice small crabs. Mine also liked bith hermit crabs and snails but not everyone has been successful with these. On the rare occasion that I actually saw my Merc I was able to stick feed it small chunks of frozen shrimp.
 

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