5.5 Gallon Mixed Reef

[Lorekeeper]

Hello all! 

So, after being out of the salty part of the hobby for that past 5 years, I decided to get back into it.

I've always had a pretty big interest in small tanks, rather than large ones. I started my SW keeping with a 29 gallon FOWLR tank, and then moved down to a 10 gallon reef. Until I managed to electrocute the tank (which had about $400 of livestock in it at the time), it went well.

After that, I've mainly stuck to FW planted tanks and the like. I recently got some Red Cherry Shrimp and setup a planted jar, and in the process I ended up with an empty 1 gallon pickle jar... what to do with it?

Well, of course, instead of putting it up into the closet or throwing it away, I decided to start a pico tank.

The original plan was to actually have a lightly brackish planted tank with a couple of Ghost Shrimp and Malaysian Trumpet Snails. However, after really thinking about it, I decided to go a little bit saltier. However, at that point I already had the ghost shrimp. Good thing they can be acclimated to marine conditions, eh?

I set up the tank with about 1" of aragonite sand, a little less that 1 lb of base rock (there are no SW shops around me, so I had no access to Live Rock at the time), and a Top Fin Internal 10 gallon filter, pumping water at 67 GPH. While Top Fin isn't my preferred brand, I've been impressed with their smaller internal pumps, so I figured I may as well grab one.

Instead of drip acclimating the shrimp in a separate container, I decided to acclimate the ENTIRE tank from FW into salt. The tank is now sitting at 1.016, two days in. The shrimp are alive and well, although they've spent the majority of their time hiding. I assume this is normal ghost shrimp behaviour, especially seeing as they've never been in a tank with a current before, especially not a 67 GPH current.

The tank is heated by the filter, which keeps it between 74-76F (a little cool, but it'll work for the hardy things that'll be put into the tank). 

My target SG is 1.023, to allow some room for error on either side of the spectrum. Evaporation will be a large concern, however I'll be around for the next week or so often enough to get a sense of how often I'll need to top off.

Currently, lighting is a CFL at 5500k. This light is simply for my viewing pleasure until I decide on a bulb. The two bulbs I'm considering atm are a PAR 38 off of Ebay, or a coralife 50/50 cfl. I'm mainly going to be putting low light softies into this tank anyway, so I think either bulb would cut it, with the par 38 being over kill.

I've read most of the threads I could find on picos/nanos, and I think I have a pretty good idea of what to do and what to look out for. Still, if anyone has ANY tips, comments, recommendations, or even just general insight/warnings to give me, I'd appreciate it. 

Pics! 

The full tank as of yesterday. As you can see, the filter takes up a large amount of space in the tank. However, I was planning on simply treating it as another surface to mount corals on, to make the most of the space.

The female ghost shrimp enjoying a pea. She swam up to the surface to grab it, and is by far the more outgoing of the two.

The MTS I threw into the tank. This was last night, and he was still doing pretty well with a salinity of 1.012. I know they do VERY well in brackish conditions, but I'm not sure how they do in marine conditions long term.

Thanks for reading, and I welcome any advice! 

[SeaFurn]

Hi!  Welcome to the Pico club! Interested to see how this progress to 1.023 and the softies!  The shrimp are cool!  I just got an anemone shrimp a few weeks ago and I'm pretty fascinated with it.  He comes right over now when I'm in my bowl with a pellet for him. 

What kind of top do you have on the jar? That will play a big part in keeping the evaporation to a minimum.  

[Lorekeeper]

13 minutes ago, SeaFurn said:

Hi!  Welcome to the Pico club! Interested to see how this progress to 1.023 and the softies!  The shrimp are cool!  I just got an anemone shrimp a few weeks ago and I'm pretty fascinated with it.  He comes right over now when I'm in my bowl with a pellet for him. 

What kind of top do you have on the jar? That will play a big part in keeping the evaporation to a minimum.  

Thanks for the welcome!
 

Sadly, I haven't figured out a top to the jar yet. 

 

I'm home all week this week, so I'm using this week to acclimate everything to 1.023, as well as figure out how much water I lose in a 24 hour period.

 

I think I may head to Lowes to buy a small pane of plexiglass. It wouldn't be pretty, but it'd serve my purpose at a cheap price.

 

Do you have a recommendation for a lid? 

 

I also saw on your reefbowl that you're using the same PAR 38 that I was considering, How're you liking it so far?

[SeaFurn]

I found an acrylic container with an attached lid at Walmart believe it or not. The lid had a rubber gasket and it fit perfectly inside the rim of the bowl which allows the condensation to drip right back into the bowl. All i had to do was separate the lid from the container which was just attached with some metal.  I'd recommend looking for one like this.  You could also look at a hobby store for these types of containers.  I think there's a picture of my lid on my thread.  

 

I love the ABi Par 38 bulb. The corals look amazing under it and it was super inexpensive. There are a bunch of us using it now. Natalia (BOTM!) got us all started using it.  The challenge has been taking pictures under it.  Everything looks so blue.

  

 

[Lorekeeper]

1 minute ago, SeaFurn said:

I found an acrylic container with an attached lid at Walmart believe it or not. The lid had a rubber gasket and it fit perfectly inside the rim of the bowl which allows the condensation to drip right back into the bowl. All i had to do was separate the lid from the container which was just attached with some metal.  I'd recommend looking for one like this.  You could also look at a hobby store for these types of containers.  I think there's a picture of my lid on my thread.  

 

I love the ABi Par 38 bulb. The corals look amazing under it and it was super inexpensive. There are a bunch of us using it now. Natalia (BOTM!) got us all started using it.  The challenge has been taking pictures under it.  Everything looks so blue.

  

 

I'll look around for one, thanks!

 

As for the bulb - do you think I'd be better off buying the coralife 50/50 CFL, or buying the ABI bulb and hanging it from the ceiling? 

 

Also, I've got the light on a timer with my planted tanks. It gets a split lighting period - is that okay? 

[Lorekeeper]

BTW, I hit 1.020. No adverse effects so far. I'll get to see tonight if the MTS has made it this far, although I'm not exactly sure about it. There's tons of threads about acclimating Ghost Shrimp to Brackish/SW, but very few about acclimating MTS to SW. We'll see! If it doesn't work out, I may look into another snail before I look at anything else.

[SeaFurn]

I'm probably impartial on that now.  But I do think the Par 38 would give you more options down the road as long as hanging it from the ceiling isn't going to be too much of a hassle to rig up. A couple of people are using draftsman lamp holders for their bulbs which could be an option for you.  

The good news is neither bulb is going to break the bank and I think both would work for what you intend

I'm surprised you can move the salinity up so quickly. I was thinking that was going to take a least a week or more. 

[Lorekeeper]

Just now, SeaFurn said:

I'm probably impartial on that now.  But I do think the Par 38 would give you more options down the road as long as hanging it from the ceiling isn't going to be too much of a hassle to rig up. A couple of people are using draftsman lamp holders for their bulbs which could be an option for you.  

The good news is neither bulb is going to break the bank and I think both would work for what you intend

I'm surprised you can move the salinity up so quickly. I was thinking that was going to take a least a week or more. 

Thanks for the advice! I for sure won't be keeping any high light corals in this tank. I may actually stick to xenia/zoas and maybe some mushrooms and leathers. Nothing fancy.

 

As for the salinity, ghost shrimp are sorta like mollies. They have a relatively low salt sensitivity, and some COULD live with just be plopped into some SW. They frequently swim between FW rivers and brackish/sw estuaries.

 

They've been acclimating for 3 days, while I've read some info that says to do it within 24 hours. It'd probably be much safer to do over a few weeks, but I think they'll be okay, especially seeing as they're hardy enough to survive Petsmart 

[Weetabix7]

 to NR, nice to see another Pico Jar Reef on here!!

I personally use the same ABI bulb SeaFurn does and like it, although the 50/50 CFL bulb would work too. 

[Lorekeeper]

22 minutes ago, Weetabix7 said:

 to NR, nice to see another Pico Jar Reef on here!!

I personally use the same ABI bulb SeaFurn does and like it, although the 50/50 CFL bulb would work too. 

Thanks for the input!

 

I'm leaning towards the CFL at the moment due to money issues (I'm 15 and can't legally have another job for a month), as well as hanging the ABI bulb would be difficult given the layout of my room. It'd also give a ton of splash light to my planted tanks, which probably wouldn't do very much good.

 

I'm going to get the jar up to 1.023 tomorrow, and from there we'll see how everything goes.

[Lorekeeper]

Just ordered the CFL off of Amazon, scheduled to be here by Tuesday.

[Weetabix7]

I have a 14 yr old son, so it's really exciting to me seeing a 15 yr old doing this!!

 

You'll do fine with that compact fluorescent, especially if you stick with Softies and LPS corals. 

I had something similar to that light over the Pico tank pictured in my Sig. 

[Lorekeeper]

32 minutes ago, Weetabix7 said:

I have a 14 yr old son, so it's really exciting to me seeing a 15 yr old doing this!!

 

You'll do fine with that compact fluorescent, especially if you stick with Softies and LPS corals. 

I had something similar to that light over the Pico tank pictured in my Sig. 

Thanks for the encouragement!

 

I grew up around reef tanks, as my grandmother kept them. So I was "helping" take care of fish and corals when I was 2-3, and had my own FW tank when I was 5-6 (I took care of it, but my parents supervised). 

 

If I do corals in this tank, are some of the colorful macroalgae out of the question? Or do they require a bit more light/space than this would be able to provide?

 

I've always liked the idea of the SW "planted tank" (a macroalgae dominated reef), and wouldn't mind getting my feet wet in that category. If it turns out that they need tons of extra care, I'll save that idea for another tank.

 

The ghost shrimp are doing great. I'm not sure why, but they seem to be more nocturnal, which is unusual. Maybe the bright light makes them uncomfortable because they came out of an unlit tank?

 

Lights go out a 10:05 PM, and by 10:15 they're swimming around the tank and scavenging for whatever is leftover in the tank from the feeding earlier.

[Weetabix7]

You could definitely do some Macroalgaes!! 

We can talk about it more later, but off the top of my head you could do some Codium, Dragon's Breath, Botrycladia. 

Some good sites to get those from are live-plants.com and reefcleaners.org. 

This is the perfect time of year to get them too, cause this is when some of the more exotic ones are available in the ocean to be harvested, we're right at the beginning of the season for it. 

Right now on kpaquatics.com, you can get what they call a "toadstool" algae. It's basically the Reef version of a moss-covered rock & it makes a really great micro habitat for pods & stuff, they love it. 

[Lorekeeper]

Just now, Weetabix7 said:

You could definitely do some Macroalgaes!! 

We can talk about it more later, but off the top of my head you could do some Codium, Dragon's Breath, Botrycladia. 

Some good sites to get those from are live-plants.com and reefcleaners.org. 

This is the perfect time of year to get them too, cause this is when some of the more exotic ones are available in the ocean to be harvested, we're right at the beginning of the season for it. 

Right now on kpaquatics.com, you can get what they call a "toadstool" algae. It's basically the Reef version of a moss-covered rock & it makes a really great micro habitat for pods & stuff, they love it. 

Good!

 

Happy to know that I have that option. There was a beautiful 2.5 gallon mangrove/macroalgae tank on YouTube, and it was probably one of the most colorful picos I've ever seen.

 

Bad news - no sign of the MTS snail. It's only been an hour since lights out, so I'm hoping he's just not come out yet. I'll watch the tank and keep a close eye on parameters to make sure he doesn't foul the tank.

[Weetabix7]

3 minutes ago, Lorekeeper said:

Good!

 

Happy to know that I have that option. There was a beautiful 2.5 gallon mangrove/macroalgae tank on YouTube, and it was probably one of the most colorful picos I've ever seen.

 

Bad news - no sign of the MTS snail. It's only been an hour since lights out, so I'm hoping he's just not come out yet. I'll watch the tank and keep a close eye on parameters to make sure he doesn't foul the tank.

 

Yeah, just keep an eye out for the shrimp, hopefully it's just being shy. 

 

If you like looking at Macroalgae Picos, check out the Macro Pico I did, the pictures in my sig are from it: 

 

It was about 4.5 gallons total if you figure in the water volume included in the refugium I built out of a food storage container, and the light over it was similar to what your ordered for your jar. 

It can help give you an idea of what is possible and maybe give you some ideas for your Pickle Pico!!

[Lorekeeper]

15 minutes ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

Yeah, just keep an eye out for the shrimp, hopefully it's just being shy. 

 

If you like looking at Macroalgae Picos, check out the Macro Pico I did, the pictures in my sig are from it: 

 

It was about 4.5 gallons total if you figure in the water volume included in the refugium I built out of a food storage container, and the light over it was similar to what your ordered for your jar. 

It can help give you an idea of what is possible and maybe give you some ideas for your Pickle Pico!!

That really is a beautiful tank!

 

I was thinking for mine doing mainly zoas with some other easy softies mixed in... maybe I'll do a macroalgae tank with some zoas mixed in? We'll find out!

 

My favorite coral I ever kept was a frogspawn carpet I had in the 10 gallon. That might be the only LPS I ever consider for this little tank.

 

Just something interesting about the ghost shrimp - the higher the salinity level has gotten, the more clear the shrimp become. The orange blotches also seemed to be turning from a bright orange to more of a fiery red color. I'm not sure if this is maybe due to the difference in osmosis with salt-water, the diet change (they went from fish flakes only to peas and bloodworms), or maybe the temp change (room temp to 76F). Either way, they look much better than any of the ghost shrimp I've kept before.

 

I am a little worried about them picking at any corals/macroalgaes that I may end up getting. That's kind of an unknown territory, as I've never really seen these kept in reefs (they're usually used as feeders, and they somehow survive the "plop n' drop" acclimation and don't get eaten, and these tanks don't have corals). 

 

They're also natural algae eaters, one of the few shrimp that I've ever had tackle fw hair algae. Macroalgae is much different, but it's still a concern.

 

I guess pass or fail, at least this info will be availiable in the future lol.

 

I was just looking at reefcleaners, and macroalgae is surprisingly cheap. It'll be at least a few weeks/a month before I buy (because of tank stability and of course money issues), however I think when I do go to buy I'll be looking into carpeting chaeto and maybe a flame fan. Thanks for showing me that site!

[Lorekeeper]

No sign of the MTS all night, but Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate are all reading 0.

 

Ghost shrimp made it through the night, and I'll be pushing the salinity to 1.023 in a few hours.

[Lorekeeper]

Salinity should be sitting at 1.023, if I did my math right (given my grade in math at the moment, I probably didn't )

 

Ghost shrimp are alive and well, and I haven't seen an Ammonia spike. So either the snail is alive and just being shy, or he's small enough to not cause a ruckus (in FW tanks, they can die by the dozen and not have an effect even in tiny betta tanks).

 

Bulb is scheduled to be here tomorrow, and I think that by the time this tank settles down a bit I'll be more than ready for the coral/algae!

 

Don't know if I mentioned this, but my PH has been a steady 8.2 with lights out and 8.4 with lights on. As long as the macros don't go sexual, I shouldn't have to worry about PH swings (even if they do, I've got 10 lbs of crushed coral to buffer my PH. Co2 in FW planted tanks is risky too )

 

What do you guys think I should do for a CUC? I know that the ghost shrimp are going to be a very, very large portion of that and I probably don't need any other shrimp/crabs. But as far as snails, I was thinking maybe a nassarius, or maybe a smaller nerite. Just something that's hardy. Any suggestions are more than welcome.

 

Weetabix7, I've actually looked over your pico's stocking list and have compiled a little list of inverts/coral/macros that I'm interested in. I'm gonna do a bit more research, but tonight I may post a list of the things that I'm considering stocking to get opinions.

[Weetabix7]

Don't chase the Ph, it'll just cause you trouble in the long run. 

It's more important to keep an eye on Alk, although if you only do soft corals that's not as much of an issue. 

You prob don't need more than one or two snails, trochus, cerith or astrea would be good. Nerites like to crawl out of the tank/jar, so it depends whether you want to go on rescue missions, lol. 

Some of what you saw in my Pico is only available seasonally (although we're headed into the right season!) or if you take the time to contact the vendors and ask what they can get. John Maloney on here (from reefcleaners) was very helpful to work with, and KP Aquatics is really good about that as well, it's worth going to the effort. 

I'm happy to give feedback once you come up with a list though. 

 

Oh, and if you haven't done it already, you absolutely HAVE to check out this Reef Bowl, much of what she has done is relevant to your jar setup: 

 

 

[Lorekeeper]

Noted on the PH.

 

Alk is around 8.

 

I think I may be getting a slight ammonia reading. It's just slightly elevated above 0, so that's good. I want at least some in the tank to get a good cycle. I'm probably gonna watch ammonia levels to make sure that it doesn't spike, but if I can keep a consistent 0-0.25 while it cycles, all should be well  

 

As far as the snails go, I'll probably honestly go with one of the most hardy species I can find. If nerites like to escape, I'll stay away. I've already had one ghost shrimp escape from their holding tank while the jar was getting setup, and that was stressful enough!

 

I've actually been in contact with John before, he's the guy that helped me stock my 10 gallon. He made some great recommendations, and helped me find exactly what I wanted.

 

That reef bowl was actually one of the threads that got me wanting to do this! There are tons of them around, but there were 5-6 that really struck the idea home.

 

Both of the shrimp molted sometime last night, I assume a reaction to the change in salinity. Both are considerably more active, and have been climbing around on all of the rock and equipment since light's came on!

 

 

The male came out for the first time in a while, and I noticed that he's gotten darker/cloudier while the female has gotten clearer. Strange.

 

 

And this is just the entire tank. This is day 4, so not much has really happened in here yet. I added in one of the cheap Tetra glass heaters that I had, but it's not really helping keep the tank any warmer. I'll probably take it out the next time I mess with the tank.

 

I'd also like to add that anything that get's put into this tank will be put into a 2.5 gallon tank eventually. It currently houses my betta, but I'm planning to upgrade him to 5-10 gallon, and then use his tank for either my Red Cherry Shrimp or the corals in this tank. Either way, they'll still get a bigger tank, as my RCS reside in a 2 gallon jar, much like the one I'm using for this.

[Lorekeeper]

 

Good news is that the new bulb should be in tomorrow, which should at least let me start getting some of the fugly softies off of ebay once the tank cycles 

 

Ghost shrimp are still going. They made it this far, so I think as long as they can tough out the next week or so they'll be fine.

 

I think that I'm going to start the tank off with a cerith snail, a few zoa polyps, and maybe some chaeto/other hardy macro. Then I'll probably give that a month or so, and add more as I feel I'm comfortable with it.

 

I usually see my cash restraints as awful- however in this situation, it could save the tank lol. I gotta admit, if I had the money, as soon as I had a nitrate reading in this tank I'd probably load it up with corals against my better judgement. This at least keeps it slow.

[Lorekeeper]

Male ghost shrimp died last night during a molt.

 

Caused an ammonia spike which I've taken care of, however I'm not sure if the female is going to make it. She's looking pretty rough atm.

[fallenlordz]

Hope it pulls through.  I always like macro algae in these smaller setups.

[Lorekeeper]

I do too! 

 

Either way, this tank won't be torn down. I'll just have to settle for a hermit crab or something like that instead.

 

Sad that the ghost shrimp might not make it though. They're interesting to watch to say the least!