Daecrist's 5g tall pico

[Daecrist]

Hello! Figured I'd create a journal of my second attempt at a pico reef here. The last time I tried putting one together I ended up deciding I'd rather have a tank that could fit some clowns and a 3g project quickly upscaled to a 25g cube that's been going for four years now.

 

I decided I wanted a desktop pico tank to look at during the day. I'm self-employed so it was pretty easy to get approval from the boss!

 

 

Aquarium Info:

 

Marineland 5g Portrait Aquarium

Cobalt 50w Neo Heater

 

Pretty simple, right? The filtration is liverock and the carbon cartridge and sponge that go in the back area of the tank. Flow is also provided by the pump that came with the tank, and when it's turned up to max it does a surprisingly good job of getting the water moving. I wanted to try and hide the heater in the back compartment, but ultimately the way the back of this thing is set up makes it difficult so I settled for putting it up top near the outflow.

 

Lighting:

 

The light is a Fluval Sea Nano:

 

 

I went with this one because it was nice and compact and should be more than enough for a tank this small. I've kept the glass top that came with the aquarium on. Both to minimize evaporation on a tank this size and to minimize salt creep since this is right next to a couple of monitors. It's doing a pretty good job, as so far I haven't had to top it off after about a week of running.

 

The water is actually about an inch below the glass top. I've added some electrical tape on the top to block off some of the light as it was blinding me out of the corner of my eye when I first set it up with the reflection of the glass and top of the water.

 

All in all the Fluval is a nice little light. It's programmable with a day/night cycle and the coral I transplanted from the main tank seem to like it.

 

Setup:

 

This was probably the easiest setup I've ever done. I had some extra rock in my 25g that was cluttering it up and making it difficult to clean and do maintenance. Moving those rocks was part of the reason I set up a smaller tank. I put in some new sand and added rock and water from the established tank while doing a water change on that one. There is one rock I added new, the bright white one, but so far the coral and critters don't seem to notice they've been moved. The idea is to avoid a cycle entirely by moving everything from an already established and stable tank.

 

Occupants:

 

Right now all I have in there are a green star polyp on the left and what I'm pretty sure is a variety of favites on the bottom.

 

Thinking of adding some LPS frags, maybe a Birdsnest to go near the top, and possibly a neon blue goby. Trying to keep the bioload to a minimum in this one and keep maintenance down to swapping out a gallon or so every week.

 

Thanks for looking!

[CD_Scapes]

10 hours ago, Daecrist said:

Hello! Figured I'd create a journal of my second attempt at a pico reef here. The last time I tried putting one together I ended up deciding I'd rather have a tank that could fit some clowns and a 3g project quickly upscaled to a 25g cube that's been going for four years now.

 

I decided I wanted a desktop pico tank to look at during the day. I'm self-employed so it was pretty easy to get approval from the boss!

 

 

Aquarium Info:

 

Marineland 5g Portrait Aquarium

Cobalt 50w Neo Heater

 

Pretty simple, right? The filtration is liverock and the carbon cartridge and sponge that go in the back area of the tank. Flow is also provided by the pump that came with the tank, and when it's turned up to max it does a surprisingly good job of getting the water moving. I wanted to try and hide the heater in the back compartment, but ultimately the way the back of this thing is set up makes it difficult so I settled for putting it up top near the outflow.

 

Lighting:

 

The light is a Fluval Sea Nano:

 

 

I went with this one because it was nice and compact and should be more than enough for a tank this small. I've kept the glass top that came with the aquarium on. Both to minimize evaporation on a tank this size and to minimize salt creep since this is right next to a couple of monitors. It's doing a pretty good job, as so far I haven't had to top it off after about a week of running.

 

The water is actually about an inch below the glass top. I've added some electrical tape on the top to block off some of the light as it was blinding me out of the corner of my eye when I first set it up with the reflection of the glass and top of the water.

 

All in all the Fluval is a nice little light. It's programmable with a day/night cycle and the coral I transplanted from the main tank seem to like it.

 

Setup:

 

This was probably the easiest setup I've ever done. I had some extra rock in my 25g that was cluttering it up and making it difficult to clean and do maintenance. Moving those rocks was part of the reason I set up a smaller tank. I put in some new sand and added rock and water from the established tank while doing a water change on that one. There is one rock I added new, the bright white one, but so far the coral and critters don't seem to notice they've been moved. The idea is to avoid a cycle entirely by moving everything from an already established and stable tank.

 

Occupants:

 

Right now all I have in there are a green star polyp on the left and what I'm pretty sure is a variety of favites on the bottom.

 

Thinking of adding some LPS frags, maybe a Birdsnest to go near the top, and possibly a neon blue goby. Trying to keep the bioload to a minimum in this one and keep maintenance down to swapping out a gallon or so every week.

 

Thanks for looking!

I LOVE IT!!! I'm picking up this same style tank on sunday and was thinking about having it be a zoa/paly garden with maybe a colt coral or Kenyan tree and a birdsnest on top to. I plan to make my own thread to document it. My fish plan is a warpaint clown goby which im picking up on Thursday...also totally subbed

[Daecrist]

1 hour ago, Northwoodsreefer said:

I LOVE IT!!! I'm picking up this same style tank on sunday and was thinking about having it be a zoa/paly garden with maybe a colt coral or Kenyan tree and a birdsnest on top to. I plan to make my own thread to document it. My fish plan is a warpaint clown goby which im picking up on Thursday...also totally subbed

Nice. Yeah, I'd been looking for a decent tall tank in the 5g range for awhile when I stumbled on this one. So far I'm really liking it! Wish I could do some zoas, but I have young children in the house and don't want to risk introducing palytoxin into the home. I know it's a tiny risk, but helps with my peace of mind. 🙂 So far I'm really happy with the tank though. It's the right size, height, and whisper quiet which is great for sitting on a desk!