Loungeview Pico – An Old School Cheerleader

[Tempestas]

On 3/14/2020 at 12:06 PM, debbeach13 said:

Getting a new job would be great. Good luck. Isn't it nice when we can save a piece of equipment. You can't beat saving some money.

 

Well, it happens to involve working in an ICU, and given the current situation with COVID, I'm not too sure it's the best plan. But then again, I know that jobs are going to become even scarcer, so I'll have to take what I can get.

 

Sadly, the previous night, the rattling started again. Unfortunately, the plastic tube that holds the rubber axle piece had broken. I fully glued the rubber axle in place and it seems to be holding. Unfortunately, it means I won't be able to replace the diaphragm when it eventually wears out now, and I'll have to buy a new pump. And that sucks because I specifically bought this expensive air pump to be able to save money in the long term. And the batteries in the backup airpump are showing signs of being depleted. Sigh...

 

Also, does anyone have any opinions of nutrient dosing in tank this small. I'm thinking of using the four Aquaforest products (Build, Vitality, Energy and Amino mix), more to get better colour than anything else. As for the actual dosing, I'm thinking of diluting and using eye dropper bottles.

[Tempestas]

It' been a while since I've managed an update. With the whole Covid situation, I've been trying to spend less time on the computer and more time with other.

During the last few weeks, I've managed to get some rescaping done. I pulled up some of the orange zoas and stuck down the acros, and moved the ricordia back to the lower reaches. I also mounted the Jack 'O Lantern Lepto in the shade under the hammer.

 

Also, due to the the mass hysteria that gripped our country, I was busy running around and forgot last week's water change. And somewhere along the line I suspect my nitrates shot up because I had hair algae growing on the bowl.

 

So I set about doing a major water change yesterday, with a full glass clean and peroxide wipedown. The water change totaled about 150%, mainly to get rid of the peroxide.

 

Given that the country is currently locked down, I've decided to forgo the full 100% water changes that I've been doing for now and will be doing about 10% water changes about twice a week. How my new job factors into maintenance of this tank is also something that needs to be seen,

 

So here's some photos:

 

FTS:

 

 

FTS with orange filter:

 

 

 

Acans are looking okay. The left one got stung by the ricordia so I had to reposition that. I'm thinking of trading it in, as it is quite bland and I feel it doesn't add much to the tank.

 

 

 

Croc Island Scoly settling in.

 

 

 

 

The green acro started bleaching (possibly RTN'ing) from the base this morning. I suspect the water change swing may have initiated it. The polyp extension though confuses me. Going to have to wait and see what happens.

 

 

 

The Fireworks Acro doesn't have any polyp extension yet.

 

 

 

 

Monti Chilli Pepper growing really fast

 

 

 

And lastly, for those that are wondering, the repair to the airpump had failed and it started rattling again. So I've bought two cheap ones to replace it when the noise or heat becomes too much.

 

[Tempestas]

Tank is 1 Year old today!

 

Cue happydance...

 

[debbeach13]

Looking Good. Congratulations!

[Christopher Marks]

Congratulations on your first year @Tempestas, you've really created a masterpiece! How has the lounge view pico been doing this summer? Hope you're well! ❤️ 

[Tempestas]

Hey everyone

 

Apologies for my long absence from the forum. Life has been especially busy these last few months with me starting a new job.

 

Sadly during this time, I had to move out of my parent's house into temporary accommodation, and the tank stayed behind with the folks in the interim, so I hadn't seen much of it. Hence my waning interest in corals and the hobby in general. (It also didn't help that my boss has two marine tanks of her own - sounds like FOWLRs to me - but never wants to talk about them to me)

Anyway, this changed last month when I was able to secure more permanent accomodation, and the homeowner didn't mind at all if I had my aquarium with me.

 

Fast forward to the end of last month when I managed to enlist a friend to help me move the tank. I had phoned the folks and told them to vacate the front rooms of the house so that we could move the tank without coming into contact with them. Whilst waiting for my friend to arrive, my mum calls me to find out where we are and to warn me that the property gate isn't working. Why? Because there's been an issue with the neighbourhood power distribution, and the power utility can't fix it until the national power utility has completed its scheduled power outage (the infamous load shedding.) All which means the folks haven't had electricity since before 8AM.

 

It's now 4PM.

 

And the tank is 17 degrees Celcius (62F)...

 

I land up rushing to my parents house, barge in in a huff, and within 10 mins the tank has been loaded into a box and is now in my car. Gently driving home I pray that my neighbourhood doesn't get load shed in the next time slot.

 

 

(This is why you choose to go pico...)

 

 

About 30 mins later the tank has been set up again at my place and is now slowly warming up. And this time I'm praying for as few casualties as possible.

And thankfully, everyone except the one acro seems to have made it.

 

 

This tank was filthy from lack of maintenance.

 

Over the last week, I've managed to give the tank some heavy feedings and done two 100% water changes. It isn't looking awful, but there is still a lot of algae over the rocks, and there are some slimy sheets that are actually on the zoa's and are preventing them from opening completely. My sps aren't the happiest, and the hammer is the smallest I've ever seen it. Even the purple milka seems cheesed off, and only the tips have any major polyp extension. The green acro was trying to crawl back but I think the move has killed it off completely.

 

Just a small portion of the crap I suctioned out during the first water change.

Additionally, my super glorious acans have completely receded and shrunk and lost most of their colour, which is a great pity. The JF Jack 'o lantern also does not have a speck of green on it - so much for that colour combination and price tag.

 

I still have a lot of GHA on the heater itself, but I'm waiting for a warm day when I can afford to remove the heater for cleaning without the tank getting too cold.

 

But on the plus side, I have my tank with me, and it brings my heart some level of peace, especially at night when the blue light is the only light source in the room and the bowl absolutely glows.

 

 

 

[debbeach13]

Glad you got it back to enjoy. Good luck with the cleaning. It looks like you got some nice results already.

[Christopher Marks]

@Tempestas How has the pico reef bowl been doing now that it's settling back in to your place? Hopefully the corals are continue to rebound well and get their colors back again!

[Tempestas]

Hey everyone

 

I'm so sorry for my radio silence again for these last two months. Work has been really terrible, and the tank had also gone downhill which has also demotivated me a lot.

 

Since the move and the clean up, things started to slowly get better. And then I decided to supplement my feeds with Red Sea AB+, mostly influenced by all the hype that I've seen on social media about amino acids and how to improve colouration. Unfortunately that turned out to be a terrible idea, and an algae explosion has been the result.

 

Since then, I've battled with green hair algae, and my poor urchin has been struggling to cope. I actually landed up borrowing a sea hare from my LFS, which did help mow down a lot of the algae, but it's all slowly coming back. The acans have really shrunk down though and I'm concerned I might lose them. They've also lost most of their colour as well.

 

I've also taken to dosing AquaVitro's Remediation and running some GFO in the hopes to try and bring my nutrients under control. With some luck, I'll be able to stop running the GFO at some stage. I've also decreased my feeding to a quarter of what I used to do pre-lockdown so hopefully not adding more nutrients to the system.

 

In addition to all of that, I took my Chilli Pepper Monti and got it fragged down to a more manageable size, and bought a new rainbow ricordea and an acro tenius which seems to be a goner at this stage.

 

 

And I broke the Purple Milka Stylo as well. The tips of it are about 3mm from the surface of the water now.

 

 

And finally the newest FTS.

 

 

Unfortunately I have a huge amount on my plate at the moment, but I'm hoping to build an external algae reactor/cannister filter to attempt to combat this GHA, but I'm still trying to figure that out and how to phase it out as well...

[Tempestas]

On 9/25/2020 at 9:06 PM, Christopher Marks said:

@Tempestas How has the pico reef bowl been doing now that it's settling back in to your place? Hopefully the corals are continue to rebound well and get their colors back again!

 

Thanks CM.

 

I also forgot to add that the tank suffered yet another setback two weeks back when I had a power outage for more than two days. Thankfully it had been a hot day and the temp only dropped 3 degrees, but it was still stressful carting the poor thing back to my folks place in the dark and then moving it back to my place 5 days later. That was definitely not a good week

[Christopher Marks]

That is super stressful, no doubt! Thankfully these picos seem to handle an occasional temp swing without much trouble. This reminds me I still need to buy a battery powered air pump for my pico jar.

[Christopher Marks]

11 minutes ago, Tempestas said:

Hey everyone

 

I'm so sorry for my radio silence again for these last two months. Work has been really terrible, and the tank had also gone downhill which has also demotivated me a lot.

Glad you're here nonetheless! And I'm happy to see your pico reef is holding up despite some setbacks. Battling hair algae is such a frustrating experience, I'm in the same boat with my pico jar. It slowly creeps back in after all the cleanup efforts. I am considering trying a chemical solution for mine, unsure.

 

In some ways these small pico reefs play out 'survival of the fittest' when it comes to corals. It's harder to build a highly mixed reef in such a small space, where light and flow are similar through most of the tank. I'm seeing luck with zoanthids and favias in my pico jar, while ricordea wither and acans slowly fade away.

 

Your zoanthids are popping! What other corals have been doing better during all this?

[Tempestas]

12 minutes ago, Christopher Marks said:

That is super stressful, no doubt! Thankfully these picos seem to handle an occasional temp swing without much trouble. This reminds me I still need to buy a battery powered air pump for my pico jar.

They do seem to handle a lot more than what I initially thought they would be capable of. Especially after reading how quickly other people tanks crash so quickly.

 

Those battery air pumps are worth their weight in gold. I would totally recommend the one that is connected to the main power and switches on automatically when the power fails.

 

 

4 minutes ago, Christopher Marks said:

Glad you're here nonetheless! And I'm happy to see your pico reef is holding up despite some setbacks. Battling hair algae is such a frustrating experience, I'm in the same boat with my pico jar. It slowly creeps back in after all the cleanup efforts. I am considering trying a chemical solution for mine, unsure.

 

In some ways these small pico reefs play out 'survival of the fittest' when it comes to corals. It's harder to build a highly mixed reef in such a small space, where light and flow are similar through most of the tank. I'm seeing luck with zoanthids and favias in my pico jar, while ricordea wither and acans slowly fade away.

 

Your zoanthids are popping! What other corals have been doing better during all this?

 

If you are able to get your hands on a teeny tiny urchin like mine, I would totally say go for it. Even though he shifts frags around, I've noticed he's a complete powerhouse when it comes to stripping GHA off the rockwork. I would totally buy him a friend or two if they sold them in pico size over here.

 

I've noticed that as well. Some things grow like crazy and some just plod along. Sadly the orange Zoa's have taken over whilst the nicer green ones have faded. Even the boring brown ones haven't been able to keep up. Once things are more stable I'm hoping to frag the orange ones for store credit - seems to be a really rare colour that they just can't seem to source.

 

The other success has been my hammer and the trachy. The hammer has doubled in height and went from one to three heads. The trachy is just large and happy and constantly begs for more food. And I also think that the SPS prefer being very close to the bubblestream due to the turbulence.

 

All of that being said, the next reef I build is definitely going to be more focused and more well planned out rather that making do with what I find at the LFS.

 

[Ratvan]

New tank shot looks amazing, those colours 😱

glad to hear you're doing well too, even if you have been doing a reef bowl relay between yours and your parents

[Tempestas]

3 hours ago, Ratvan said:

New tank shot looks amazing, those colours 😱

glad to hear you're doing well too, even if you have been doing a reef bowl relay between yours and your parents

Thanks bud.

 

Those shots are courtesy of the $10 orange reef sunglasses that I picked when I bought the ricordia. They just make everything pop.

 

https://www.theaquariumsolution.com/product/8236/353

 

Gosh, I didn't realise it but this makes it 5 trips this poor tank has made in my car already in it's short life

[chaostactics]

On 10/2/2020 at 7:55 AM, Tempestas said:

Thanks bud.

 

Those shots are courtesy of the $10 orange reef sunglasses that I picked when I bought the ricordia. They just make everything pop.

 

https://www.theaquariumsolution.com/product/8236/353

 

Gosh, I didn't realise it but this makes it 5 trips this poor tank has made in my car already in it's short life

Is this tank still running? It's one of my fav builds. 

[Tempestas]

Hey everyone

 

Just popping in to say hi. The tank is still up and running. It has had a number of setbacks over the years, but I'm hoping we make it to the 5 year mark soon.

 

Just the latest FTS:

 

 

Shout if anyone wants further details

[debbeach13]

On 10/1/2020 at 3:14 PM, Tempestas said:

 

I see some growth on several corals. It is nice to hear/see that it is still up and flourishing. Oh, and I like details. 

[InAtTheDeepEnd]

Wow, exquisite little set up. What's your maintenance routine on it and what are you using for flow?

[Tempestas]

11 hours ago, InAtTheDeepEnd said:

Wow, exquisite little set up. What's your maintenance routine on it and what are you using for flow?

Thanks. Ideally its meant to be a 100% water change every 7-10 days, but lately its been more like monthly. I try to feed the corals about a day before the water change, but I've also been skimping on that, hence the poor colouration.

 

For flow, I have just and airline and airstone. I've tried just bubbling it but don't like the noise.

[Tempestas]

16 hours ago, debbeach13 said:

I see some growth on several corals. It is nice to hear/see that it is still up and flourishing. Oh, and I like details. 

Be warned, you asked for this post...

 

So in terms of my personal life, everything fell apart. I left the ICU job because the HOD was essentially giving us only about 1-2 days off per month. I then floundered a bit until I got a job working at a physical rehab hospital. And after about 18 months that ended in a mess when the hospital manager decided that it was too expensive to employ me and cut my pay by 40% without letting me know. Eventually, my best friend invited me to come work at her GP practice where I've been ever since. Slowly building up my practice but the pay is still much much less than previously. And that's on top of 6 failed antidepressant trials so yeah.

 

As for the tank, you're right that the corals have grown a lot. The blue green stylo is the most obvious, which has nearly reached the waterline. The purple stylo did actually hit the water line and grew sideways for quite a while. Unfortunately the stinging from the green stylo and the lack of maintenance has been too much for it, and most of it has died away. Only the tips of the right side are still alive.

 

The hammer actually grew quite a bit until I knocked it over and left it in the void. Subsequently, I've taken it to the LFS where the owner kindly cut it down to 2 heads which I've reglued into place (hence why it looks like it hasn't grown much from the last photo.

I've also had a bunch of acans in and out of the mix as some of them have slowly succumbed. Sadly, all of them have lost their bright colouring that I purchased them for. I'm not too sure whether it was the poor maintenance or the light that caused it.

 

I'm also sad to report the death of Huey the last sea urchin. I think it was old age that got to him. I temporarily used a long spine sea urchin to keep the tank going, but I've now swopped him out for a tuxedo urchin who's a lot more manageable.

 

I did manage to get a green acro a while back, and it grew and encrusted quite nicely but it has also suffered some necrosis but is hopefully on the mend.

 

The croc island scoly also succumbed a few months ago - I just couldn't get it to grow which made me really sad. Especially because of the price I paid for it. But lastly, big momma trachy is still performing like a champ. I think if I could just have a tank of those it would be almost bomb proof.

 

And that's about it on the reef and life front. Both are quite messy now that I think about it.

 

But now, for some reason, I'm getting the itch to start up a new aquarium (even though I have a dozen unfinished projects and no money) for my office. Who knows what will happen this year.

 

 

 

[debbeach13]

Way to hang in there. I am glad things have turned the corner. I wish you all the best.

[Tempestas]

Thanks Deb

[Tempestas]

I did an oopsie...

 

[InAtTheDeepEnd]

Need a love react because that's stunning