5 gallon Experiment!

[sphelps]

A couple things to consider:

Base rock will become live, not much difference, it will still become biological.

Be careful what you see, many of these guys running small tanks have large tanks as well that they actually use to sustain them.

100% or very large water changes in a nano need to be done with caution, for example if you purchase a pail of salt and only mix up small amount at a time the levels will vary greatly each time. Large changes with inconsistent make up can be detrimental.

Use carbon with caution in nano tanks.

Personally I think you'll have better success with a large biological system that uses some sort of highly efficient bio media and water changes in the 50% range but never the less best of luck.