2.5 Gallon Reef

[jacobsears]

Last year I put together a 7.5 gallon reef with a bunch of soft corals and a small frogspawn. It was doing pretty well, but I took it down after awhile because it just wasn't as interesting as my other freshwater projects. In the last six months or so that I've not had a saltwater setup, I've been checking out some pretty cool reefs on here and planning my own new setup using some features that I thought worked well in other people's tanks.

 

I'm on a tight budget, and I wanted something that I'd be able to take with me to college, so I decided to use a 2.5 gallon rimless aquarium from Finnex as my starting point. Since the tank is so small, any equipment, even a hob filter, takes up too much space and makes the aquarium feel cramped. To get around this, I drilled the back wall so that I could plumb in an external pump for water movement and an in-line heater (I haven't gotten around to the plumbing yet- I've got a temporary Aquaclear hob set up to provide flow as the tank cycles). To make drilling easier, I disassembled the tank and removed any excess silicone. I bought a hole saw at Home Depot and the drilling process went very smooth. While I was at it, I painted the outside of the bottom pane matte white so that I could go bare-bottom and avoid the mirror effect caused by unpainted glass. When I reassembled the panes I made sure to use as little silicone as possible. The seams turned out way cleaner that I had expected. I'd say it's a step up from the quality of the seams on the tank originally.

 

The tank isn't quite as blue in person as it appears. I tried to adjust the white balance but it didn't come out perfect.

 

For the light, I wanted something that would hang over the tank instead of sitting on the rim. For that, I ordered a par38 style bulb from ABI on Amazon and modified a desk lamp to hold it in place. The light is a lot brighter than I had expected- I had to dim the brightness in the pictures significantly to avoid glare. The color is really nice as well. The blue-white mix is very similar to the Finnex Fugeray Marine, for those of you familiar with that fixture. There's also a noticeable bit of purple in the mix as well. It does seem to spotlight the area directly under the bulb, but it's not worse than expected. I'm sure there's enough light reaching the far side of the tank to grow zoas and the like.

 

The rock that I used is a very porous piece of coral skeleton that I found in an lfs tank. It had macroalgae all over it so I soaked it in bleach and boiled it for a few hours. There's a very small piece of liverock sitting on the far left side of my main rock to help seed the tank. The whole thing is siliconed to the tank bottom. As far as substrate goes, I don't plan on adding any. I've always found the debate between pro-sand and pro-bare bottom aficionados to be an interesting one, but I personally don't have an opinion on which method works better, I just don't like the look of sand. I'm trying to create a very minimalist tank, and I feel like sand would just look messy and unnecessary.

 

 

As far as stocking goes, I'd like to have three or four mini colonies of some easier sps like birdsnest mounted to the rock, and a few interesting zoas/palys and maybe some riccordia on the floor of the tank. I've seen tanks of this size with very nice looking gobies and smaller minnow-sized fish, but I haven't done enough research yet to know which species, if any, I'd be able to keep in this system. Not being able to keep a fish or two certainly wouldn't be a deal breaker- my favorite freshwater setup doesn't have any fish at all.

 

That's all for now. Any questions or comments are appreciated. I'd love to hear some feedback from people who have undertaken similar projects.

[Weetabix7]

I like this!!!

Very clean, well thought out.

 

Gobies would do great in here.

You could also pair up some Pederson's Anemone Shrimp with either Maxi Mini anemones or Rock Flower Anemones.

[jacobsears]

Just an update- I've put together the plumbing which attaches directly to the tank.

 

 

I hope to start (and finish) building the stand over the course of the upcoming week and have the external pump up and running within two/three weeks from now, before I go on vacation. Also- just wondering, does anyone have any tips on photographing these things from an iphone? My pictures always come out to dark, to blurry, and to blue.

[Beer]

The sensors in the camera have a heavy blue bias to compensate for the way the human eye perceives light, which under most circumstances works well, but with reef lighting they get over saturated (is that the proper term?) with blue.

You can get gel swatches that are intended for lighting for stage and film that will help neutralize the blue a bit and brighten things up a little. Things in the peach, pink, and straw range I think are what works well. I got mine from Apollo lighting.

I know someone on another forum was selling some pretty cheap. You might be able to find them on Amazon or EBay.

 

[EDIT]

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/45189-REG/Rosco_950SBLUX0103_Roscolux_Swatchbook.html

 

http://www.adorama.com/searchsite/default.aspx?searchinfo=gel+swatch

 

You can pick up some clip on lenses for fairly cheap as well that will allow you to get some macro and close up shots, as long as the specimen is close to the glass.

[jacobsears]

You can get gel swatches that are intended for lighting for stage and film that will help neutralize the blue a bit and brighten things up a little. Things in the peach, pink, and straw range I think are what works well. I got mine from Apollo lighting.

I know someone on another forum was selling some pretty cheap. You might be able to find them on Amazon or EBay.

 

Thanks, I might try this. I downloaded an app that lets you manually control all of the automatic settings, but nothing I tried seemed to help all that much.