Euphyllia College Pico Reef

[bolts.mania]

It has been exactly a month since I started my 5.5-gallon pico reef in my college dorm. I had a 30-gallon reef for about four years, but when it was time to go off to college I sold it all and went on my way. A semester past and I couldn't deny a tank any longer.

My plan for this tank was to keep it as simple as possible. I wanted low maintenance coral and basic features on the tank. I had a par38 light and fixture along with an MP10 scattered in the house from my last tank, so with those and an all glass aquarium, I started planning the other logistics. To avoid pest, I started to dry rock. A big thing for this tank and keeping it simple was I wanted to do it without any mechanical filtration. In order to do this, I made the tank a bare bottom tank.

Aquascape after days of deliberation

Since pico tanks are notorious for being harder to keep stable because of their small volume, after doing lots of research and using some advice from a friend, I put a glass top on the tank to help with evaporation. Since I was trying to keep everything simple and cheap I got some good advice on what to do for an auto top off. Instead of buying one, I used the law of gravity and a siphon to help keep my salinity stable. I have a one-gallon water jug, full of RO/DI water, with airline tubing connected to an air distributor as my auto-top off. The gallon above the tank uses the siphon to slowly drip RO/DI water into the tank. This makes it very easy to top of the tank especially since I don't have to touch it for 2-3 weeks at a time.

I finally got to campus and spent all night setting up the tank. I first got water in it and cycling the 16th of January.

It took about 3 weeks for the cycle to complete and then I added my first inhabitant!!

I was thrilled to start adding corals and from the beginning of the build, I saw that reef2go.com had some great prices. I was about to order a great deal on 5 different types of zoanthids, but I decided to look up some reviews on the site just in case and I am glad I did. I saw they maybe had one positive review out of 50... Yes, this was annoying because I was on a tight budget but it made me look around at other places to get my coral and this is when my simple mentality went out the window. I have always loved the Euphyllia group of corals for the flow they provide so I decided to try them out knowing I was going to have to do more work, but that's what keeps me interested in this hobby. I ordered from vividaquariums.com and they were great! I started out with two healthy torch corals and got them February 12th.

I know that these corals are not the easiest to keep especially in a small volume of water but I do a 1/4 gallon water change every day. This routine also helps because I do not have a protein skimmer on this or any mechanical filtration of any kind. I rely purely on water changes to keep this tank going.

I hope to build on this Euphyllia themed tank and add a hammer sometime soon.

This is where the tank stands today...

2 Trochus Snails

1 Maroon Clownfish

 

2 Torch coral

[Droy008]

I love the idea of a euphyllia only tank!

Ba cautious adding any other fish with your maroon, they are notoriously territorial.

Looking forward to seeing this thing completely full!

[bolts.mania]

Thank you for the advice! I was planning on just keeping him as I didn't want the bio load going any higher than it is with one fish. Without filtration, I am having to be extra careful about that.