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My first pico! Dymax IQ3 now 5 YEARS OLD!


andrewkw

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Thanks!

Another thing I love about this tank; I was just away for 8 days and when I came back I spent 30 seconds cleaning the acrylic and everything looks great. While I do try and do weekly water changes, skipping a week here and there is no big deal.

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The mini carpets don't really grow unless you feed them a lot. I would think they are more or less the same size.

I actually have 2 but you rarely see the second one since its tucked away in the corner. It never gets fed and barely gets any light, but for whatever reason stays there. It's maybe 1/6th the size of the other one.

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Apparently my new pump won't fit in the tank

 

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WP40. I never thought I'd buy another chinese pump but these things have been getting good reviews and the price was beyond right. Just trying it out on my 112 reef. It's a little loud and the plastic part over the magnet smells like tires but so far so good. If it fit into the pico I could get 1000x turnover :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Day 1332

Took some pics at sunset today :

Yesterday I tried to add a rock flower anemone but there was just no where to put it. It ended up in my main display tank. I also scraped the GSP off the front of the tank, and made 10 frags out of it! I am restarting my frag tank so they're a good start to make sure everything is good.

 

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Some of these pictures were very hard to take. There is always another coral in the way. In the 3rd to last you can kinda see an Acan extended it gets very little light as other corals block it out but still doing very well and very puffy.

I have 2 moderate concerns. The chalice that is growing up the front and side of the arcylic is slightly bleached in the center. It has bleached before so it will likely recover. The little scoly is receeding slowly. I'm not sure if it's because of irritation from the gsp or what. It still extends I even fed it twice and it ate fine but the flesh is receeding. Instead of trying to figure out what's wrong with the water I simply did 3 50% water changes over 4 days. It certainly made everything else look good. Got rid of a lot of detritus. Still it may be on it's way out. I'm tempted to just remove that rock of gsp entirely. For now it will stay and there really isn't space anywhere to add anything. Still loving the tank before you know it, it will reach 4 years of age.

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What inverts are in there?

 

There is 2 mini carpet anemones and some pods. I am the cleanup crew. I used to have a turbo snail but he died and I never even noticed. Prior there were sexy shrimp which were not reef safe, i had a pom pom crab which i saw maybe once. I would like to add an invert like a shrimp or crab again later but no rush.

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testaments covered here-

 

large water changes done right save, they do not kill

 

 

including 100% ones done twice a day, for three days, should that crazy need ever arise or someone feels the need to test it.

 

Its only fish that mind, all pico kept inverts will take it. my own fish would not mind, just ones on the internet would be dying... this can be done often in a pico reef so the animals come to expect it.

 

its a substrate tank that should be concerned about doing so due to dust clouds, not a concern here.

 

Knowing when to do something decisive to your reef with certainty is probably the single most important trait of a pico reef keeper with an old tank. they know how the bets will pan out, and act preemptively.

 

curious to know if the chalice is bonded to the glass, or can be lifted off

 

a going theory of mine that we are testing is that sps bond to glass, unremovable, and all lps do not

 

curious to know about your chalice

 

coral growth onto glass isn't as common as it is for substrate bound calcification from corals

 

allelopathy cannot be ruled out for the minor bleaching, this baby is packed lol

 

ideally we set up the reef to run with less water changes, the point is you disproved hundreds of posts across the years that said b2b 50% water changes would:

-recycle the tank

-spike ammonia

-kill/destroy

-lose bacteria

 

 

all misnomers. 50% is still a large water change by todays standards.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Honestly I don't think you can maintain a pico without doing large water changes.


I haven't changed my water in almost 2 weeks. I was away for a week, and never got around to changing the water prior. Everything in the tank is doing well except one scoly is slowly wasting away. It's not melting but almost half is gone. Tenticles still extend and it will even feed ect.

I did some massive water changes before that. That was instead of wasting my time testing. However I did just get new alkalinity and magnesium test kits. Mag tested around 1250 but dkh was 4.5!!! I have been adding 1.4 -1.6 ML of alkalinity per day for the last 4 days rasing from 1-1.4dkh per day. I tested yesterday at 6.1 (salifert) today 24hrs later im at 4.5 again! now perhaps there was some user error but regardless I am losing quite a bit of alkalinity. I have noticed since I started dosing things looking a little better. Of course if I just do a 100% water change with coralife salt I will go back up to 9.6 but that seems like too much of a change. I'm going to raise it to 5.9 now and then test again tomorrow. edit restested at 5.7 after dosing (hard to get exact exact dosages at these tiny amounts). will test again tomrorow at 1040.

 

Just goes to show despite everything looking good everything is not nessessarily alright.

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Hi,

 

I am starting a nano tank and I would like to follow how you are doing for your pico. Would like to ask are you using and bio media in your in sump? Are you using a much powerful water pump to create flow in your tank?

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I don't have a sump this is a 2 gallon tank.

There is a mini jet that replaced the return pump, a zoo meds powerhead and the red sea pico filter providing flow.

 

dkh today is 5.1 so I am losing .5 per day or 3.5 per week. which I guess makes sense since I didnt change the water for more then a week and it dropped all the way to 4.5 I'll bring it up to 6.5 today which will be 6 by tomorrow then maybe do a water change tomorrow or monday. I know in the past I did try dosing but it became tirseome getting less then 1ml of alk ready to dose but I guess I'll give it another go. Otherwise I need a dosing pump and a timer that has a seconds function :)

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I remember when i was dosing my 3 gal, i was doing half a cap of C balance A and B, then i would do my weekly 80% water change to reset everything. i basically just did what brendan told be in regards to dosing and it worked :)

ask him about it if interested. much easier than measuring less than 1ml of something.

 

that is more or less an EI strategy to dosing. estimative index as the FW planted community calls it.

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I bought a flaming prawn goby :) can't help myself I hope he lives at least a little while and I see him at least once.

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I should have just kept him in a measuring cup. Surprisingly I saw him for a good 10-15 minutes after putting him in. Initially he perched on the duncan on the way down and I thought oh no it's going to eat him, however he moved down quickly.

I tried to feed him cyclopeeze in the measuring cup but showed no interest (not surprising) a pod went over to him and I thought he'd eat that but instead backed off. At the store they were keeping him in a 5 gallon tank with some live rock thinking he would eat the copepods. They had to remove all the live rock to show him to me.

 

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I will try and feed cyclopeeze again, in addition I may hatch some bbs, there are smaller pods in the tank then the one pictured, so he certainly won't starve at least not right away if he's going to hunt.

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Haven't seen him yet today but overall I'm surprised how much I do see the goby. I tried putting some cyclopeeze to get him to come out but no luck. I don't think he's a jumper as he spends all of his time on the bottom of the tank.

 

Here are some pics I took the other day just with sunlight.

 

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Alkalinity is finally back to "normal" I did a 60% water change and dosed again today. I'm going to start paying close attention to it and see if I can't further improve the tank. While there might not be room for much if any new corals I can certainly try and improve the overall health and colour of existing corals.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just saw the goby on the rocks for the first time! I usually sit at my desk a couple hours a day and more on the weekends. He is 100% eating cyclopeeze which I feed every other day. I'm not sure if he is eating pods or not, he's probably not big enough to wipe out the population and there still seems to be a lot in the tank.. Things seem to look 'slightly' better now that I'm dosing alkalinity every day. However the weekly drops did not seem to be devistating. The only thing that was affected negatively was the one scoly that's still hanging on but receeded a lot. One Acan has also slightly receeded but this is due to gsp irritation as the rest of the colour is still puffing up.

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are the nems still in there with the goby? ill be interested to hear about that, as i am so aprehensive of a lil fish getting caught by mine in my 5 gallon

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