2 Gallon Pico Reef Jar - Snail Kingdom 🐌

[Christopher Marks]

7 hours ago, seabass said:

It's impressive how resilient our tanks can be.  Your low maintenance approach might actually have some benefits.  I feel that much of what we do, to try to make our tanks pretty, can set them back in ways (pretty and healthy aren't always the same).  But it is nice when things are looking good.  I hope that the maturity that your tank has achieved helps make your jar flourish going forward.

I was thinking about this dynamic yesterday. We are trying to keep our reefs cleaner than nature would, with less biodiversity to boot. A tall order, going against nature 😅. Definitely a delicate game we’re playing. 

[debbeach13]

Hopefully if we win. The livestock also wins. 

[Christopher Marks]

Oh, I forgot to mention, last night I observed 3 Dwarf Planaxis snails cruising around! These were from my original Reef Cleaners snail order, I chose them because they were so small and had interesting shells, something fun and tiny to observe in this little reef. Of all the snails, these ones have endured! https://www.reefcleaners.org/aquarium-store/tank-cleaners/dwarf-planaxis-detail
 

They cruise the rocks and the sand bed, making tiny contributions to the algae effort. When I was dumping my water change water yesterday, I spotted two more that had been siphoned out with some sand. I wrongly assumed they were goners.

[vlangel]

If you do not have the proper sized sieve you can strain rotifer through coffee filters also.  That is what I did when I raised clownfish larvae.

[Christopher Marks]

Well, the pico reef jar was no worse for the wear after the phyto and rotifer dosing, I even added another 0.5ml of both. I figured the nutrients would be welcomed after the 100% water change earlier. I tossed the rotifers after that, just to be safe, but I plan to dose some more of the chilled phytoplankton in another day or two. 
 

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting @NoOneLikesADryTang and @EfrainChicagoDeepdish at their home! I got to see all their awesome reef tanks, and meet their cute doggo too. They sent me home with all sorts of goodies for the pico reef jar, so generous!

 

 

More zoanthids for the collection! Blue and red hornets, bam bams, and yellow brick roads. They’re so vibrant, all awesome colorations. Additionally a purple plating sponge, and a new cleanup crew: a cerith snail, a margarita snail, an asterea snail, and a little blue hermit crab.

 

Everything is settling in well so far, more photos to come!

[debbeach13]

This is fantastic. I love this community!

38 minutes ago, Christopher Marks said:

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting @NoOneLikesADryTang and @EfrainChicagoDeepdish at their home! I got to see all their awesome reef tanks, and meet their cute doggo too. They sent me home with all sorts of goodies for the pico reef jar, so generous!

 

[NoOneLikesADryTang]

1 hour ago, Christopher Marks said:

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting @NoOneLikesADryTang and @EfrainChicagoDeepdish at their home! I got to see all their awesome reef tanks, and meet their cute doggo too. They sent me home with all sorts of goodies for the pico reef jar, so generous!

It was great meeting you and your wife! I look forward to watching those all grow into colonies in your jar! 

1 hour ago, debbeach13 said:

This is fantastic. I love this community!

I could not agree more, Deb. I love this little slice of the interwebz as well! 

 

[CD_Scapes]

On 3/1/2021 at 11:24 AM, NoOneLikesADryTang said:

It was great meeting you and your wife! I look forward to watching those all grow into colonies in your jar! 

I could not agree more, Deb. I love this little slice of the interwebz as well! 

 

I love reading about other members helping each other out, it really makes this hobby the best hobby out there. 

 

On 2/26/2021 at 10:23 AM, Christopher Marks said:

Oh, I forgot to mention, last night I observed 3 Dwarf Planaxis snails cruising around! These were from my original Reef Cleaners snail order, I chose them because they were so small and had interesting shells, something fun and tiny to observe in this little reef. Of all the snails, these ones have endured! https://www.reefcleaners.org/aquarium-store/tank-cleaners/dwarf-planaxis-detail
 

They cruise the rocks and the sand bed, making tiny contributions to the algae effort. When I was dumping my water change water yesterday, I spotted two more that had been siphoned out with some sand. I wrongly assumed they were goners.

I've heard that the dwarf planaxis can live in extreme anoxic conditions, they are such a cool snail and I hope they come back in stock soon so I can add some to my tidepool

[Christopher Marks]

After these new additions, I've been observing my pico reef jar more than ever, watching the snails and crab get to work on the algae in the tank, and the zoanthid frags opening up. I am completely amazed by the new cleanup crew, and all the work they're doing! Each snail seems to have their own preferences and appetites for different areas of the tank, they seem to be a good trio for this pico reef, and the blue hermit has been a gentle soul so far.

 

The pico jar was started with cultured 'Real Reef Rock', and while I enjoyed the pink and purple hues of the man-made rock during the young days of the tank, it eventually grew a bit of an algae haze as the mysterious blue-green cyano and then eventually hair algae took over. After all the hair algae ran its course and burned out during my 2020 year of no water changes, what's been left behind is a light fuzz on the rocks, and a few errant strings of hair algae. The very top edge of the waterline of the jar also had one last stubborn patch of hair algae on the glass, that I just couldn't seem to scrape off.

 

 

The Asterea snail is definitely the champion cleaner, making the biggest impact on the reef. It has been turning the rocks back to their original pink and purple hues, and I'm finding more coralline algae spots building up naturally on the rocks. The asterea snail definitely has the biggest and broadest appetite, and poops like crazy too. It eventually found its away onto the glass of the jar, and has nearly decimated the last patches of hair algae. It's awesome to watch it happen on the glass side! The Margarita snail is pretty active too, but seems more selective, avoiding certain areas, less into the 'fuzz' on the rocks but cleaning the glass. The cerith snail is a bit of a clutz, and has been moving my unsecured zoanthid frags around at night. Less active than the others, but it seems to be more focused on the sand bed, which is ideal. I think a nassarius snail would be the ultimate final member, to keep the sand bed more actively stirred up.

 

 

A view from above. This was a day after adding the new zoanthid frags and cleanup crew. The new Yellow Brick Road and Bam Bam zoas frags can be seen opened up, while the red and blue hornets were still closed up. I gave all the zoanthids a dip before adding them to the jar, but the hornets went too long when I got distracted away, and they’ve been angry at me ever since. 😣 The reds are showing signs of opening now, so hopefully they settle in soon. I will not be so casual about coral dip timing in the future.

 

The jar is just teeming with life, I’ve never seen so many amphipods out and about, copepods and hydroids jittering around. I’m sure they’re enjoying the phytoplankton supplement.

[debbeach13]

Look at that. Teaming with life. It is fun to hear how much you are enjoying getting the jar back in shape. 

[SaltyGallon]

It sounds like you've got the world's best CUC haha! I bet its dead satisfying to have it looking ship shape again. A suprising amount of people don't dose phyto... In my experience it's great for all manner of pods and coral!

[Tritone]

On 12/20/2018 at 11:59 PM, Christopher Marks said:

Wow, when you said “nano” you meant it. How is this getting on?

I’m told the smaller the harder…..

 

[fulltang]

Hey friend, glad to see your jar is looking great! Now that you've had the light for a while, what settings do you have your dials at and what is your lighting schedule? I'm finally close to setting mine up!

[Pjanssen]

Can't believe I missed this thread. Just browsed through. Actually nice to see that you go through ups and downs like the rest of us-honestly, makes me feel like less of a failure when I can't seem to find the time and energy to properly tend to my tank, so thanks for posting. It's been awhile since you've updated, how's it going?

[Christopher Marks]

It has been a journey, reefin’ ain’t easy, as they say.

 

The pico reef jar is still up and running, I would say on autopilot, but cruise control is probably a more appropriate term. Algae is under control, snails are content, and my corals are hungry, I’d imagine, but holding up ok. I did lose a few, mainly from the crabs pushing unmounted corals around and then getting buried in the sand bed. The green favia and some zoanthids have been troopers, holding on and dealing with the crabs messing things up from time to time.

 

I can blame the crabs, but really it is my fault. I am terrible about deciding where to place frags, I procrastinate gluing them down, and inevitably something or someone (me) knocks them out of place. The emerald crab really did a lot of remodeling too, I should have glued everything first.

 

I have a lot of unique and unusual landscape plants here at my house, strange desert cactus, agave, and succulents that propagate a lot like corals. I am just as equally guilty of often getting a new rare plant at a nursery or from a cutting (frag), bringing it home, and then never deciding where to plant it. Old habits die hard. 
 

The pico jar is still a stable ecosystem, lots of pods and snails, a few durable yet apathetic corals holding on, it’s just waiting for further input and attention. It’s low demand, so I keep it going. One of these days I will give it the attention it really deserves, and I am looking forward to it. 

[fulltang]

On 2/11/2022 at 7:05 PM, Christopher Marks said:

It has been a journey, reefin’ ain’t easy, as they say.

 

The pico reef jar is still up and running, I would say on autopilot, but cruise control is probably a more appropriate term. Algae is under control, snails are content, and my corals are hungry, I’d imagine, but holding up ok. I did lose a few, mainly from the crabs pushing unmounted corals around and then getting buried in the sand bed. The green favia and some zoanthids have been troopers, holding on and dealing with the crabs messing things up from time to time.

 

I can blame the crabs, but really it is my fault. I am terrible about deciding where to place frags, I procrastinate gluing them down, and inevitably something or someone (me) knocks them out of place. The emerald crab really did a lot of remodeling too, I should have glued everything first.

 

I have a lot of unique and unusual landscape plants here at my house, strange desert cactus, agave, and succulents that propagate a lot like corals. I am just as equally guilty of often getting a new rare plant at a nursery or from a cutting (frag), bringing it home, and then never deciding where to plant it. Old habits die hard. 
 

The pico jar is still a stable ecosystem, lots of pods and snails, a few durable yet apathetic corals holding on, it’s just waiting for further input and attention. It’s low demand, so I keep it going. One of these days I will give it the attention it really deserves, and I am looking forward to it. 

Hi Chris! Was wondering if you might be able to shed some light (heh) on your light mix and intensity settings?

[fenderchamp]

Pictures???) please 

[Christopher Marks]

On 2/15/2022 at 11:16 PM, fulltang said:

Hi Chris! Was wondering if you might be able to shed some light (heh) on your light mix and intensity settings?

My PicoPro light was technically a prototype, so my two channel dimmer housing is non standard. I think the control knobs are the same, but there are no markings to indicate the power levels. It’s been so long since I’ve adjusted them, I can’t remember how far the dials even turn. I'm afraid to fiddle with them at this point.

 

Here’s a picture. If you want to compare the orientation to your own, the power plug is on the left side, and the wire to the light fixture is coming from the right side of the box.
 

 

I remember turning the white/red channel down quite a bit, like down to 20% power, in hopes of reducing the hair algae I was experiencing over a year ago. I was worried the high intensity LEDs were fueling some of the growth.

 

I saw more coral growth with higher light, but this is where I settled for this holding pattern the tank is currently in. The inventor of the PicoPro ran his almost full blast, and sees a ton of growth.

 

Hope this helps!

[Christopher Marks]

It’s hard to believe this little jar has been running for over 3 years now. It’s a testament to the durability of simple coral-only reef jars. Not everything in life goes quite as planned, a global viral pandemic was definitely not on my list of possibilities back when I set this up. Progress has been slow, but the jar waits patiently for me. 
 

I like to think of this as a coral garden, more than anything. It’s been joined by a collection of house plants over the last two years, now with their own grow light. 
 

 

I always want to be upfront with this pico reef experience, and share all aspects of the hobby, good and bad. It has been nearly a year since the last water change, maybe longer? Salt creep from the lid continues to build up, enough to drip down the sides and build up around the tank. I top off the tank every 3 months or so with distilled water. I used to top off to the original water line, but with all the salt creep, I was reducing the salinity a little too much over these long spans of time.
 

Before I make any changes, I wanted to document the tank at this low moment, and show the loss and receded coral growth. This pico reef needs a good cleaning, inside and out.

 

 

I mainly have lost zoanthids, in large part because I didn’t glue them down, and they never fully encrusted to my rock. The emerald crab moved them around the most, with some help from the blue legged hermit. Some were buried in the sand, others faded away. What’s left now exist on the sand bed, 3 or 4 varieties. The neon green favia was nearly a goner from crab abuse as well, but has been slowly rebounding. The purple blue brain coral frag is showing signs of life too, some tissue remains and is recovering. The red/green blasto is holding on fine, 3 heads now, but I know it’s hungry. I don’t really ever feed, I’ve put in a tiny bit of powdered coral food maybe 3 times in the past year.

 

 

The emerald crab died quite some time ago, though I never saw the remains. Bubble algae has slowly returned ever since, although it has remained limited. I will remove it manually during my next water change. That acan skeleton has been there a long time, I plan to grow zoanthids over it. A little hair algae grows on the heater and Inkbird temp probe, but nowhere else thankfully. Coralline algae and little feather dusters are encrusting the glass, I haven’t done a good job of scraping it clean.

 

 

In the near term I would like to introduce nassarius snails back to the system to get some sand sifting happening again. No more crabs, I don’t think, the one blue legged hermit is sufficient. I may increase the lighting power a small amount too, I see the zoanthids reaching for more light, but I don’t want to encourage pest algae, so I won’t push my luck.

 

In hindsight I should not have added the emerald, for all the disruption that happened. It became discouraging, trying to save each buried coral frag every day. Committing to gluing frags down needs to be my top priority, whenever new introductions are made moving forward.

 

I am thankful that this pico reef has handled my neglect with grace, all things considered. Tank maintenance has always been my weakness, but I finally found a good match for me.

[The Rainy Day Aquarium]

It's nice to see this still running after all this time, regardless of upkeep.  I look forward to what you end up doing with it.

[fulltang]

On 2/17/2022 at 8:09 AM, Christopher Marks said:

My PicoPro light was technically a prototype, so my two channel dimmer housing is non standard. I think the control knobs are the same, but there are no markings to indicate the power levels. It’s been so long since I’ve adjusted them, I can’t remember how far the dials even turn. I'm afraid to fiddle with them at this point.

 

Here’s a picture. If you want to compare the orientation to your own, the power plug is on the left side, and the wire to the light fixture is coming from the right side of the box.
 

 

I remember turning the white/red channel down quite a bit, like down to 20% power, in hopes of reducing the hair algae I was experiencing over a year ago. I was worried the high intensity LEDs were fueling some of the growth.

 

I saw more coral growth with higher light, but this is where I settled for this holding pattern the tank is currently in. The inventor of the PicoPro ran his almost full blast, and sees a ton of growth.

 

Hope this helps!

 This does help very much! Glad to see your tank still up and running.

 

I finally just placed my live rock order, and I'm nervous/excited.

 

You might find this interesting.. I originally had the anchor hocking jar and just could not get past the poor clarity of my jar. I ended up scouring the web searching for something clearer and compatible with the light. I ended up finding this 3g snack jar at cb2 (took 2 months to finally arrive), and the clarity is way better.

 

Ended up designing and 3d printing a reducer ring for the light with passthrough for my canister filter plumbing (which has a 50w heater inside, custom bent acrylic tubing into the tank). Just a note, the canister filter has nothing inside of it - it's purely being used to house the heater and to provide flow, keeping the display clear and as cool as possible in the summer (fingers crossed). I'll end up doing another revision of the ring in order to extend it below the water line and to get a better finish on it.

 

 

[Christopher Marks]

That is awesome @fulltang! I’ve always been curious about sourcing a different glass vase or jar to fit the lid, 3D printing an adapter ring is a great solution.

 

I think the only thing I would do different with mine, if I were setting it up today, I would put only a thin 1/4” of live sand in my jar, rather than 1”. That top layer of sand seems to get the most life and movement, I worry what will grow or collect in the depths where I don’t have much sand movement. 

[fulltang]

6 minutes ago, Christopher Marks said:

That is awesome @fulltang! I’ve always been curious about sourcing a different glass vase or jar to fit the lid, 3D printing an adapter ring is a great solution.

 

I think the only thing I would do different with mine, if I were setting it up today, I would put only a thin 1/4” of live sand in my jar, rather than 1”. That top layer of sand seems to get the most life and movement, I worry what will grow or collect in the depths where I don’t have much sand movement. 

 

Thank you, I appreciate that! Here's the jar for reference, and I was able to get the ring printed for $25 shipped by someone on reddit. If you're ever interested let me know and I can share the file! https://www.cb2.com/snack-extra-large-glass-canister/s529649?localedetail=US

 

I'm glad you added that tip about the sand, I was actually going to prep my sand tomorrow. I would highly encourage you to search for @brandon429's sand rinsing thread, it deals with exactly that. The long at short is to do a water change, taking your rock out and then rinsing your sand with tap water with a final rinse with RODI.

[night_cloud]

Premium Aquatics has these lids on sale for $50. I picked one up on a whim and am amazed and inspired by your pico reef jar journey.. is this jar still running??