Mixed Reef Pico

[Badfishofbabylon]

I'm doing an Pico build for a local Reefing club Nano contest, so I thought i would post some info and pics on it for any one interested.

I had my Fluval Spec with a custom LED hood sitting around empty (aside from Live rock and some snails) for awhile now, the last two times I had it up and running everything did so well that I had to move it all to my 45 cube. So this time I decided to see how far I can "push" this little tank. It's been up for 2 months and everything seems fairly happy.

Not a lot of room for rock work in these little tanks, and after using this Spec a few different times I'm starting to run out of scaping ideas so this time I went with just 1 rock.

1 Cool piece of rock...

I happy with how it turned out, it's something unusual I guess.
This is at the end of week one, it didn't really have a cycle because the tank was already running with some LR left over from the last time I had it set up, I just swapped it with the new rock.

Here it is on 3/4/12....

Stock List
Sps
3x Acro frags
Monti Plate

Lps
Hammer coral
Blasto
Acan

Softies
Pulsing Xenia
Ked Red Zoas
Dragon eyes Zoas
Mean Green Zoas
Everlasting Gobstoppers Palys
Green Palys
Brown/Pink Palys
GSP
Assorted Shrooms

Macro
Halimeda Plant

Livestock
2x Snails
2x Hermits


I still would like to add some more corals, a few inverts; maybe 2-3 bumble bee shrimp, and I was thinking about adding one fish… but only if it’s a flaming prawn Goby (good luck finding one right?).

 

[Badfishofbabylon]

All the Sps looks happy, I did notices some color loss in the front acro frag but that’s about it.

One of the biggest problems with the tank is light acclimating all the different coral, aside from some shady spots the whole tank is "high lighting". Notice the polyps and GSP are getting the same amount if not more light than the SPS.

Thanks for Looking

 

[carey]

Looks awesome! You did good with just the single piece of rock, gives it a classic open feel to the tank.

 

[janky]

haha! That's AWESOME! I never knew a tank that small could be so tight! definitely getting more into these nano builds...

 

[Badfishofbabylon]

Looks awesome! You did good with just the single piece of rock, gives it a classic open feel to the tank.

Thanks carey, not really a lot of options with this small of a tank. But I really like the open look too.

haha! That's AWESOME! I never knew a tank that small could be so tight! definitely getting more into these nano builds...

Yeah nanos can be alot of fun, thats how I got into reef tanks. I really like using these small tanks, and if you have the patience and pay attention to the tank they can turn out great.


Nothing too exciting happening, there is a little growth going on but nothing mind blowing. Still haven't gotten around to getting any cool inverts yet..

There's 3 new Gobstopper heads and the Sps is growing a little but the hairy Acro still still hasn't colored up.

But all things considered the tank is doing great, Thanks for looking

 

[Badfishofbabylon]

Here's a little more info on my build.

Lately I've read a lot articles on how technology and advances in equipment has made reef keep much easier; while I totally agree with this statement (I have Leds on this tank and they are the main reason why it's able to keep such a wide range of corals), I've also seen tanks more tricked than the cars from those fast and furious movies. Too many people depend on crazy controllers and loads of equipment meant to reduce the amount of water changes need to be done rather than doing research on what makes a balanced system and watching to see what their tank is telling them.

I decided a good way to test this is by using the famous K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) method on this tank and seeing how far I could take it. Again the only maintenance is my weekly water changes and daily RO/DI Top off, I'm using the tanks stock filter pretty much as is:

Mechanical: Porous foam block
Chemical: Replaced Carbon with SeaChem's SeaGel for phosphate control
Biological: BIOMAX insert

no skimmer, no dosing, no feeding... I didn't even test my water parameters up until last week. I wanted to just keep an eye on everything and let the tank tell me how it's going. The only thing I have been worrying about lately is my Alk and Ca levels because I have a lot of stony corals in this tiny guy, I figured that they were being soaked up like a sponge and the water changes would have a hard time keeping up. (The levels for my fresh mixed W/C are @ 8-9 dKH and 460-480 Ca). And with all the different variables from light acclimation to just plan have Acro in a pico it was hard to tell just on observing growth alone, so I decided maybe it was time to test the tank and see how things where holding up.

All the levels seem pretty good except for dKH it was at 5! So I've been doing small daily water changes with 12 dKH to slowly get it back to around 9-10. Surprisingly none of the corals seem to have been effected too much by it, I was still seeing pretty good growth in my stonys.
(4 new heads on this Acan in the last month)

I'm hoping once I get the levels where I want them I can maintain them my using water with higher dKH and Ca for my weekly water changes.


Another problem we dealt with was the red Zoas came down with a fungal infection of some sort

so we dipped them in some Furan-2 which seem to do the trick and they are recovering nicely.

Also the last few piece of coral have all been light acclimated so the tank got a final rescaping job, that makes a total of 20 different piece in only 2 gals . I'm thinking the tanks is full time to sit back and watch it grow. The only thing I'm still looking to add is a unique inverter of some sort... I just have no Idea what .

Here's the Solo Cup I use for Water changes, it give the tank some scale.

Thanks for looking.