Starting 2.5g pico - Aquarium Advice

DragonForce · 09-06-2007, 12:32 AM

Ok so I'm helping this girl I'm seeing set up a 2.5g pico(she fell in love with my 37g (really)mixed reef)

Anyways we're planning on doing a 4 inch sand bed, 4lbs of LR, a hob filter for flow with a heater in it.

For lighting I was thinking a single 13w 50/50 PC setup. We would house shrooms, zoas, maybe a small green tree coral, gsp, and maybe a frag of some of my LPS, like candy canes and torch. I even have some ricordea florida frags we can try out if things go well.

So my questions are:

Do you think the lighting will be sufficient? I want to make it easy on the evaporation till she gets the hang of things.

And do you think the corals sound reasonable?

Any other suggestions?

Scottm · 09-06-2007, 02:25 AM

can she go any bigger? if not it sounds like it will work alright for shrooms or zoos I would want more light for anything else but who knows you've only got like an inch or two of water between the light and the coral so it might work alright. Are you doing an auto top off? How are you circulating the water? Are you planning on using any external filtration? If you used a canister filter to cycle the water through some live rock rubble you could really get some more capacity out of the system and circulate the water without taking up much room in the display. Not to mention some extra buffering and a bigger filtration capacity against over feeding.

If she can go bigger then you know its safer and less work. Even a 5-12 gallon is exponentially easier then a 2.5gal. As I'm sure you know evap is a huge problem on a tank that small. Maybe try one of those 6 gallon nano cubes that are out there?

09-06-2007, 12:32 AM	#1
DragonForce Aquarium Advice FINatic Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Southern California Posts: 925 Images: 1	Starting 2.5g pico Ok so I'm helping this girl I'm seeing set up a 2.5g pico(she fell in love with my 37g (really)mixed reef) Anyways we're planning on doing a 4 inch sand bed, 4lbs of LR, a hob filter for flow with a heater in it. For lighting I was thinking a single 13w 50/50 PC setup. We would house shrooms, zoas, maybe a small green tree coral, gsp, and maybe a frag of some of my LPS, like candy canes and torch. I even have some ricordea florida frags we can try out if things go well. So my questions are: Do you think the lighting will be sufficient? I want to make it easy on the evaporation till she gets the hang of things. And do you think the corals sound reasonable? Any other suggestions? __________________ 37 [acronym="Gallon"]gal[/acronym] all glass 50lb [acronym="Live rock"]LR[/acronym] 3' fine sand bed 1x Orange Stripe Prawn shrimp goby, 1x sixline wrassemated pair of true percula clowns, 1x CBS shrimp, 2x peppermint shrimp, 1x pistol shrimp, 1x tiger tale [acronym="Sea cucumber"]cuke[/acronym], ~20+ snails, ~10+ hermits, 1xserpent star. green Bubble coral, hammer coral (8 heads!) ,various Zoos,green finger leather, green star polpys ,[acronym="Mushroom coral"]shrooms[/acronym] 175w 10k [acronym="Metal halide light"]MH[/acronym] 28w actinic [acronym="Actinic lighting"]03[/acronym] 2x maxi jett 1200 Prizm skimmer (modded) Hagen powerfilter(for running carbon 24/7) nano arctica chiller

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09-06-2007, 02:25 AM	#2
Scottm Aquarium Advice Freak Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: BFE North carolina Posts: 452	can she go any bigger? if not it sounds like it will work alright for shrooms or zoos I would want more light for anything else but who knows you've only got like an inch or two of water between the light and the coral so it might work alright. Are you doing an auto top off? How are you circulating the water? Are you planning on using any external filtration? If you used a canister filter to cycle the water through some live rock rubble you could really get some more capacity out of the system and circulate the water without taking up much room in the display. Not to mention some extra buffering and a bigger filtration capacity against over feeding. If she can go bigger then you know its safer and less work. Even a 5-12 gallon is exponentially easier then a 2.5gal. As I'm sure you know evap is a huge problem on a tank that small. Maybe try one of those 6 gallon nano cubes that are out there?