Pico Acro Ridge (Still Planning)

[Sprinter70]

I have a few acropora that are doing well in other tanks and anticipate trimming them to shape them in my small tanks. I plan to glue them to rocks and glue this to a main aquascape as I prune and will want a place for this when the time comes. I want to make it a dedicated tank and think I have it laid out. I am debating circulation pumps on both sides of the tank to create multi directional flow over time. Also leaning toward no sand bed. I will want to start cycling asap but wanted to see what everyone thought. The tank is a 2 gallon Aqueon frameless I picked up from the Petco tank sale a while back.

 

threw a standard thermometer on the front, but probably can do better than that for showing scale.

[BadCrab]

What sort of rock is that?  It doesn't look like aragonite.

We use specific rock in our saltwater tanks for two reasons: biological filtration and buffering.  You'll need to come up with a solution for both if you opt out of traditional rock.
Nitrifying bacteria need surface area.  In a traditional tank, they find that on the extremely porous surfaces of carbonate rock and substrate.  I doubt you were planning on stocking fish here, so the bioload will be small - but I believe it will still require supplemental surface space for colonization.  Are you going to run any filter in it?  A possible solution could be sponge filters on your wavemakers.

Secondly and importantly for any tank focusing on stony coral growth is buffering.  Any pico's primary challenge is parameter stability.  Not having calcium carbonate to dissolve is going to make dealing with pH harder.  How are we planning on keeping the pH and alk levels stable here?

That said, the rock looks wonderful.  I don't know how much of that you'll end up seeing after grow-out though.

[Sprinter70]

Appreciate the feedback!

The inside is basically webbing that creates a monstrous amount of surface area and more than covers surface area needed for bacterial colonization.

 

You have me on the buffering capabilities though. It is plastic and I have used this on pico tanks before, this will be the first time using it bare bottom 😬. I’ll usually use a mix of crushed coral and aragonite sand that offers some of that buffering. I do used dosing pumps delivering all for reef during the day and kalk at night to continue replacing calcium and keep pH more constantly high. I usually manage the dosing by testing alkalinity before the weekly water change to tweak the dosing volume, but as my tanks stabilize, this goes down to testing and adjustments on a monthly basis (even for tanks as small as 1 gallon).

 

As far as looks go, it is nice since the uglies don’t really have a visible presence on the “rock”. It is also shaped exactly how I want it to set the foundation and allow more space for the corals to grow. Ideally it will be entirely covered in corals one day!

[BadCrab]

Did you 3d print it?  That's very clever.

Do you have to affix it to the bottom to avoid buoyancy? 

The use of dosers will largely make up for not having a carbonate source in the tank, I'd think.

[Sprinter70]

Yea, 3D printed! I do not have to glue it, but I do to ensure sand or crushed coral do not get under if it gets bumped, it is negatively buoyant though.

 

So far these rocks seem to be stable enough, I really only use the dozers on heavily populated tanks, otherwise weekly manual dosing is sufficient so far.

[Sprinter70]

And I do believe the substrate / carbonate rocks eventually lose their buffering capabilities once they are encrusted or otherwise colonized/covered by other organic stuff.

[euphrate]

Nice rock indeed, can you show the result on one of your tank?
{ Edit : i just found your other posts 🙂}