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Texas 3.5G Pico


chippwalters

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I would like to ask a question about your light. Where did you get those brackets? Did you make them or buy them? Looks like they would fit a heat sink for LEDs perfectly.

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I would like to ask a question about your light. Where did you get those brackets? Did you make them or buy them? Looks like they would fit a heat sink for LEDs perfectly.

I built them and then had them 3D printed. Yes, I imagine they could actually attach quite easily to a heat sink assuming they were designed correctly.

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I like them a lot! One of the hardest parts about this DIY LED stuff is finding stuff like that.

 

Well done! When I build my 35" LED set up I may come back to you on that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

New FTS:

Added some Aussie Acans (beautiful!). Bought them on eBay from Austin Aquafarms. Great deals. Also added a blue sponge and some rics.

 

Haven't seen my Pom Pom since the great saltwater/freshwater mess. He seemed OK, but now is either hiding, or gone-- not sure which.

 

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Your tank is looking awesome, Chipp! Love the sponge, and the ric's placement is very cool, almost looks like a maxi mini the way it is draped there.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Left for 5 days and the wife and daughter took care of the top-off chores. This is the first time I haven't changed water in a week, and it seems to have done the tank some good. Everything looks great-- though there does seem to be some algae build up, even though there have been no feedings.

 

Couple of surprises. First, my Pom Pom finally did come out of hiding-- this after a number of weeks. Did find his molt about a week ago and was keeping my fingers crossed the little guy was still around.

 

And the second surprise, shown below, is a very small brittle star! Actually, I've seen the critter's little arms sticking out once or twice, just didn't know what sort of animal it actually was until tonight. In fact, there seems to be 2 hitchhiker brittle (or are they Serpeat Sea Stars?).

 

Photo%20Nov%2009,%207%2047%2008%20PM.jpg

 

I did also come back to a virtual investment of copepods, but I assume that's OK. I did also notice some very green fine hair algae at the top of my rock. The picture below is looking straight down. Should I burn this off when I do a water change?

 

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some would advocate leaving it, stocking with snails and I would advocate burning it with fire, peroxide, then having that area of rock excised for demon possession. opinions vary

 

:)

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some would advocate leaving it, stocking with snails and I would advocate burning it with fire, peroxide, then having that area of rock excised for demon possession. opinions vary

 

:)

 

Will snails get rid of this? If so, I'll get some. Nerite or Cerith?

 

Here's a pic of my shy Pom Pom before he headed for the caves..

 

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BTW, that ric he's behind shrinks to something like 25% overnight, then enlarges during the day. Is this typical?

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I have heard so many good things about reefcleaners package from this website, more ceriths than you can shake a stick at. I have a few ceriths too, I've seen them leave a little clean trail on the glass where they pass so at least certainly ceriths have always truly eaten algae without being destructive or detrimental to the tank. if you are changing strong volumes of water regularly its just that much more you can get away with in your tank

 

the hermit crabs work too but they always attacked my corals Chip so I don't use them. mainly I spot remove algae, don't spend a whole lot of time working water params, so the clean up crew is really just for added biodiversity even without them Id have no algae.

 

Your tank looks great man!! its super clean in the details and the crab looks happy. fed well I know for a fact they can live past 48 months in a given tank. My rics always do open up during the day and close at night.

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I've been gone for a couple weeks, with the wife and child only topping off the tank with fresh water. My single sexy started munching on a Zoa, but that's about all the damage-- other than a lot of hair algae. I did the best I could with cleaning the glass, then siphoned out 80% of the water, dabbed some straight hydrogen peroxide on the algae while it was out of water, then added back in the new water.

 

Things look better. I did buy 50 saltwater snails on eBay today for $15 and I'm going to put a couple dozen in to see if they can clean up some of the algae, then remove them when it's done. I'll be using my Walmart Pico as a snail farm, with the hope I can move snails to and fro this one as needed.

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The tank is definitely looking good! If you'd like my opinion I'd say take those frags off of the sand bed and put them on your rocks. That'll make the tank look much bigger! Right now it looks too cluttered and messy with those frags there.

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The tank is definitely looking good! If you'd like my opinion I'd say take those frags off of the sand bed and put them on your rocks. That'll make the tank look much bigger! Right now it looks too cluttered and messy with those frags there.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I just need to find space for them!

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Still haven't gotten around to moving my acans-- not sure there's room.

 

I've been losing snails left and right. I swear I've spent over $50 on various ones-- ceriths climb out, nerite and turbos flip over and die, hermits killed a few... so, I ended up buying a couple hundred nassarius snails on eBay for $20.

 

I know these guys aren't much good for algae, but they are good for cleaning up detritus, especially for overfeed, and as an added bonus, they can 'right' themselves if flipped over. I've been carefully trying to feed my candy canes and acans shrimp pellets, which they do seem to like. For the most part the 2 hermits clean up the mess, but there's been a couple SORTA serious algae incidences: hair algae, bubble algae, red hair algae, and some muck stuck on the back glass. So, I dropped in about 25 nassarius and we'll see how they do. I'm keeping the other 100+ in my Walmart 1.5 pico, and feeding them. A bunch died, and they seem to clean up after themselves (little snail cannibals!).

 

Anyway, now for the real reason of this post-- to check out how my new iPhone's camera works! Yep, got an iPhone 4s last week and decided today to take it for a test tank pic spin. Here are the results:

 

Close up of Mr. Sexy bouncing around my zoas. He seems not to bother them.

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Several acans, a zoa colony and Mr. Hermit hiding in his shell.

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FTS with the LED panorama pro 50/50 and two actinic stunners.

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The torch with a barnacle hanging around-- you can see this guy in the video below.

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Very green GSP, zoa with sexy on the right, and blue photo syth sponge.

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And here's a video of it taken from my iPhone 4s:

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Chip, I assume you turned your pumps off for that video?! Looks great, but so still ...

 

Yep, the pumps were off for the pics and I didn't think to turn them back on for the vid. ....next time... ;)

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tanks looking good. Ive read the thread so far. My best advice, and please dont take this the wrong way, but leave the thing alone! :D Do your weekly maintenance, top off, water change, clean the glass, but thats it. Best not to add anything more for a while either, let the system stabilize to whats in there before you add anything else. In my experience, these things do better when we let them take care of themselvs. Let the thing mature.

 

Also, it sounds like youre feeding a lot! None of your corals (that i can see) need food. All are photosynthetic. Focus your feeding on your shrimp and crab. Its easy to overfeed in such small tanks, ive done it myself and only noticed when my nitrates were hurting corals.

 

I used to be super hands on in my 10 gal, overthinking every little thing. Then school started and I left it alone while doing my weekly maintenance, and the thing blossomed. Good luck and keep us posted!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hey guys, I've got 5 different Acans, and today, one of my most healthy ones had stuff 'streaming' out of it's mouths. Any idea on what's going on?

 

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Hey guys, I've got 5 different Acans, and today, one of my most healthy ones had stuff 'streaming' out of it's mouths. Any idea on what's going on?

 

 

 

Just pooping, no worries.

 

Nice little tank btw!

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Just pooping, no worries.

 

Nice little tank btw!

 

Whew! Thanks. I thought for sure things were headed south. Much relieved. Thanks on the tank-- it's coming along. I've finally got the small Acans off the floor on onto the LR-- and now I can put a Turbo snail in there to help clean. They're like a bull in a china shop for Picos, but they do a really good job of cleaning up. I have a dozen or so Nassarius snails in there which keep the bottom clean. I've tried hand feeding the Acans and Candy Canes-- they eat it up-- but I want to be sure things are cleaned up afterwards-- and the snails do the trick.

 

I also have a couple Cerith snails, two hermits, a sexy and VERY SHY pom pom.

 

I have a smaller 'snail' tank which I migrate the snails to/fro whenever I need to. So far, things look pretty good EXCEPT I can't get anything to grow very fast (except the GSP--grows like a weed). No big deal. As long as this is a small tank, I don't need stuff filling it up.

 

Here's another (better) video:

 

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