II (tiny reef)

Found a way of delivering unlimited current in the femtoreef. It is much better to use a betta hex that has an internal divider. Flowing through the outflow and inflow bulkheads was restricting the current. Now the GSP beat around in there, and the xenia is pulsing and throwing out small stolons. This microsystem further tests the mechanism for proportional growth in nano/femtoreefs.

The corals in this reef do not outgrow the aquascaping every three days like it would appear. A controlled dosing schedule and ????? some other mechanism I haven't pinpointed just yet actually keeps them in check, proportional to the size of a given system. yet they are colorful, extended and healthy.

Meaning, in you guys' tanks you are supplying the utmost biological assistance to corals with strong light, high Ca+, other dosings. This is one option to keep them, and there's no doubt they like it. this makes GSP seem to be a weed in many growth-efficient systems.

GSP can, however, be ran with high current and relatively strong lighting under lower dosings and remain in check, in scale--even down to 26 ounce reefs.

IMO!

new pics:

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-The macro has been cut back to allow for two weeks regrowth. It can remain sealed with no external air exchange, neither oxygen nor CO2, for that time as well. When you have a refugium that has the same scale as the bioload portion, you can bet your oxygen production/CO2 uptake is predictable no matter what size reef you are working in.

Completely sealed reefs change many parameters of reef keeping, because topoff isnt needed any more and you get zero salinity shift when you run a truly sealed system. you get carbonate maintenance (biological separation of CaCo3, yielding carbonate) from the phosynthetic activity of a well-lit (constantly lit) macro refugium, as well as a constant pH control because CO2 never builds up in the system even at night. A key trick is to keep nitrates so low that they and CO2 become the limiting factors in macro growth, causing macro to uptake nitrate and CO2 constantly to send out new shoots while all along keeping it out of your water column. Counterlit refugiums and balanced bioloads rule!

b429

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that is just too unbelievably cool

Thats really nice. Its amazing what you have achieved with such a small system.

Keep us updated with its progress.

Bear with me I hanen't had my coffee yet.....

Is there a pump in there at all? I don't see one(may be lack of coffee).

Is the whole tank lit 24/7?

Very nice looking set up Brandon!

I'm sorry, I'm trying to understand this.....

So is the Refugium sealed from the main tank then opened for a certain time. Or is it opened at all times thru some holes or vents?

Can you give some details on how you created this AMAZING setup?

I wish I could have some coffee but it makes me shake like Tweak on Southpark!

During the day, both tanks are lit by the galaxy light. At night it turns off and just the refugium is lit by the smaller palm light. Pump is a minijet 404 set on low setting. Its fitted into the other side of the divider and fires right into the front reef tank.

b429

jaysus h. chris! slow down brandon! i just started cycling on my betta reef for pete's sakes! after i saw your femto's sealed system i restarted playing with the picos (about 24~30 oz. but months away from where you're at even now). what else do you have brewing? :

that betta system is amazing! are you dosing at all or letting the aragonite dissolve with the co2 generation? do you light the back side 24/7 like lizbeth's asking? how are you circulating the water? (PH, bubbling, photo/temp., or biological)

you da pico-reef man!

edit: just saw your response to lizbeth, thanks!

That's just d*mn cool.

Your opening line had me laughing. I had a good buddy once who always said that and it struck me as funny

The plastic grid is the input to the refugium, continually opened allowing fast flow-through. The powerhead is about an inch over from the opening, firing into the reef and coming back through the plastic strainer--keeping snails etc in the reef side.

I definately dose--in this system I add 5 drops weekly liquid seachem calcium, one drop Ia per week, some carnonate liquid and some Dts drops. Varies from pico to pico. Temp is hard to maintain, they run hot. I don't mind having the fan on though-it stays 24/7

NICE SETUP BRANDON!!!!

and GEEZZzzzz...that green button polyp looks liek a Tree in that tank..hahahaha

that is unbeleivably sick!! Can you please give more details of how you set that up? or is it posted somewhere else?

Spiffy

HOT DAMN! what's next make one in a light bulb? No, I got it, how about in a contact lens. This Is like the bonsia of reefs.

wow, thats sweet

man, talk about digging up an old thread!

well as long as it's back up, brandon429 do you still have this tank? updated pics?

wo!!!! haha, i didnt even notice how old it was. but now that i know i'm curious as to if it's still alive. i had been wondering if a closed top system was possible and was planning on trying one even before i saw this post, so it's great for me. speaking of, i have a few questions if you dont mind, and some of them are for everyone: how much light spills over from the refugium? could it be too much where the corals in the other chamber don't get an appropriate night? what kind of a clean up crew do you have in there? how often do you do water changes? what do you think would happen if you stopped dosing anything?....... do you think it would be possible to set up a system that cleaned itself well enough that you didn't need water changes??? that would be crazy....hmm....

ITS BACK AGAIN! LOL Well Is it still alive? AWSOME setup BTW I Just have to say that is just way tooo Cool!

Hey guys, I hadn't seen this thread get resurrected until I was reading through some of JustDave's posts (completely awesome btw) and saw this one down at the bottom of the page. Sorry I'm a month late in the reply (Messy posted on 7/20) but the system has been taken down and its animals moved to a more stable system. The funny thing is to see how some of these specific corals grew out in other pico reefs that branched off the design of this first sealed setup. As time went by, I found out that this particular tank's mode of sealing was not the most efficient. I had used a dremmel tool to bore out two cable-entry points from the back of the system (for the heater and powerhead) and this started developing ###### issues in time, actually causing the s.g to lower as the water level dropped! Long story short, sealed systems are now my favorite and I have centered my design focuses on setups where the cables are actually cut in two, ran through grommetted holes in the top of the lid (so as to not interfere with lid/tank sealing) which really helps with the ###### issue. This little tank didn't have SCreep issues in the early phases, but I think constant lid removal and re-positioning of the entry cables weakened the improv sealing I was hoping for. Here is a link to the updated experiements, and no I don't have all these up at one time! I've been bitten by the nitro-RC car bug, so I only keep one pico SPS system and one pico planted terrarium cause I grew tired of keeping them all up.

Chris M., I usually like to post pics directly on your forum but for this one I hope you don't mind me linking back to RDO for this blizzard of pictures. It saves me the time in having to drum them all up in a new thread and should save you a little memory on your server!

http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=52540

Thanks guys,

B