Joe's Boneless Pico Reef

[Joevember]

8/2/19

7/16/19

6/12/19

5/8/19

Hello NR! I’m excited to be joining the old school pico reef contest.

My plan for the tank is a ‘boneless’ setup… so all (or mostly) soft corals and nems. On top of this, the tank will be set up at my high school, Whitney Young, as a part of my club, Eco Club, which focuses on animal stewardship and environmental education. I will be the one managing all maintenance on the tank. My main goal for this project is to teach other students about coral reefs/marine habitats and for them to be able to become active in their protection and conservation. Since I’ll keep it at school I won’t be there to take care of it every day, so I’ll try to make it as bulletproof as possible (why it'll be boneless).

 

Let’s get down to the setup list:

• The tank I’m using is a UNS 3N, very seamless, clean look.

• Aquaclear 50 power filter. I’ll get into the filtration below.

• Kessil A160, supplied by the club.

• Kessil Spectral Controller, supplied by the club.

• Aqueon 50W heater.

• ACKE horticulture/refugium light.

• JBJ ATO, cheap and ugly... I'd like a Smart ATO micro in the future because the JBJ is reeaally bulky.

 

Now we’re getting into filtration:

The filtration is going to be mostly biological. I converted the AC50 into a refugium by putting the light on the back and taping the sides to keep the light in. I’ll be putting chaeto in there along with 3 marine pure spheres- I considered caulerpa but the possibility of it going sexual and nuking the tank outweighs the pros. The other biological filtration will be from the sandbed and live rock.

I have a small bag in with a tbsp of carbon and a few pinches of GFO as well.

I have a strip of filter floss next to the intake in the filter for mechanical filtration.

Jumping into the aquascape plan:

I wanted to give this its own category since I planned so much about it. Just to give you an idea of how long I spent on it, it took me over 10 minutes to wash the epoxy and super glue off my hands after I finished it.

I designed an arch to be able to let a few corals grow up the sides of it while leaving enough room on the sandbed for other corals. I’ll try to find some tall corals like leathers, kenya tree, xenia, or photosynthetic goniopora to put on the back of the arch to give it more depth.

I’ll get cloves, GSP, zoas, mushrooms, and some other softies to grow over everything and make colorful. It's mostly zoas though.

Then on the sandbed I’ll keep RFAs to put some more colors in there.

Moving onto the stocking list:

So the only real things that I will stock in the tank will be a clean up crew and a few crabs. 

Right now I have a purple porcelain crab, a halloween hermit, two trochus snails, and a few hitchhiker stomatellas. 

That about does it, I’ll try to pump out as many updates as I can for you all.

[This guy is extra salty]

Very nice  

love the aquascape

[SeaFurn]

Welcome to the party! 

Pretty cool that you’ll have it at school.

 

[WV Reefer]

17 minutes ago, Joevember said:

Hello NR! I’m excited to be joining the old school pico reef contest.

My plan for the tank is a ‘boneless’ setup… so all (or mostly) soft corals and nems. On top of this, the tank will be set up at my high school, Whitney Young, as a part of my club, Eco Club, which focuses on animal stewardship and environmental education. I will be the one managing all maintenance on the tank. My main goal for this project is to teach other students about coral reefs/marine habitats and for them to be able to become active in their protection and conservation. Since I’ll keep it at school I won’t be there to take care of it every day, so I’ll try to make it as bulletproof as possible (why it'll be boneless).

 

Let’s get down to the setup list:

• The tank I’m using is a UNS 3N, very seamless, clean look.

• Aquaclear 50 power filter. I’ll get into the filtration below.

• Kessil A160, supplied by the club. May get the A80 for myself later.

• Tetra 50W heater.

• ACKE horticulture/refugium light.

• JBJ ATO, cheap and ugly.

Now we’re getting into filtration:

The filtration is going to be mostly biological. I converted the AC50 into a refugium by putting the light on the back and taping the sides to keep the light in. I’ll be putting chaeto in there along with 3 marine pure spheres- I considered caulerpa but the possibility of it going sexual and nuking the tank outweighs the pros. The other biological filtration will be from the sandbed and live rock.

I might also throw in a chemi pure blue baggie in there just because I have so many of them.

No mechanical filtration at the moment since I won’t be putting in a lot of nutrients/large organic matter.

Jumping into the aquascape plan:

I wanted to give this its own category since I planned so much about it. Just to give you an idea of how long I spent on it, it took me over 10 minutes to wash the epoxy and super glue off my hands.

I designed an arch to be able to let a few corals grow up the sides of it while leaving enough room on the sandbed for other corals. I’ll try to find some tall corals like leathers, kenya tree, xenia, or photosynthetic goniopora to put on the back of the arch to give it more depth.

I want to keep my RBTA on the top of the arch and let it be a real centerpiece, but I might have to move it back to my main tank if it doesn’t do well in the tank. If that happens I might try to get a carpet mushroom to replace it.

I’ll get cloves, GSP, zoas (no palys), mushrooms, and some other softies to grow over everything and make colorful.

Then on the sandbed I’ll keep RFAs and ricordea to put some more colors in there.

Moving onto the stocking list:

So the only real things that I will stock in the tank will be a clean up crew and a few crabs. My plan so far is to put in my pom pom crab, halloween hermit, and a porcelain crab as show inhabitants. The clean up crew will be a couple nassarius snails, some zebra/blue dwarf hermits, and a couple trochus/astrea snails. I’ll update this and make an actual list of things I put in the tank once it’s fully set up.

That about does it, I’ll try to pump out as many updates as I can for you all.

 

I love that arch! 😃

[Joevember]

Don't think it will even have to cycle since the marine pure spheres already have a cycled culture of bacteria from my other tank. Went ahead and added a GSP frag half an hour ago and it's doing just fine.

Also for the others that run aquaclears, how loud is the impeller on yours? You can hear mine from another room clearly. Maybe it's just breaking in.

[MetaTank]

39 minutes ago, Joevember said:

Don't think it will even have to cycle since the marine pure spheres already have a cycled culture of bacteria from my other tank. Went ahead and added a GSP frag half an hour ago and it's doing just fine.

Also for the others that run aquaclears, how loud is the impeller on yours? You can hear mine from another room clearly. Maybe it's just breaking in.

Welcome to the competition! I wish when I was in school, we had clubs as cool as this! I'm running an Aquaclear50, and it's very quiet. I can only hear it when the water level gets low and it starts to suck in microbubbles from the surface skimmer. 

[ksadam]

Also running an AC50 only time it's noisy is when I turn the flow all the way down. Awesome setup BTW loving the arch aquascape 👍

[Tempestas]

That arch looks great!

 

I remember the good old times of having a fishtank set up at high school in what we called the 'Pet Club' if I remember correctly. I think your students are really lucky to see this come together.

[Joevember]

16 minutes ago, Tempestas said:

That arch looks great!

 

I remember the good old times of having a fishtank set up at high school in what we called the 'Pet Club' if I remember correctly. I think your students are really lucky to see this come together.

Thanks, I am a student, I don't have any 😂

[Joevember]

Pom pom is in!

Still trying to figure out how to take good pictures under a kessil. 

[MetaTank]

Pom Pom is a good choice for a tank in School...lol

 

 

[Joevember]

The heater blew up overnight. Everything looks dead. 

[debbeach13]

Oh that's terrible.

[William]

What heater

[Joevember]

13 minutes ago, William said:

What heater

Tetra 50w

[Joevember]

The light also managed to fall in the tank. I don't think it overheated the tank since it was on an analog timer so no power was going into it. It still managed to kill the light though. 

 

I̶'̶m̶ ̶g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶p̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶a̶n̶k̶ ̶i̶n̶d̶e̶f̶i̶n̶i̶t̶e̶l̶y̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶k̶e̶e̶p̶ ̶p̶o̶u̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶i̶t̶,̶ ̶I̶ ̶a̶l̶r̶e̶a̶d̶y̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶m̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶u̶d̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶g̶i̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶.̶ ̶ Nevermind, I'm goin back in.

[William]

I’m so sorry 

[Joevember]

I left the light in distilled water to clean everything out (it's a great solvent to use on wet electronics). Hopefully it's able to bring it back.

[Joevember]

Here's a picture of the heater.

The only things that look like they can make it are the zoas. The halloween hermit was alive somehow, but when I was acclimating him to the other tank he died. The zoas are all closed up atm, but I have them in a container in my main tank. I'll update y'all if they pull through or not.

[yoshii]

Oh no I'm so sorry 😞 At least it wasn't a fully stocked tank and you can salvage the zoa's

 

I dropped my phone in SW and brought it back to life after washing it in RODI then letting it air dry for a month, so hopefully you can save the light

[Mr. Katz]

On 4/19/2019 at 10:25 AM, Joevember said:

Here's a picture of the heater.

The only things that look like they can make it are the zoas. Yhe halloween hermit was alive somehow, but when I was acclimating him to the other tank he died. The zoas are all closed up atm, but I have them in a container in my main tank. I'll update y'all if they pull through or not.

Oh no Joe! I’m so sorry this all happened and you lost your hermit and heater. I know you were really excited to have done this and wanted to share your love for salt water tanks to others at school. I look forward to speaking with you more about this today. 

[Joevember]

Two of the zoanthid frags look like they will be able to pull through. 

I have moved all of the zoas to the sandbed of my main tank after taking this picture. And as you can see I have a couple RFAs planned to put in the tank.

 

Unfortunately the light did not make it after the distilled water bath. I looked in the light and a few connections were corroded beyond repair. It's surprising how corrosive saltwater is, some of the metal parts just crumbled away.

 

Still looking for a light to put over the tank, and a reliable heater. I'm looking at an Inkbird controller as well. 

 

Other than that, I have the tank running without a heater and the filter moving water around. I replaced the sand with new dry sand, and I washed everything out after the crash.

I also made a 'stand' that the tank sits on that I can mount a light on. Just a couple boards I drilled together and painted the edges of.

 

Excited to get back on track and do this tank right. 🙌

[This guy is extra salty]

On 4/17/2019 at 8:19 PM, ksadam said:

Also running an AC50 only time it's noisy is when I turn the flow all the way down. Awesome setup BTW loving the arch aquascape 👍

Yasss!

[Joevember]

Well I got an Inkbird 306 running currently. I'll upgrade to a 308 if it gets too hot in the summer months. I'll be getting an Aqueon 50w preset heater in the mail soon, it'll fit in the HOB too.

I also have a replacement a160we on the tank. The photoperiod on it is maxing out at 35% at noon. I have no clue how high the intensity should be on such a tiny setup. Any help with intensity would be greatly appreciated, it's mounted 5 inches above the water.

Here are some shots of the setup:

 

[748S911]

Sweet set up, love how you murdered out your ac50 lmao!