ParanoidObseshun's 5.5 Gal AIO Reef

[ParanoidObseshun]

Oh no, just a HH clam.

[.Newman.]

HH clams are awesome! I think I have two of them atm.

[ParanoidObseshun]

Well its been a while since I put a picture of the progress of the very small frogspawn I had in my tank.

It has grown a lot so far. Skeleton is still only about half the size of a dime, but it used to be as big as a pencil lead.

Here it is, but not fully extended as I was moving stuff in the tank.

In this picture I bumped it a little so it would retract so you could see how the tissue has grown over the skeleton, the superglue I used to attach it to the rock, and it is now starting to grow over the rock.

[ParanoidObseshun]

Well my Pico is now over 1 year old!!

 

I think it is time for me to do a good good cleaning on this tank.

 

I was planning to remove all the livestock/corals/ rock/ to my bigger tank to hold it in there for a while as I remove all the crappy substrate and junk in the pico. I am going to clean up the filter compartment and maybe replace the pump. I just think it is about time I do this as things are getting a little messy in spots and whatnot, and some corals appear grumpy.

 

Also have quite a few spaghetti worms and hair worms that do their fair share of ####### things off too. Hoping to take care of that problem when I get rid of the substrate and add new sand.

 

Might do this in the next week or two, depending on when I get to it.

[Mr. Microscope]

Congratulations! 1 Year!!! :D

[plantman1028]

i'm cycling my 5g now. This tank is awsome...love all the varities of zoas. Hope mine is half as colorfull as yours. cant wait til its redone!

[evanski]

1 year!

[.Newman.]

congrads on the 1 year! cant wait till mine makes it there

[ParanoidObseshun]

Thanks Guys! Yeah the big 1 year. It goes fast haha. Had some great points, and had some bad points that pi$$ed me right off haha.

 

Ive gone through a lot of coral changes in this tank. Add this,... it overgrows....remove it.....and repeat. lol

 

Hope to start on the tank restore in the next week or so. Want to get more salt, and more RO water. Also just take my time so nothing is pissed to the point of death haha.

 

Just plan on cleaning the filter compartment, pump, loc-line tubing, get rid of pesky bryopsis, and remove sand and add new to get rid of those damn spaghetti and hair worms! They are always aggrivating my zoas!!

 

 

Also have been dabbling in other little hobby things like customizing action figures and whatnot. So I need to dedicate more time to the tank to get this stuff done and get it back stabled.

[ParanoidObseshun]

Welp enough $hittin around. I finally got to the tank today. Took out all the corals and rock and moved it over to my 23. That thing is packed now. I cant believe how dirty the sand was, there were clouds of debris coming out when I was moving the larger rock out. It took forever to rinse the substrate out, took like 25+ times to get it clear. Also took out the loc-line and got that cleaned up, and took out and cleaned the pump which was clogged with debris.

 

Here is what it looks like now.

 

Going to start setting it back up within the next few days.

 

 

Also forgot to mention that when I was cleaning the sand I must have come across 50-60 hair worms, if not more.

[.Newman.]

hair worms?

 

and what water did you rinse all that sand in?

[ParanoidObseshun]

Hair Worms- yellowish bodies with many yellowish tentacles.

 

 

I used fresh water to clean the sand thoroughly. Had a hairworm problem, and flatworm problem. I am basically starting this tank over fresh----all new again.

[.Newman.]

oh ok, that confused me because hairworms often refer to nematode -like parasites.

what you describe is supposed to be a harmless polychaete related to bristleworms (they may not look much like each other, but apparently they are related )

Speaking of being harmless, is the reason youre removing them because they were starting to annoy your zoas?

[ParanoidObseshun]

Yeah they were all over the sand and on some of the rocks. I would pull out 10-15 every other week. And today when I cleaned out the sand I came across atleast 50 of them. They were annoying a lot of my zoas and they even burrowed under the matt of a few of my zoas and those ones ended up melting away.

[.Newman.]

wow, thats some adverse effects...these things arent supposed to be poisonous and they dont sting lol, but their way of gathering food involves mucus and thats probably what the zoas hated the most. good to know that they can be dangerous.

spaghetti worm was the worm i was thinking, i just couldn't remember it before lol.

[ParanoidObseshun]

I went over a couple ideas in my head about what I could do to improve this tank with flow, and ease of pump access "which my first setup was a complete failure for, since I hadnt been able to access the pump for over a year."

 

I am going to get rid of the loc-line and patch the holes up in the overflow. I am going to get clear vinyl tubing and run it from the pump in to a T fitting or two and run the tubing across the top of the tank underneath the lip of the lid.The vinyl tubing running across the top will give me easier access to the pump compartment without as much pain and aggrivation as the loc-line.

 

I am going to have atleast 3 outlets for flow if not more. To give better flow to certain areas that really didnt get the best of flow last time. Trying to go for an outlet in the front left corner, back right corner, and maybe a few around the corner of the overflow. Ill figure out exactly what ones I am going to do when I actually get around to working on it.

[ParanoidObseshun]

Alright well I think Im done with working on the tank. I patched up the holes in the overflow, and moved the one outlet further up on the left side, added an outlet coming out from the corner of the overflow, and added a spraybar across the back.Tomorrow all I have to do is put sand in it, water, some rock and just let it run for a while.

[ParanoidObseshun]

Here and updated pictures..

 

 

[.Newman.]

you basically restarted the tank...

was that spraybar there before? it looks really well blended into the background. well done.

[ParanoidObseshun]

Thanks.

 

No the spray bar is a new addition to the tank. Was getting tired of the old setup and found it laying around and decided to add it in.

[ParanoidObseshun]

Here is an updated FTS.

 

New additions include goni in bottom left, brought back the plate coral on the bottom right, and brought in a green and pink tipped frogspawn.

 

Here is a new frogspawn.

[.Newman.]

good luck, looks like a nice restart

[ParanoidObseshun]

Well here are some updated pictures of the pico. Things are looking good and the corals are looking happy.

Let me know what you think of the updated tank layout compared to the old one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW FTS AND SIDE TANK SHOT

 

 

[jdl]

nice!

[.Newman.]

it does look better, like a floating rock mass on the right.