1 gallon pico rebuild

ashevillan dont forget i still have 2 more of those gobys that are going in there and as far as the maintance im doing 25 percent water changes every other day which is about 4 ounces and im not even going worry about top offs because i had the tank sitting there with water in it for months and the lid on it and literally lost maybe a 1/16" so between being almost sealed and water every other day the perams should be just fine

Zechenia i know what you mean. when i set up my first pico tank (jbj picotope) i spent 90 bucks on just the light it was a 12" coralife cf fixture and then you gotta replace the bulbs which are like 10 a piece. but think you should just go for it cause if you go with those leds you prob wont have to spend more than 30 bucks on lighting depending on the tank.

 

I'm going with the 2.5 gallon. I've decided to do it... just waiting til fall. It's going to be an office tank, so I want to wait until I get my vacations out of the way. Plus I want it to be all frags I cut myself... so that means I need some more growth in the display tank (and probably some more variety ).

I'm excited to see more pictures of how this tank progresses! Do you have any sort of ATO?

 

Thanks for the info, bud!

Just bought 16 whites @ $2.89 a piece and 20 blues @ $2.99 a piece, shipped . I have a feeling that's going to be too much light and I'll have more than a few extras. If I do, I might try to make use of some of them in my DT.

I'll let you know how it goes when they get here in 2-3 weeks. Gotta love free shipping from China...

 

haha yea no kidding it would be horrible if we had to pay for it lol but if you want to reach me for info try my facebook page cause i dont check my 3 reef too often unless i got a thread active. heres a link to my page Brijesh Patel | Facebook

 

no i meant the goby will be too much competition for food, pipe fish and seahorses are some of the slowest swimmers in the ocean and are not used to that kind of competition. thats why seahorses and pipes can only be housed together, although occasionally you see them with a mandarin or scooter blenny.

 

I'll add you when I get home. Might need your expertise with the wiring and such

 

It'd be nice if you could just go through how you did that here

 

LOL! Its Jessica. That has to be the cutest fish ever!!!!!

Im going to have to look into these, I just set up a 2 gallon, u got me going! Ill have to take some pics, its def not as cool as urs though LOL

 

here we go folks as promised its update time. so remember those other two gobys that were in a little container in my 20 gal? they have been aclimated over to their new home in the pico. and i saw a slight algal film on the glass yesterday so when i did the water change today i used the water from the reactors instead of out of the display i also put in a small piece of carbon pad right under the pump to act as a prefilter to keep gunk out of the pump and since it has carbon impregnated in it it will also help remove any unwanted chemicals in the water. also there were 2 little zoanthid frags on the rock from day one i just didnt say anything because i wanted to see if anyone would spot them and say anything and since noone noticed them ill show you where they are. and now for everyones favorite part of the update PICTURES!!!!

heres the brand of carbon pad i used.

the carbon pad out of its package. its huge and should last forever

i cut a tiny piece to fit over the intake of the pump


and since the pad will last me a long time and carbon can absorb stuff out of the air i "vaccum packed" it lol hopefully itll last longer that way

the two zoanthid frags, i actually moved them both the other day because i couldnt see them very well where i put them originally but if you look in previous pictures you can see them both about an inch above where they are now although they were probably closed up in the other pictures since i take the pics right after i mess with the tank.

here are the three amigos swimming behind the rock i got lucky with this pic cause one of them likes to hide and never come out

and i said in a previous post that i wanted to throw an idea at you guys well here it is i have a tom aqualifter pump and i bout a bunch of these prefilters for it i was thinking i could use the pump and put diffrent medias in the prefilters and use it as a 3 stage canister filter. i would use the original pad that came with it in the first stage. then sea chems matrix in the second stage and carbon in the third stage. what do you guys think? the pump only pushes 3 gallons per hour but i figure that would be ok in this small of a tank
here are some pics of the prefilter in the first pic you can see an o-ring in the lid which i didnt know they had but thats a good thing cause i know it wont leak and the second one shows the pad that comes with it and the third is the box it came in.

 

jessica im sure itll turn out awesome. i didnt think much of this project till i got all this positive feed back from you guys. oh and if youre doing a pico then i would def reccomend these lights they're the brightest thing you can get for that cheap lol

and jlongwell this is a warning for you and anyone else that gets these leds dont look into them while theyre on youll be seeing spots for a little while lol