9 year old 1 gallon pico reef, last full tank shot before cleaning

[HammerLover]

Thanks Brandon for the wonderful inspirations and ideas. Alot of people in our local facebook reef club are so against in my idea of starting a 2 gal cookie jar.

 

The only problem I see is that I live in a tropical country (The Philippines) and at summer it can get really hot. What can you recommend during those times? I think no one in our country is brave enough to start such a very small project (heck some are even afraid of trying a 7 gal fowlr). I just took down my 12 gal mixed reef and decided to di something much simpler since college can get really busy.

 

Thanks for the updates! Awesome tank!

[brandon429]

I never found a reliable way to keep these with ambient home temperatures anywhere above 81 because they tend to run a degree or two above ambient temps depending on lighting type

 

The vase and rocks and sand make for a fine experiment even before sensitive animals can be had

 

Some considerations might be:

 

The vase sets in a vat of water halfway up, and a fan blows across that water vat for evaporative cooling

 

Sure it's easier to fan the reef, but one gallon is too much evaporation

 

Or something called a peltier chiller for small tanks, they cost $ and you'd have to fit it's cooling pole inside the lid somehow

 

Also, when my home AC went out, I draped wet paper towels on the outside of my bowl, and fanned the towels! Cooled it well but takes work. It would take creativity for sure to keep it in settings above 80 in the home

[HammerLover]

Its not always to hot in here lol, just in the summer. Now its kinda cool because there are monsoons which brings lots of rain. I think Ill put a fan near it at summer and wrap it with wet papertowels. Hmmm Maritza told me to simply do daily waterchanges and increase aeration during such times.

 

Ill let you guys know when the project starts next weekend Ill start cycling. Thanks again for the help and suggetions!

Oh and the place where I will setup the reef is semi outdoors and the structure of our house and perhaps the trees provides a constant breeze of air in this area that's why my french bulldog who is sensitive to hot temps didnt get any health issues even though he is placed in a semi outdoor location. The location is fairly shady because the sunlight is being filtered by bamboos and some small shrubs. I think this setup may work, since my 12 gal sits in the same location before I took it down (and it never had any temp issues even on hot summer months)

[brandon429]

Agreed on water changes and circulation you can change the water everyday mid day with cooler water if you ever need to

 

As long as not a huge drop the temp lowering nor the constant changes will hurt the system. Each change is a life extender, they aren't negative. Always match temp and salinity when changing nothing else required.

[brandon429]

I really like how new site upgrade supports strong pic hosting that takes a ton of storage agreed strong upgrade.

 

 

 

The brain coral rock is 80% regrown as a complete brain colony not a frag now, just grew together in the middle last week, 2017 reefbowl updates

 

I keep the sandbed clean, really clean

 

 

The claim I'm making about sandbed non storage of waste, hard rinsing, is that it makes algae and cyano invasions more manageable in the aged pico reef vs hands off reefing which stores waste until something happens

 

 

Not everybody has a removable scape, they can do back to back flushing water changes as a creative change out, when my reef was this dense below at the second to bottom picture 2007 it didn't get taken apart, but I did back to back flushing changes -before- the sandbed sinked up. 

 

 

 Even Paul B's large 45 year old aquarium has notable designs to prevent bed incursion of waste... a reverse undergravel filter and he does massive stirring of it from time to time we see in his threads. the oldest aquaria are not doing hands off sandbedding, they seem to be managing waste directly in any number of ways either preventative or catch-up like above.

 

while its possible to rely on the stability of a reefbowl to run hands off for years that method isn't turning out as well for the masses who possibly through where they source their frags are importing any number of invasions ranging from cyano to bryopsis...im finding it easier to work on others tanks in threads over the years when they are either bare bottom, or clean bottom with sand. I believe any number of pico reefs can run hands off sandbed, El Fab got three years out of his in the stickied thread up top forum.

 

 

** The biological oxygen demand of a dirty sandbed is much higher than the bod of a clean one. Clean sandbedding is where you want to be during power outages and any sort of overheating scenario I'll guarantee you that. It's not the only way, it's just a highly consistent way of reefing and I feel it's the ideal method for truly old reefs to earn an indefinite biological lifespan. 

 

Sandbed work is takedown cleaning

 

Frags and rock removed temporarily for access to the bed for cleaning. It's not the only way to reef, but reefing with a clean sandbed has really consistent outcomes and gives us an edge in algae control

 

An old reef needs it's edge

[brandon429]

the day of setup 2006, skip cycle assembled with live rock aquarium cured, then some corals after (see the thor shrimp who went in w the live rocks, taken out mos later for bad grazing behavior on my lps:

 

 

Every post ive ever written about skip cycle biology comes from the workings of this pico its ran true to form. from the very day the rocks came home until today 11 yrs later, this has been a skip cycle aquarium and that's how it will remain. I claim not storing detritus is what got it old

 

 

 

after six yrs running

 

 

after nine yrs no takedown but heavy rinsing of sandbed via hard-pouring water changes the corals grew to take up all vital space:

 

 

 

2 yrs ago just after the mass 9 yr cleaning, 80% cull of corals, clean bed. the brain coral below is directly in the shot above but that flat plate growth of sps on the glass has obscured the brain coral. when I took the bowl apart and found this much brain coral from the old mass I knew it was a fighter. it will colonize the entire rock as a solid boulder by end of this yr or a bit beyond am predicting.

 

 4/2017:

[Nano sapiens]

Looking good!  This little bowl is a trooper

[brandon429]

I would like to whole heartedly thank you and SeaBass for stopping by and my electrical company for no power outages beyond 3 hours since 2006

 

without their network and some regional weather luck the little guy would've been toast or ice hard to say. I think good sandbed stewardship only buys us the ticket chance to play the hardware continuance lottery game with our life forms

 

tried to impart a little backup to the system just for the occasionals... that D-cell powered air pump is on standby its a real help for pico reefers I want to post it. worked great when my power had an outage, I think its max runtime is 20 hours which is pretty slick off two D batteries. 

 

http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/silent-air-pump-with-battery-powered-back-up-sab11.html?gclid=CjwKEAjw_uvHBRDUkumF0tLFp3cSJACAIHMYkVaM2Bs1KZwFWiUV9hIffysE8904EvH1dBPWxo_NhRoCrc_w_wcB

[Lula_Mae]

Looks awesome!  Love to see this pico just truckin' along!

[brandon429]

It took two years for the war coral to take over the whole rock. It is now a complete colony as it would present in nature...a six pound rock that is solid red brain

It's total coverage except for tiny spot at bottom. I'll have it by December

 

 the bluer lighting is a change to Kessil

[seabass]

Love to see this Brandon!

[brandon429]

thank you very much friend I get so lucky on no nerf impacts year after year~!

[Nano sapiens]

Great to see this 'oldie-but-goodie' still trucking along