GR's 2 Gallon IQ3 Pico Reef - New Pics!

January 21, 2014

Sweet. It really is amazing to see life not only surviving but multiplying in such small tanks! You are a wonderful reef-keeper and I really enjoy watching your tank grow. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the kind words. I don't know about the wonderful reef-keeper part, as I simply research things before i do them, and I never make too many changes at one time so I know what affect each change really has.

January 22, 2014

I started seeing small patches of GHA on the back wall of the tank, and decided to beef up the clean up crew with some new help. I had these three guys for about a year in another tank. They came off of some macro algae I ordered from GCE - I believe they are Olive Nerites, but I'm not positive on the ID as I thought Olives were freshwater only. They eat algae constantly - I've never seen them rest. If you have a positive ID on them I would love to know what they are.

The Florida Cerith I've had in this tank sprouted a nice Acetabularia plant...

January 22, 2014

I wish my snails would sprout some Acetabularia lol

January 25, 2014

Did my weekly water change this morning, deciding to change out 64 ounces instead of the usual 32 as the Lobophytum slimed up quite a bit this week - I'm figuring another growth spurt.

I had to clean a couple of Valonia bubbles off the colonial tunicate that I noticed last week. I removed its frag rock from the tank, plucked the bubbles off, rinsed and replaced. The tunicate was under water at all times. I plucked a few strands of bryopsis and GHA as well. It's all on the Yuma frag rock, so I'm not terribly concerned. I remove any pest algae as soon as possible so it doesn't get a chance to take hold.

I also noticed that the Yuma dropped another baby this week, so that makes two so far! There's now one on the top and one on the bottom of the frag rock.

April 22, 2014

It's been several months since my last post on this tiny tank. I've since added an Apex Jr and a fan for cooling, and a few more corals from my frag tank - a couple of Duncans, a few more mushrooms, a Cyphastrea, a brain coral, and a small colony of pulsing Xenia.

My Yuma family is up to five now, with the original Yuma having dropped four young. Oddly, my Lemon Tree coral released from its anchor spot, so I had to wedge it into a hole in the rockwork. It seems to be doing fine there. The brain coral has split a couple of times, and now is four heads, up from the original two.

I've started dosing 1 ml of Brightwell part B every other day, along with 1 drop of Brightwell Replenish and 1 drop of Brightwell MicroBacter 7 on the same schedule. Everything seems very happy.