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5.5 Gallon Mixed Reef


Lorekeeper

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I'm using a Tetra 50W preset heater that I had laying around the house. I'd buy one of the smaller adjustable heaters off of amazon though.

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Okay so all ll I need is a one gallon fish bowl a small heater and air stone. A little bit of sand and a rock. Along with some kind of light 

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If you want to start out with a gallon, sure. 

 

Some people recommend bare bottom tanks for picos, which is probably the best way to go about it. However, i hate bare bottom tanks, so yeah.

 

I'd shoot for a pound of very live rock if you can find it, and either the Tuna Blue PAR 38 LED bulb, or the 50/50 Coralife CFL.

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16 minutes ago, Braun036 said:

Okay so all ll I need is a one gallon fish bowl a small heater and air stone. A little bit of sand and a rock. Along with some kind of light 

For a heater, look at this one from the company that makes ADA.  I have it in my tank, it's very slender and sleek and has an external thermostat.  25w is plenty for 1 gallon.  So far it has done very well maintaining temperature and is much less bulky than the Tetra.

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Okay, so everything has gone well since the introduction of the zoas and snail.

 

Parameters actually didn't fluctuate too much, and are currently:

ammonia:0

nitrite:0

nitrate:10-15

 

The Nitrate reading does worry me, because I'm just now halfway till my next water change and I'm already getting a decently high nitrate reading. But, I'm hoping maybe there's die-off from the rock that's causing part of it.

 

The turbo snail has cleaned the jar up pretty quickly, and so far hasn't caused too much mischief. He knocked over the zoas yesterday, and they laid mouth-down for at least 4 hours before I got home. They were pretty angry looking for an hour or two, but I can't see any noticable damage, so I think I'm good.

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I think it's likely that you're right about some die-off from the rock causing the nitrates. 

 

Zoas can usually handle what you described ok, I wouldn't worry too much. 

Turbos can be kinda "bulldozery" tho, you'll have to watch out for that. 

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Yeah, the plan is to superglue the frag down when I drain the tank for the WC. I'm thinking about maybe trying to put it in the back of the sandy area in the front of the tank, maybe an inch or so above the sand. Then have my other softies around/in front of it, and fill in the rest of the scape with macros and whatever else I decide to attempt.

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If you're ever super concerned, you can always do a partial or full water change. :)  My trochus snail knocked over my not-glued-down zoas the other day lol.  And he's pretty itty-bitty.

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Thanks, I might do a WC if it gets too much over 20.

 

So, when I do a 100% wc, should I just leave the snail in there, or should I transfer him to a container with water? I'd say it wouldn't be over a few minutes max without water, so I think he'd be fine, just making sure.

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Alright.

 

I've noticed that a few of the zoas have a "mushroom" effect going. Instead of being flat discs, they're a inflated. Is that just how they grew? Is it immflamation? Maybe a sign of stress? My salinity just hit 1.023 today, as I may or may not have forgotten to add some SW yesterday :P so maybe it's from the salinity being low? I didn't notice it in the store though, and their water was lower than mine.

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  • 9 months later...

Although its been a long while since I updated this, the tank is still going. The macro's never happened due to cost and availability, but I've since added a scarlet tip hermit and another small zoa colony. Been slow going, seeing as the nearest shop with saltwater is a few hours away, but the tank itself is trucking away just fine!

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On 1/29/2018 at 6:26 PM, Lorekeeper said:

Although its been a long while since I updated this, the tank is still going. The macro's never happened due to cost and availability, but I've since added a scarlet tip hermit and another small zoa colony. Been slow going, seeing as the nearest shop with saltwater is a few hours away, but the tank itself is trucking away just fine!

I don't live close to any saltwater stores either so I end up ordering online a lot.

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On 1/30/2018 at 8:03 PM, Lula_Mae said:

I don't live close to any saltwater stores either so I end up ordering online a lot.

Yeah, I'd love to order from online, but I can't bring myself to spend that much on shipping. I can only work part-time by law, so between insurance bills, gas, etc. there isn't a ton to spend on tanks, and I wanna get as much as I can with what I have. So maybe one day I'll have that freedom, lol.

 

This is actually no longer a jar... I just finished moving it over to a 2.5G AGA tank that used to house my betta. I decided to drop the sand, as it was causing some problems, so I went barebottom. 

 

I'm actually using a Finnex LED light made for FW planted tanks, and I gotta say... it's so much better than that CFL had. Even with a lower color spectrum (8000K white LEDs, two actinics and two reds, vs the 10000K and actinics on the CFL), it's much more vibrant. Plus, the shimmer of the water with LEDs is nice. I ordered one of the cheap PAR 30's off of Amazon to try after seeing pics of people using them, so I'll try that one and see if I end up liking it any better.

 

If disaster doesn't strike over the next week or so, I'll be going and trying to find a small GSP frag to put on the little island on the right in my tank. Know it tends to be a bit invasive, but I think it's time for some variety in the tank!

 

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Here's a few pics before lights out. I need to rotate my old zoas to face the front of the tank, since I was in a rush when I switched the tank over and forgot. The new zoas have settled in, although a few of the polyps have yet to open. I need to vaccum up the sand that's fallen off the rocks since they were put in, which'll be done on saturday, and I need to find the hermit crab a few more shells. He's got one extra in there somewhere, but I wanna give him options so he doesn't decide to rob my snail! He's been doing well with the hair algae, so I'm glad I got him. What you see here is nothing compared to how bad it was just a few days ago when i got him.

Full tank.jpg

New Zoas.jpg

Old Zoas.jpg

Scarlet.jpg

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12 minutes ago, Lorekeeper said:

Yeah, I'd love to order from online, but I can't bring myself to spend that much on shipping. I can only work part-time by law, so between insurance bills, gas, etc. there isn't a ton to spend on tanks, and I wanna get as much as I can with what I have. So maybe one day I'll have that freedom, lol.

 

This is actually no longer a jar... I just finished moving it over to a 2.5G AGA tank that used to house my betta. I decided to drop the sand, as it was causing some problems, so I went barebottom. 

 

I'm actually using a Finnex LED light made for FW planted tanks, and I gotta say... it's so much better than that CFL had. Even with a lower color spectrum (8000K white LEDs, two actinics and two reds, vs the 10000K and actinics on the CFL), it's much more vibrant. Plus, the shimmer of the water with LEDs is nice. I ordered one of the cheap PAR 30's off of Amazon to try after seeing pics of people using them, so I'll try that one and see if I end up liking it any better.

 

If disaster doesn't strike over the next week or so, I'll be going and trying to find a small GSP frag to put on the little island on the right in my tank. Know it tends to be a bit invasive, but I think it's time for some variety in the tank!

 

If you do look into ordering online, look for vendors that will ship priority mail as it's much more affordable, and zoas and GSP can definitely take it, as well as macros.  LA reefs and also 333aquatics on ebay offer smaller frags of macros that are good for our pico tanks. :)

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7 minutes ago, Lula_Mae said:

If you do look into ordering online, look for vendors that will ship priority mail as it's much more affordable, and zoas and GSP can definitely take it, as well as macros.  LA reefs and also 333aquatics on ebay offer smaller frags of macros that are good for our pico tanks. :)

Just $7 shipping for macros? Interesting... might be making an order!

 

As in... the orders made.

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4 minutes ago, Lorekeeper said:

Just $7 shipping for macros? Interesting... might be making an order!

Yep!  As long as the macros don't sit out in the cold they should do alright, most times they'll ship Mon-Tues and hold off on the rest of the week in case of delays.

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4 minutes ago, Lula_Mae said:

Yep!  As long as the macros don't sit out in the cold they should do alright, most times they'll ship Mon-Tues and hold off on the rest of the week in case of delays.

Thanks for the tip! 

 

I made a small order, just to try it out. Got a red dragons breath and something just listed as "Rare red branching macro" that's supposedly hardy and looked good.

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1 minute ago, Lorekeeper said:

Thanks for the tip! 

 

I made a small order, just to try it out. Got a red dragons breath and something just listed as "Rare red branching macro" that's supposedly hardy and looked good.

The branching macro is very pretty, much smaller than it looks in pictures, but I like it a lot.  I love dragons breath but am still struggling to find a frag that will live for me. :rolleyes:

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