NateDawg Posted May 2, 2019 Share Posted May 2, 2019 Coming soon to Albany Oregon.... another Pico reef jar. This one's pretty small at about .87 gallons total without any substrate or rock! Gunna try a new idea of having the top seal tight at the top so I can put a pump somewhere else in a sump of sorts and have it push water through the system, instead of an overflow. Lighting will be from a diy light that I built which consists of 8 spectrums including 415n, 430n, 440n, 470n, 500n, 650n, 5k white, and 20k white. The livestock for this one will be high end "designer" zoas and palythoa and maybe a really nice sps centerpiece. The for sure livestock so far will be: - hallucination paly - utter chaos paly - rainbow incinerator zoa - Darth maul zoa - pink diamond zoa - and more.. I'll be up for suggestions if anyone has a nice zoa or paly to add. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derbird Posted May 2, 2019 Share Posted May 2, 2019 How are you going to populate the tank with beneficial bacteria without rock or sand? Cool idea, I'm definitely going to follow along Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vance164 Posted May 2, 2019 Share Posted May 2, 2019 3 minutes ago, Derbird said: How are you going to populate the tank with beneficial bacteria without rock or sand? Cool idea, I'm definitely going to follow along I think he meant that's the volume before he adds rock Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NateDawg Posted May 2, 2019 Author Share Posted May 2, 2019 5 minutes ago, Derbird said: How are you going to populate the tank with beneficial bacteria without rock or sand? Cool idea, I'm definitely going to follow along Yep, what @Vance164 said, the volume mentioned above is just the largest possible capacity of the container being used, there will be sand and the small pieces of pukani in the picture in there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TaylorW Posted May 5, 2019 Share Posted May 5, 2019 I love this idea! I'm assuming you have to cycle it right? Sent from my BLU R1 HD using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NateDawg Posted May 5, 2019 Author Share Posted May 5, 2019 2 hours ago, TaylorW said: I love this idea! I'm assuming you have to cycle it right? Sent from my BLU R1 HD using Tapatalk I was going too, but I have the rock and sand I'll be using in my main display sump and I'm going to take water directly from my main display and use that in the tank so if all goes well, there shouldn't need to be a real cycle before I can start putting live stock into it. I'm gunna try giving it about 5 days to settle and make sure all the equipment is working properly then start adding some little critters. 😁 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
householdofpayne Posted May 5, 2019 Share Posted May 5, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, NateDawg said: I was going too, but I have the rock and sand I'll be using in my main display sump and I'm going to take water directly from my main display and use that in the tank so if all goes well, there shouldn't need to be a real cycle before I can start putting live stock into it. I'm gunna try giving it about 5 days to settle and make sure all the equipment is working properly then start adding some little critters. 😁 We started a Pico tank with a empty volume of 2.5g. I used rock from my sump, and sand from a sealed Caribsea bag. It took about a week to cycle. I think the rock from established tank, as well as the small water volume made it fast. Edited May 5, 2019 by householdofpayne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NateDawg Posted May 5, 2019 Author Share Posted May 5, 2019 13 minutes ago, householdofpayne said: We started a Pico tank with a empty volume of 2.5g. I used rock from my sump, and sand from a sealed Caribsea bag. It took about a week to cycle. I think the rock from established tank, as well as the small water volume made it fast. Yah, I've been following your Pico tank, and that's good to hear about the short cycle. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
householdofpayne Posted May 5, 2019 Share Posted May 5, 2019 2 minutes ago, NateDawg said: Yah, I've been following your Pico tank, and that's good to hear about the short cycle. Interested in seeing how plumbing in a sump goes for ya! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NateDawg Posted May 13, 2019 Author Share Posted May 13, 2019 Updates are in! New things: - got all the plumbing figured out and I'm going to have it sit on a small clear shelf taught next to my computer so I can distract myself even more while working haha. - I ended up wanting the ability to control the little pump I bought, so I designed and printed a flow controller for it that so far, works great! More to come! 5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NateDawg Posted May 14, 2019 Author Share Posted May 14, 2019 Another update! - got everything set up and water tested, had to restart about 3 times since there is a little bit of pressure in this system, almost every spot that could leak leaked... but, finally fixed all those, got the light working and water flowing! And I couldn't resist putting in the first frag! Good ol classic utter chaos. It opened up instantly which was a good sign. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
householdofpayne Posted May 14, 2019 Share Posted May 14, 2019 8 minutes ago, NateDawg said: Another update! - got everything set up and water tested, had to restart about 3 times since there is a little bit of pressure in this system, almost every spot that could leak leaked... but, finally fixed all those, got the light working and water flowing! And I couldn't resist putting in the first frag! Good ol classic utter chaos. It opened up instantly which was a good sign. Need me a frag of that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuncrestReef Posted May 14, 2019 Share Posted May 14, 2019 Looks great! How many tangs are you going to put in? 😂 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NateDawg Posted May 15, 2019 Author Share Posted May 15, 2019 5 hours ago, SuncrestReef said: Looks great! How many tangs are you going to put in? 😂 I'm thinking 2 or 3, probably a hippo tang and a gem tang to start 😂 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertareef Posted May 15, 2019 Share Posted May 15, 2019 1 hour ago, NateDawg said: I'm thinking 2 or 3, probably a hippo tang and a gem tang to start 😂 No pico is complete without a good tang collection 😁 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
householdofpayne Posted May 15, 2019 Share Posted May 15, 2019 2 scoops a day keeps the surgeonfish away 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xxkenny90xx Posted May 15, 2019 Share Posted May 15, 2019 Nice tank! About how many gallon water changes do will you be doing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
householdofpayne Posted May 15, 2019 Share Posted May 15, 2019 19 hours ago, NateDawg said: Another update! - got everything set up and water tested, had to restart about 3 times since there is a little bit of pressure in this system, almost every spot that could leak leaked... but, finally fixed all those, got the light working and water flowing! And I couldn't resist putting in the first frag! Good ol classic utter chaos. It opened up instantly which was a good sign. Did you make the light? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NateDawg Posted May 15, 2019 Author Share Posted May 15, 2019 11 hours ago, xxkenny90xx said: Nice tank! About how many gallon water changes do will you be doing? It'll be trial and error for the first while and the water changes will depend on how heavy the live stock is in there. I'm going to start with 35% every week and see how things look with that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NateDawg Posted May 15, 2019 Author Share Posted May 15, 2019 2 hours ago, householdofpayne said: Did you make the light? Yep, the light is completely home built all the way down to the bare components. I was gunna just get a kessil a360x but it didn't have as much low spectrum output as I wanted so I just built one with the same power output with lower spectrum LEDs and saved like $430 dollars. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NateDawg Posted May 16, 2019 Author Share Posted May 16, 2019 Okay so the next thing I'm gunna be looking for is a cleanup crew, what do people suggest for such a small container? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuncrestReef Posted May 16, 2019 Share Posted May 16, 2019 41 minutes ago, NateDawg said: Okay so the next thing I'm gunna be looking for is a cleanup crew, what do people suggest for such a small container? Smaller snails like cerith and stomatellas would probably work great. The ceriths will burrow into the sand which helps keep it stirred up. The stomatellas are small eating machines that can get into every nook & cranny and reproduce quickly. I have a ton of them if you can't find them anywhere. Maybe also a small hermit crab. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NateDawg Posted May 16, 2019 Author Share Posted May 16, 2019 49 minutes ago, SuncrestReef said: Smaller snails like cerith and stomatellas would probably work great. The ceriths will burrow into the sand which helps keep it stirred up. The stomatellas are small eating machines that can get into every nook & cranny and reproduce quickly. I have a ton of them if you can't find them anywhere. Maybe also a small hermit crab. Sweet, thanks! I'll look into that for sure. I've got some stomatellas in my main display that I might fish out. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NateDawg Posted May 16, 2019 Author Share Posted May 16, 2019 Does anyone know of any coral safe nudibranchs? Preferably vegetarians or omnivores (not really sure if there is such a creature) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TaylorW Posted May 16, 2019 Share Posted May 16, 2019 Smaller snails like cerith and stomatellas would probably work great. The ceriths will burrow into the sand which helps keep it stirred up. The stomatellas are small eating machines that can get into every nook & cranny and reproduce quickly. I have a ton of them if you can't find them anywhere. Maybe also a small hermit crab.I love those weird looking stomatellas lol, I don't have any at all anymore lost them all in my tank crash couple years ago. If anyone has any to spare Id be happy to give you a little $! If you can find them of course [emoji6] sorry didn't mean to hijack... got a little excited I forgot about those guys. I always seemed to spot them on the glass at night Sent from my BLU R1 HD using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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