0.4 gal pico

[Darylb]

I built a tiny .4 gallon tank and I wanted to do something with it so I was thinking a small reef iv got an aqua one clearview 280 I was going to put a small piece of live rock and some sand out of my 55 and maybe keep a small zoa frag or mushroom how would you cycle a tank like this?

 

[BigRedsReefs10]

If you take the rock and sand from your 55 and keep them submerged the entire time you won't need to cycle the tank

 

[Darylb]

Hmm would that be the same for a 20 gallon tank? Because I added base rock to my tank took out some old cured live rock and put it in my 20 as well as some seeded media

 

[BigRedsReefs10]

If you used all LR from your 55 on the 20 it might be good, or it might take a "mini" cycle, but with dry rock added that would have to cycle

 

[Darylb]

Ah okay I am thinking of adding a fish in about 2 weeks that's given it 6 weeks anyway back to the pico how much would you say the parameters would swing in the tank?

 

[dingusplease]

Lol... I thought you meant you might start adding fish to the pico. Anyway, from my experience with a similar tank, you can extra pretty large swings in params. My "ultra pico" got up to 4ppm ammo in two days. Unfortunately, it seems that getting a compete cycle in these tanks can be hard without a very careful vigilant approach to topoffs, temp, and ammo levels (you don't want TOO much ammo, which is hard to control in a tank this small.)

 

[Darylb]

Hmm with chance of ammo getting that high is there anything I could keep in there

 

[dingusplease]

Do you mean what could you keep with the the possibility of ammo getting so high? Assuming you sort of skip the cycle as Red points out, by using all water, sand, and LR from your 55, and do very frequent WCS and topoffs... Maybe some cool macro or hardy softies with good light? Hmmm... Maybe an aiptasia tank would be cool just to see how fast it grows and how hardy it really is

 

[Darylb]

I was actually thinking of that i would like to make a way to cover the rock in aptasia and put it in my 55 and see if the pep will eat it all I haven't seen any since I added him

 

[dingusplease]

Don't think you will have to try very hard to cover a rock with this stuff ... Much less your whole tank. Would be a cool experiment with your pep!