Starting a little late, but starting! It took a while to get permission for this one.

Good luck.

Good Luck.

thanks

I added some liverock and sand yesterday. Here are some pictures.

I like the rockwork... good proportions.

Thanks, I will try and update it often.

Here are some updates:

Candycane and gsp corals added

I just added some polyps, pictures soon.

Here are some December Coral Updates:

Full Tank shots, one with flash, one withouth.

Updates on livestock:
The pico now includes: 1 Red mushroom, 1 purple/green ricordia, many various zoolanthid polyps (more on the way!), a type of gorgorian, not extended in pictures, but it does extend during the day until about 7ish, then it closes up. The pico also includes 3 astrea snails, and one red reef hermit. The candycane is out for now, back into the 90 under halides. It wasn't looking to good for about a week, it was off to the side of the 2.5. Now it looks great back where it belongs, but once I make room it might be back?

Future additions: I may possible add a small goby down the road, but not yet. More polyps to come, as well as a kenya tree, and other various softies that I stumble upon at work. I hope to have xenia in there soon! One of my favorite softies, but I had a light malfunction in my 90 gallon, and it all melted.

Water Quality: All of my water parameters are in check, but I am battling some bryopis algae, and other various algaes. Chemi-pure is on the way!!

Review of dry goods: The coralife 2x9 watt light is amazingly intense, great deal too. I also like my aquaclear filter, the flow it creates at its top end is wonderful. The acrylic petsmart tank is alright, but really hard to keep clean! I really wanted glass, but could not find one in the greater chicagoland area.


Well I know I am long overdue for updates, but thats them, so thanks for looking!!

I like it

Nice, I like the rock layout a lot. Neat caves at the bottom.

Best regards

Ann

Thank you very much. More updates on the way! I hope to get some new polyps this weekend, maybe some red zoos??

Coming along nicely

Are you going to add some tall corals to the top of the LR, or leave it with that low profile look?

Thanks, for now I am going to leave the low profile look, but maybe if I can find a nice kenya tree to add some height, and maybe some taller xenia frags. I am really concentrating on zoos right now because they are easy to get. At my work little frags of zoos fall off of colonies, so I just bring them home and drop them in the pico. I hope to "clean-up" the 2-75 gallon polyp tanks this weekend!

Oh, I see. They just "fall off" the big colonies.

I tried that one at the LFS that would let me put my hands in the tank. Nice stuff just fell off the rocks left and right!

Isn't it crazy how that happens?

Must have pics after you go raid the coral store

Actually they do just fall off. I could frag them, but why waste my time if I can just look on the bottom of the bb tank and find all kinds of neat frags. I am the only one at the store that bothers "cleaning" out the loose corals, so there is usually a good amount by the weekend. I will definately post some pics when I get the new zoos. That is pretty awsome that your lfs lets you put your hands in the tank. We only let people put their hands in our liverock tanks.

I tease That's pretty much what I was pulling out of the tanks at my LFS as well, the tiny stuff that would die due to lack of light and falling between rocks. Plenty of good stuff there.

As for the owner letting me put my hands in the tank, we'd hang out and chat and I'd help with tank maintenance or water changes now and then, if I had nothing better to do. So he pretty much trusted that I wasn't going to muck up his systems. I don't think there's any way any other LFS nowadays would let me do that.

So, to get back on topic...how's this tank going? Find anything interesting to add to it?

That's awsome that you help out w/ waterchanges and stuff. We have one customer that does carpentry for us(builds stands, walls, etc.), and he gets the full discount I am pretty sure.

The tank is actually starting to clean itself, never thought that was possible, but I woke up today, stuff was moved around, but... it looked really clean. A lot of algae got eaten last night!!! Today I picked up a little frag of yellow zoos, there are only about 6 on the rock, but they are nice. Last week I picked up a frag of red zoos. They are amazing, but I can't get them to stay in one place, any suggestions??? That frag happened to be stuck to an urchin for over a month in our 120ish sps/clam tank, and I fortunately saved it.... Pictures will come soon, now that I am on winter break. I am planning on either buying some frags from a local reefer or online. Don't really know which yet. That is what I am deciding right now at 11:26 PM.

Well thanks for the interest

Well, now that I am on break I have been really working on my reefs. Yesterday, I attached all of my loose zoo frags onto pieces of live rock rubble with super glue. It went really well, and I am happy with how they came out. Yesterday, I also ordered a bunch of zoos from justcoral.com. I ordered some for my 90 gallon, and some for this little 2.5 gallon.

Here are some pictures of the new frags, currently all in my 90 gallon, so I can decide what will go in the 2.5 gallon. There are also some pictures of the newly mounted frags that were already in the pico.

Here are some more pictures of the mounted frags, as well as some FTS.

Here are some pictures with my new corals added. I bought them from Justcoral.com

Sorry if the pictures are blurry, I wasn't really concentrating. I hope you enjoy.

Did you get those during the sale? I thought they looked strangely similar to mine. Your tank is coming along great, keep up the good work.

Yup I got them in the 30% off sale. I didn't know about the $10 new member coupon though.... Oh well, thanks for the support! I like your pico also, did you have to switch to custom?

Looking really good, those zoas are making a nice display. Top job!

Best regards

Ann

Thanks Ann! I really enjoy your support.
Billy

OFFICIAL PICO CONTEST NEWS

New Task... Read about it here...
http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=75620

YOU MUST COMPLETE THE TASK!

i like ur aquascaping alot.

thanks shivametimbas. i have done a lot lately, and will hopefully have some new updated pictures. Coraline is growing well, i have also added some baby kenya trees, and some shrooms.

Final Entry Pictures.

Summery:

This is my stock entry 2.5 gallon reef. I have the coralife 2x 9watt powercomact fixture running one actinic and one 10,000K. I have a an Aquaclear filter running at minimum flow. The liverock in this tank is from my former 20 Gallon reef, current 90 Gallon reef, and some freebie rock donated to the LFS I used to work at. Some of the corals were from my previous reefs, some were bought online, and some were random frags I picked up at work. The cleanup crew consists of 3 astrea snails, one scarlet hermit, and many unknown baby snails that seemed to just "grow out of the rock." The keys to success in my opinion were: waterchanges, not adding supplements, keeping my hands out of it, and not having any fish to feed. I will try to get a sequence of photos from each month, but I am almost posative that I don't have any from March. I really enjoyed participating in this contest here on n-r. I also liked proving my boss wrong that you it is possible to keep a 2.5 gallon reef set-up heathy and strong.

Pictures:
Order: 1st from november, 2nd from december, 3rd from january, 4th from febuary, 5th through last are my final entry pictures.
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