I have a 2.5g pico that's up and runing and I think it would be absolutely bad ass to have it feature sun corals and keep it under actinic lighting. I could see feeding becoming an issue, but feeding 2-3x weekly followed by .5g weekly waterchanges can't be that detrimental to water quality could it?

I've played the pico game before and done it successfully. has anyone done it with non-photosynthetics though?

Removing DOC will be a problem for a sun corals, you are right. Lesser problem, if you will feed by whole organisms, like mysis, pre-washed. More if feed by chopped homemade coral food, pre-washed or not

You may try to use the same what is used for a large tank in thread Biotopes/Sun, sun, sun...

HOB skimmer and larger amounts of carbon too. Bacterial-enzime supplements like Prodibio, if you up to it. Or keep it on massive water changes, if not.

If you have a large modified Aqua Clear HOB filter that doubles size of tank, it can act as a back sump: you can hang on it Rio Nano skimmer and fill it either by biomedia or LR rubble, it helps.

I had 3L (3/4g) pico with one full sized sun coral colony, it lived on 100% water changes after each feeding, using the aged live water from 6g tank next to it.


Tired after 4-5 months.

Now have nano, 2.5g (or so) tank with small frags (less food, less pollution that for large colonies) with 7g sump, filled with LR, Matrix biomedia, ceramic cylinders, with in-sump skimmer ASM Mini, micron sock (less than 50 microns), carbon. Skimmer doesn't solve problem, neither does carbon, but together plus big water changes the water is more or less tolerable. Naturally, it takes place and is not a pico anymore:



HTH

Get a rhizo! They're like giant sun corals

That does help actually. I'll have about 3x your water volume in your smallest tank and have no problem doing large waterchanges. Space won't allow for HOB filters or skimmers, but I have room for carbon and chaeto in the back chambers. I could also add a pad of filter floss after feedings to skim out the little particles of bad stuff.

I'll look into rhizos too, tanks!

I'll be interested to see how this turns out! Since it will be just sun corals, it should be easier than a full blown NPS tank, as sun corals would only need feedings of mysis a few times a week, which I feelis quite a bit less polluting than the other NPS coral foods. Keep us updated.

Aren't rhizos colorless and even more expensive than dendros? I saw them once in store, so-so (IMHO)

If I may: about full blown NPS tank and sun corals tank.
~100g good NPS tank (Germany) gets 3g of the specialized food daily, plus, if memory serves, 15g frozen food for a fish. My sun's pico gets 2" in diameter chunk of frozen mysis (flat) with 1 cube of Marine Cuisine or something like that. It's a lot. Unless full NPS tank contains small polyped corals, like scleronephthya and leptogorgia or elicella, pollution may be more with sun corals; but this is my experience, your may differ.

http://www.melevsreef.com/suncoral_tank.html