Humble 5 Gallon Pico Tank

[Poison Dart Frog]

Corals are fairly puffy today. 

[billygoat]

Looking good, as usual! I was thinking the same thing as @Tired though - sooner or later those leathers are going to get pretty dang big! Luckily it will be easy enough to frag them. I bet you could fill up your whole 20g rig with cuttings from this pico.

[Poison Dart Frog]

43 minutes ago, billygoat said:

Looking good, as usual! I was thinking the same thing as @Tired though - sooner or later those leathers are going to get pretty dang big! Luckily it will be easy enough to frag them. I bet you could fill up your whole 20g rig with cuttings from this pico.

Yeah, for sure. I'm holding off for as long as possible but soon I'll have to make an attempt at fragging, starting with the green tree leather probably. I'm putting in an order for an NPS gorgonian along with some other corals for my 20. I've had pretty good luck with purple plating sponge in that tank so hopefully I can keep an NPS gorgonian alive with feeding. Have you tried those?

 

[billygoat]

17 hours ago, Poison Dart Frog said:

Yeah, for sure. I'm holding off for as long as possible but soon I'll have to make an attempt at fragging, starting with the green tree leather probably. I'm putting in an order for an NPS gorgonian along with some other corals for my 20. I've had pretty good luck with purple plating sponge in that tank so hopefully I can keep an NPS gorgonian alive with feeding. Have you tried those?

 

I have not yet tried NPS gorgonians, but I'd like to some day! I think they are very beautiful, but according to what I've read and observed in other systems they are considerably more challenging than photosynthetic gorgs. Many of them are collected in deeper water, so they can sometimes suffer under the intense lights on our aquariums. Finding the proper food to feed them can also be somewhat challenging, though I think that most prepared coral foods (Reef Roids etc.) should be sufficient for a majority of species.

 

Can't wait to see what you get! What species did you choose? And where are you planning to order it from?

[Poison Dart Frog]

On 4/19/2020 at 4:00 PM, billygoat said:

I have not yet tried NPS gorgonians, but I'd like to some day! I think they are very beautiful, but according to what I've read and observed in other systems they are considerably more challenging than photosynthetic gorgs. Many of them are collected in deeper water, so they can sometimes suffer under the intense lights on our aquariums. Finding the proper food to feed them can also be somewhat challenging, though I think that most prepared coral foods (Reef Roids etc.) should be sufficient for a majority of species.

 

Can't wait to see what you get! What species did you choose? And where are you planning to order it from?

I was planning on getting them from Aquarium Depot though I haven't put the order in yet. I have read some mixed reviews so I am still deciding. My pygmy spotted filefish loves gorgonians and sleeps in them at night so I thought it would be nice to have an NPS version that keeps its polyps extended even in the dark. 

 

[billygoat]

56 minutes ago, Poison Dart Frog said:

I was planning on getting them from Aquarium Depot though I haven't put the order in yet. I have read some mixed reviews so I am still deciding. My pygmy spotted filefish loves gorgonians and sleeps in them at night so I thought it would be nice to have an NPS version that keeps its polyps extended even in the dark. 

 

Great video! What a cool fish. The gorgonians look happy too. 😊 Do you have a separate thread for your 20g or do you just post about it in here too from time to time? (Sorry if I've asked you that before; I can't remember if I have)

 

 

[Poison Dart Frog]

54 minutes ago, billygoat said:

Great video! What a cool fish. The gorgonians look happy too. 😊 Do you have a separate thread for your 20g or do you just post about it in here too from time to time? (Sorry if I've asked you that before; I can't remember if I have)

 

 

No, I've just been posting about it occasionally here. It's still pretty new and not a whole lot to see in it so far. 

[Poison Dart Frog]

My turbo snails decide to rescape things on a regular basis including dragging my zoa frag to the other side of the tank and removing the gsp frag which had been glued down for months. 

[Poison Dart Frog]

[Poison Dart Frog]

The 7 gallon bowfront tank will hopefully be more successful now that I'm not cooking the corals. Somehow the 11 watt Aquatop Nano light puts out insane PAR. I had it at its highest setting all this time and it was reading over 500 PAR where I had the zoanthids and about 350 or higher on the sand bed. Just below the surface it was close to 900 PAR. No idea how this light manages that, but turning it down 3 clicks and I still get 300 PAR at the top of the rock flower anemone and that's with the light looking very blue. It is drastically more powerful than my other lights and I paid $29 for it, lol. 

[billygoat]

3 hours ago, Poison Dart Frog said:

The 7 gallon bowfront tank will hopefully be more successful now that I'm not cooking the corals. Somehow the 11 watt Aquatop Nano light puts out insane PAR. I had it at its highest setting all this time and it was reading over 500 PAR where I had the zoanthids and about 350 or higher on the sand bed. Just below the surface it was close to 900 PAR. No idea how this light manages that, but turning it down 3 clicks and I still get 300 PAR at the top of the rock flower anemone and that's with the light looking very blue. It is drastically more powerful than my other lights and I paid $29 for it, lol. 

Dang that's pretty crazy! I guess there's not a lot of depth in little tanks like these, so even a $29 light can punch out some serious PAR. That RFA looks beautiful though! I love the contrast between the tentacles and the oral disk. It looks like they are glowing.

[Poison Dart Frog]

1 hour ago, billygoat said:

Dang that's pretty crazy! I guess there's not a lot of depth in little tanks like these, so even a $29 light can punch out some serious PAR. That RFA looks beautiful though! I love the contrast between the tentacles and the oral disk. It looks like they are glowing.

The strange thing is that the booklet that came with the light claims it puts out roughly 120 PAR in the center and that it's mostly appropriate for zoanthids and mushrooms. One amazon review claimed it put out crazy high readings but I didn't believe it until I checked it myself. I couldn't even grow toadstools under it because it was just too bright for them (since turning it way down I have one frag in there showing polyps right away). 

[Poison Dart Frog]

I reglued a couple things and got a new green coral. Not sure what it is but it was sold as a "brain coral".

[Poison Dart Frog]

The 20 gallon tank is doing fairly well. I had a lot of cyanobacteria and I tried to just siphon out regularly with water changes but it would return very fast so I treated the tank with Chemiclean. It worked really well and only the purple plating sponge reacted poorly but I think it will recover. 

The tank is still pretty new but I've added a few things. 

[Poison Dart Frog]

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[Poison Dart Frog]

I got this Derasa clam from petco. It's in my 7 gallon tank. 

[Poison Dart Frog]

[Poison Dart Frog]

A few updates

Like melted crayon 

[Poison Dart Frog]

Apparently fire shrimp are cleaner shrimp? The damsel fish was hovering next to the fireshrimp and letting it clean his scales. I've never seen that happen before. I snapped a photo right before the fish swam off. 

[Tired]

Yep. You can tell by all those flashy, conspicuous antennae meant to signal "hello, cleaning services here" to fish. 

[Poison Dart Frog]

59 minutes ago, Tired said:

Yep. You can tell by all those flashy, conspicuous antennae meant to signal "hello, cleaning services here" to fish. 

Hehe, yeah that makes sense. Never thought of that. 

[Poison Dart Frog]

Tanks are doing pretty good still. 

[Poison Dart Frog]

Update 

[Poison Dart Frog]

I've been dosing with Reef Energy and feeding a tiny bit of Reef roids. Most of the corals seem to like it.

[Poison Dart Frog]

The 5.5 gallon tank is a year old now. I fragged the nephthea tree a little. It is apparently too large to stand upright with the small amount of flow I have. I added a favites coral on the rock on the right side.