Brew Boy's 8 gal pico reef

[Brew boy]

Current FTS

 

Date: 3rd October '16

 

Current stock list

CUC/inverts

Blue-legged hermit,

Cleaner shrimp,

1x Cerinth snail,

Caribbean Feather Duster

 

Corals

Green zoas,

Maximini anemoni,

Green acan,

Red acan,

Dark green zoas,

Green ricordea yuma,

Purple ricordea yuma,

Dark-blue striped chalice,

Green/orange cyphastrea,

Sun-pot coral,

War coral,

Purple-tipped hammer/frogspawn,

Blue hornet zoas,

AoG zoas (I think),

Large red zoas,

Green-tipped frogspawn,

Orange-fringed zoas,

Pink-fringed zoas,

True rainbow acan,

Red-turquoise acan,

Red-purple acan,

Red blasto,

Green chalice, &

Dark green torch

 

Fish

1x Saddleback Clown (Ocellaris),

1x Regular Clown (Ocellaris)

 

Current levels

 

[Brew boy]

Hey Nano-reefers!

 

About 8 years ago, my wife bought me an awesome tank because I wanted to get back into fishkeeping.

 

It is designed to be wall mounted, so has an unusual geometry, as it is essentially a really narrow-topped tank, with a large half-sphere sticking out the front, with a wooden circular frame surrounding the sphere (all-in-all it’s about 8 gallons). It really looks great!

 

After playing around with it for a few years and (IMO) successfully keeping some soft and LPS corals and even a green manadrin for about eighteen months, I packed it all up when we got a puppy.

 

After sitting empty for about five years I decided to get it going again, whilst trying to make it a little easier for myself this time around. Looking on this site, there are so many awesome examples of what can be done with a pico reef, (like many, El Fab's pico was a huge inspiration) and I’m not going to let the unusual shape of my tank limit my ambition!

 

Here are some stock photos of the tank (not mine, but it helps give an idea of the shape). Mine is the same, apart from it has a white frame.

 

 

 

And I've also created a few drawings of the front and top view of the tank that will (hopefully!) come in useful later on. I haven't drawn on the frame to try and keep it simple, just remember that the only parts that are visible are inside the circle.

 

 

What follows is what I hope to be an interesting look at my aquarium.

[Brew boy]

Equipment

"Hardware"

What is actually in the tank is fairly straightforward, it consists of a water polisher, a koralia nano power head and a 100W heater. They are arranged like this:

Interestingly, because of physics or something ?!? none of the hardware is actually visible from the front, (I think because the water bends the light?) so the set up does look very 'clean.'

 

I like the water polisher because it allows me some where I can put in some filter floss or activated carbon, or phosban etc if necessary, but, and most importantly, I think that the increased surface agitation is really important because the actual surface area of the water is limited to about a 30 cm x 8 cm rectangle.

 

 

Lighting

Because the top of the tank is quite narrow, I couldn't find any high quality stock lighting (that would fit without poking out of the top, and even then it was only a 50/50 tube in an ugly housing that I feel compromised the 'clean' look of the tank which I love. So in about 2010 I started experimenting with a couple of ideas, from blue and bright white Christmas tree lights individually set into 50 holes in a sheet of acrylic (suprisingly effective actually) to the readily available LED strips that are used under cars and behind picture frames etc. The LEDs seemed to do a relatively good job, and the standard blue provided adequate moonlighting that really helped the colours of some zoas and a torch coral pop. You can see the effect a single moonlight (NOT actinic) 12-LED strip had in the old photo below.

 

 

For the tank reboot, I decided to make a little acrylic sandwich for a number of these LED strips that sits perfectly on top of the tank opening. It consists of a clear sheet of acrylic that faces down into the tank, and a more solid white piece that doesn't let any light out of it. The two sheets have a central hole drilled through them that I have inserted a cut-off test tube through that has a screw lid and is big enough to feed piping through that I use for water changes and will use for feeding etc.

 

Sandwiched between these two acrylic sheets there is room for 3 pairs of 18-LED strips, meaning I can light the tank with 108 LEDs. Currently I have 2 strips of true actinic blue, 2 strips of cold white, 1 strip of purple & 1 strip of pink, although I am thinking about changing this to have more actinic as the strips are inexpensive.

 

 

Because the strips come in pairs each to a single plug with a dimmer switch I have each pair on a separate timer switch and have manually tweaked the output of each to get the level of lighting I like. The dimmer switches will allow me to properly perform light acclimation for corals at a later date.

 

My current lighting schedule is

09:00 - Actinics on

09:30 - Purple & pink on

10:00 - White on

16:00 - White off

16:30 - Purple & pink off

17:00 - Actinics off

[Brew boy]

Aquascape

Because the tank opening is a little narrow, in the past I experienced some problems with getting in a viable aquascape that still looked good. I also had some problems with attaching corals using the epoxy putty because if you manipulate it too much in water, the particles can actually bind with the dissolved oxygen, and in a tank with low water volume and low water surface area this can cause problems.

 

I tried to eliminate both these issues by smashing up the single piece of live rock I had, and creating an artificial scape from these dead rock fragments, PVC tubing and eggcrate. Importantly, I have made six pieces of unattached rock that sit on some eggcrate platforms that can be easily lifted out and put in some old tank water during a water change and corals be attached then, without risking the rest of the tank. To make sure these shelves stay on the eggcrate, I have made little feet that lie within the holes in the eggcrate to keep them in place, and so far, it seems to have worked.

 

Here are the eggcrate shapes I started with

 

 

And here you can see how I've started to build up the platforms of the structure with bits of dead rock and PVC tubes.

 

Here you can see the plastic structure schematically.

 

And where all the 'fixed' rock that is attached to the plastic structure.

 

You can see how I had to use quite a but of putty in some places, but I tried to keep this to a minimum so as to not block the pores into the rock, and where there are large sections of it, I added as much texture as I could to increase the surface area for eventual bacteria and algal growth. Below you can see how I started to build up the lower left platform.

 

 

 

And here is how the removable rock structure sits.

 

When I put this all into the tank, I rested it ontop of some old heater sucker pads to raise the whole thing up off of the tank bottom.

[Brew boy]

Flow and light

With the rocks now in place, I got the tank wet in October 2015. At the same time, I went to my LFS and bought some small pieces of live rock with some nice coralline algae growing on them, and put them out of sight.

 

Once I turned the polisher, heater and powerhead on, I could begin to see the flow patterns within the tank.

 

Planned stocking

After the tank had been wet for a few months with no life in it except for the algae that had started to grow, I decided that it was about time I put something in there, so at the beginning of February 2016 I got a couple of dwarf hermits, and a blue legged hermit to start producing some (albeit minimal) waste, as well as a bit of fresh live rock rubble just to make sure there was still some bacteria in there. As the tank is essentially uncycled, I have decided to do a soft cycle so will add a few pieces of coral over the next few months.

 

With my light & flow 'map' now created (above) I thought I could share my plans on stocking too. I am aware that space is a little limited, but I know what I like, and I know what I want to try. I've grouped the map into six sections (each revolving around the removable rock pieces) that I am labelling L1-3 and R1-3, with L being on the left, R being on the right, and 1 - 3 descending from high to low.

 

L1 & R1

SPS of some sort, probably encrusting montis. I think my lights should be good enough, but I'll start out with a test piece and see how it goes.

 

L2

Zoas, a nice encrusting chalice and maybe a couple of ricordea

 

L3

Acans and some ricordea

 

R2

Some maxi-mini nems, because they're awesome and I also want some sexy shrimp in there.

 

R3

As this section isn't that visable, I am thinking probably a torch or hammer coral, as long as the proximity to the nems isn't a problem...

 

Other inverts

I'm a massive fan of cocoa worms, they are stunning! So I will probably get one or two of these and try and find somewhere for them. I've also kept a gorgonian in here before, so I may try one again if I find a fairly flat one. I'm also thinking sexy shrimp because they are pretty characterful and will host the nems.

 

Fish

No plans for fish immediately, but maybe in a few months once the soft cycle has finished, who knows! Obviously I'll only be able to keep one, and something small at that, but my planned 50% weekly water change (I am a big believer in big water changes in small tanks) should keep things in check.

[Brew boy]

June 2016 update

After soft-cycling the tank with the crabs, a ricordea and an encrusting monti for a couple of months, I decided to take the monti out. I'm just not sure the lighting is good enough. I may still upgrade the lighting in the future, but SPS aren't a high priority for me in such a small tank.

Unfortunately I lost the ric; I fiddled about too much with it's position, stressed it out and it detached to be sucked into the powerhead.

I've also moved the tank from home into my new office. After the move (a little over a week ago now) I made the decision to add a sun-faced damsel. Although all my levels were zero before the move, adding the fish has inevitably increased the ammonia, and subsequently the nitrate levels, although they are already dropping. The damsel will probably end up being moved once I am satisfied that a secondary cycle has completed, to be replaced by a more characterful fish. I know that a fish in a tank this size may be a little controversial, but I have had success in the past with my twice-weekly 50% WCs (having kept a green mandarin for a year and a half before shutting the tank down), and I want the tank to be interesting to look at. For me, I would sooner have a fish and some more tolerant inverts as that is what I find the most interesting.

I will obviously keep an eye on the levels, but the ammonia is dropping fairly rapidly, and I should be able to drop the 'trates with WCs. Here is where they're currently at.

And here's the little damsel, not a great picture I know, but there he is.

I've not update the FTS yet as the new office is quite a lot brighter than where the tank was previously, so I need to find a black backdrop before it is camera ready.

Anyway, thanks for looking.

[Brew boy]

Okay, so it's looking like it was too soon to have added the damsel.

 

After taking the readings after the weekend, there was a big jump in ammonia and nitrate.

Obviously the tank isn't mature enough to take on the extra bioload, so I have removed the damsel and will continue to do water changes to get the levels back under control. There is obviously some denitrifying bacteria because the ammonia is being converted to 'trite & 'trate, but clearly not in the sort of numbers that can handle a fish's waste (plus the food debris, etc).

 

Because of this I have decided to take a slightly different approach. I will continue to add corals to gently increase the bioload, and then revisit getting fish at some point in the future. With that in mind, I've invested in some proper lighting.

 

 

This thing is so bright,

 

 

(not that this picture shows it well at all) and I love the controllability. I currently have this lighting schedule,

 

 

complete with lunar mode turned on, plus the weather effects, so there is a 25% chance of a storm every afternoon between two and two thirty.

 

My current short term plan is, once the levels are under control, to try adding some hardy corals and see how they settle, as well as seeing how happy they look with this level of lighting (which is a completely new experience for me). If it all looks good then I may add some sexy shrimp or something similar so that there is something interesting to look at.

 

I'll be doing very regular 33% water changes this week to try and regain control, and keep this thread updated with my progress.

[Lizzie1324]

Cool set up! Sorry about the initial mishaps! I'll be following along on this one

[Brew boy]

Cool set up! Sorry about the initial mishaps! I'll be following along on this one

Thanks Lizzie, I am too! Thanks for following.

 

The battle with the levels continues...

Overnight saw a drop in ammonia, and a rise in nitrate, all improved by a WC. I will repeat tomorrow and see where thing are then.

[Brew boy]

So I decided to stop updating the levels so frequently (can't make for interesting readings TBH), but with regular water changes, over the past month or so, it seems that I've got everything under control and stable, so I decided to add three new corals today:

 

- A little colony of green Zoas,

 

- A maximini anemoni, a torch that was beautiful and orange in the LFS, but looks pretty much brown now it's in my tank. Oh well, we'll see what happens with the colour I guess!

 

The Zoas and Torch have opened up already, and the 'nem looks like it is trying to, but has retreated a little into the rock work.

 

I've updated the FTS and my levels on the first post, but they're here as well now. I was satisfied that things have stabalised, but I will continue to monitor regularly.

 

And this is the first FTS I've uploaded since February.

 

Do let me know what you think.

[Brew boy]

Oh wow, so it looks like I didn’t upload an update at the end of August, but there’s been quite a lot happening since my last post. I’ll try and catch up with what happened in chronological order, and will post them in separate posts, but for now, here’s is the most recent FTS.

 

[Brew boy]

Late August 2016

 

With my levels finally dropping and staying low from the end of July into August, and the ‘nem, torch, and Zoas doing great I decided to add some more frags. One of my LFSs has really upped its frag game since I was last in the hobby, so in mid-August, I decided to remove the brown torch (I really didn’t like the colour, and with space at such a premium in this tank, I thought it was a waste) and added a green and a red acan, a green and a purple Yuma, an orange and dark blue stripped Chalice, some dark green zoas and took a punt on a Cyphastrea.

 

I've taken some pictures, but they aren't the greatest, firstly, I only have my phone, and secondly, the rounded front of the tank makes it very difficult to take pictures. I'm looking into how I can take some better pictures (and will happily take any tips!), but for now, here are some photos of these corals.

 

Here's the red acan with the dark green zoas in the background.

 

Here's the cyphastrea with the green acan in the back (amongst other things).

 

And finally, here's the chalice.

 

As well as these new additions, I decided to add a small backpack filter to increase surface agitation and it would also give me opportunity to add some chemical media or chaeto in the future if I wanted.