Pico reef scale: easy way to manage favias shape and size, they grow fast

[ubpr]

Question to people who either have experience with micro reef or pico reef, or can imagine that there is not much of a space there, unlike at 10+ gallon scale.

A problem: I would like to keep 5 small polyped favias, now at planning stage. Corals are already in the tank, grew to the edges of their disks, soon have to do something about it. How to manage their size and shape, to look good and have a least work with keeping them in available space.

The tank is standard 5.5 gal, have more than one tank. But there is a lot of other corals too, so techniques could be as well applicable to a 2-3 gal pico reef. Prefer to keep them movable, as on the rock on a small drop of super glue, or on a frag rack.

What I could think of:

1. On flat rock, tile or disk this this does not look good and takes maximum floor space. With no bandsaw, fragging will be limited to lifting it or an edge of it up, cutting it off and re-gluing to a smaller support. To repeat this few to several months later, they have to be easily accessible and removable separately from other corals.
2. On a rock rubble of a complex shape. There is some additional vertical space, it takes more time to cover this. After they grow to the edge, add another piece, let it get attached to it, break or cut connection, remove main part for trade, selling or passing it to someone else.
3. On barely connected group of smaller rock pieces, to break/disconnect them and leave more sizable part of colony in the tank. Less chance to lose it and this looks better.
4. Do not keep them, but this will be a pity, they look good.
5. Letting it take over the main rock structure, as war coral on pictures of Brandon's reef bowl, but I prefer to keep variety of corals at frag size instead of larger colony.

Anything else, or some pitfalls that I didn't notice? Aggression is manageable by distancing and flow direction.

Thank you.

[daniejd]

With no experience myself can give no advice, but I have wondered the same. That is what corals are pico scale. Obvious ones like zoas and palys come to mind but what other corals can be easily contained and how? Sorry not trying to hijack the thread.

[daniejd]

As a side note I did notice that Favia can be kept on the sand bed, in the Caribbean, Rose Coral (a massive brain coral of a different genus) occurs naturally on the sand bed as one of its forms. When this occurs, it greatly restricts its growth from over a meter in diameter, to 2”-6” in diameter. Maybe the same is true for Favia?

[ubpr]

Zoas:

Frequent fragging zoas and palys (these are out of scale for pico, even Utter Chaos looks as big as discosoma mushrooms in nano tank) is asking for troubles, even with full protection. I would rather go for letting them grow over small surrounding them pieces of rock, then just make a cut to disconnect a mat, and break this easy to disconnect support apart. If you know better solutions, please add for all of us.

 

I have seen post about a nano cube with plugs inserted into a rock with holes, allowing to keep zoa garden in a very limited space, similar to a pico. When they overgrew, the main plug with each of kind of zoa was popped out and used for creating new garden. I assume that overgrown rock was removed from the tank and either sold or exchanged for a new, blank rock. This, BTW, was a good advice on dealing with rocks, overgrown with zoas and palys. Much safer than try to peel off of the hundreds of them.

 

Coral growth is a major challenge in a keeping pico tank:

• 1 gal has no place for growth and all manipulations inside have to be done with tools, there is no place for a hand inside. Removing rock with corals from the tank frequently ended with some acros dying on me. Went back to manipulations under water or outside for a very short time, without disturbing next to it corals.
• 2-3 gal tanks are much more reasonable, with place for a hand and corals to grow, for longer time.
• But if some start wanting too much, the corals they want to keep, not just a flower vase, then increasing size to fit all of them there is necessary, even if they have to be kept at the same size as in 2 gal pico, as a frag, not a colony. Technically, 5.5 gal tank is a borderline between picos and nanos, but this is a completely different way from keeping an average nano tank. It is not about hardware and way of doing water changes, but about managing coral placement and growth. Or wanting too much 🙂

 

I even set 10 gal tank to cycle for easier access and more place for them, with much better light, but it ended to serve as a cull tank, for dumping there grown colonies for a time being, until decision about them will be made. Hollywood stunner chalice takes a third of the tank, rock, overgrown by variety of zoas, another third of it, so this is not a solution. They have to go anyway, and the corals to keep have to be of really small size.

 

Light requirements

 

There is one more problem I encountered: light zones. Next to impossible to create in a shallow tank, so when choosing corals, better to stick to the corals with the same requirements at the time of buying. Low light corals were not doing well not far from acroporas and other SPS. Zoas were especially finicky for a beginner with them, not knowing which kind requires what, before getting some experience with them.

• Yes, each light fixture has variety of PAR zones, if you don't have PAR meter, they hard to find online, but posts with this are there. Only the hands are tied to the placement in a light cone or rectangle, 2-3 acro frags in a center at the top (they also vary in their requirements), medium light corals slightly aside, low light corals at periphery. Too much restrictions, in addition to the rest of the problems.
• I ended with two layers of corals on eggcrate, high light corals overshadowing low light corals. Not aesthetic solution, but it works. Again, depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Mine to keep what I want to keep alive and well, that's it.
• Other way is to keep them in separate tanks, under different light intensity. But things happen, something can go wrong and corals could be lost, the second tank could be used for backup, the same as with computer backup. Here goes two-level eggcrate, to keep all of them in the same tank, just in case.

Favias on sand: this is a good idea, worth of trying, I have a couple frags of the same variety, will try and see. After freeing some space on a sand. Or moving it to another tank.

[daniejd]

I am in the planning phase of a 4 gallon AIO Lifegard nano tank (actually is 2.5 gallon display, 1 gallon sump), hence my question on pico sized coral. For light zones was planning on tinting a portion of the cover glass if needed, so the dark/light zone would be left/right, vs the normal bottom/top.