My first attempt at a Pico | Reef Casa Flat 6

[Reddotreef]

After over a year of off and on planning, I finally took the plunge and set up a Pico! I had some smaller branches I had been saving just for a small setup like this. The only problem was I could not find an aquarium suitable for what I had in mind. Along came the Flat 6, everything I wanted out of a pico with 0 compromise! Also being a fan of vintage porsches, I found the name very fitting. 

 

 

The tank has been up and running for a few days now. The rocks had been sitting in one of my nanos for over a year so I imagine the cycle is gonna be pretty short. I do like to cycle with corals. Im not sure what it is about it but, In my previous tanks the ugly phase was very short if not skipped entirely. Possibly the early introduction of copepods? 

 

PAR is sitting at 200-250 at the top of the rocks and 125-150 on the sand, I have the highest point of the branch right beneath the hotspot so I might toss in an acro or two as it hits almost 300 at the peak.

 

live stock is going to be a yasha goby pistol pair. Possibly a tailspot blenny but i've heard conflicting opinions about putting them in anything less than 10 gallons. I also intend to move my sexy shrimps and pom pom crab when the tank is ready. Over the weekend I found a golf ball sized christmas tree rock with over 20 worms. I think that will make for a very nice centerpiece when the time comes.

 

 

Id like to maintain stability with 1-2 water changes a week but we'll see. I intend to stock it with some higher end pieces so Im not opposed to dosing as more corals are introduced.

 

I'll post an update in the next week or two!

 

Edit: forgot to include an equipment list

AI prime 16hd

Random bits of reef rock (Tonga branch?)

sicce Jolly 10W

Inbird Temp controller

Caribsea fiji pink

VCA 1/4" RFG with Sicce micra+

PNW custom micro ATO

 

 

[debbeach13]

Welcome to NR. Sweet tank.

15 hours ago, Reddotreef said:

I found a golf ball sized christmas tree rock with over 20 worms. I think that will make for a very nice centerpiece when the time comes.

That will be a great center piece.

[Reddotreef]

First Update, I did suffer my first casualty, it of course had to be my dragon soul torch. It was doing fine since day one but I made the mistake of putting in a sad looking gold torch that I got for a steal. I had been watching it closely, and the gold torch showed no signs of bacterial infection. It seemed to be stressed as it had been stung by a chalice, hence the cheap price. Over the night it jellied out and spread to the dragon soul, killing all 4 tiny heads by the time I woke up. Nothing like a $60 frag causing $500 worth of damage!

Good news is the tank is cycled and now housing a pair of sexy shrimp and a chestnut cowrie. In my mourning of my torch I went out and picked up this quarter sized jawbreaker shroom. It’s not attached to anything yet, hopefully it’ll stick to the spot I put it. I couldn’t be happier with the coloration, plenty of red speckles. 

While cleaning my other tank I accidentally knocked a bit of this bubblegum digi, I figured I’d just toss it in and see what happens.

I found the first hitchhiker in the tank, not sure how they got there but It looks to be 3 gold dragon shrooms. Could be worse! 
 

I’ll add the yasha/pistol pair in a another week or two, never hurts to play it safe.

[boscoT]

Looking forward to following along with this build.  I just watched the latest Fragbox YouTube video this morning and they are taking apart this tank in Store and doing something new with it.  
 

I went with the Vila 24 and I am already thinking about a Red Sea upgrade.  I think that I will stick with an AIO as a sump is more than I want to get into. 

[Reddotreef]

12 hours ago, boscoT said:

Looking forward to following along with this build.  I just watched the latest Fragbox YouTube video this morning and they are taking apart this tank in Store and doing something new with it.  
 

I went with the Vila 24 and I am already thinking about a Red Sea upgrade.  I think that I will stick with an AIO as a sump is more than I want to get into. 

Thank you!  I introduced a pistol shrimp yesterday and he picked the perfect spot for his burrow. My yasha goby should be arriving tomorrow. The cowrie seemed a bit large for the tank so I swapped it out for a Pom Pom crab out of my 20 gallon. I also changed up the scape, I think it’s a big improvement! I’ll post another update Saturday or Sunday.

I saw their video this morning, really interesting concept with the rock work. Not gonna lie, it sounds like a nightmare to build. I’m curious about his plan for fiddler crabs, from what I’ve read they’re a brackish species.

 

I don’t have too much experience with sumps, the extra space for a fuge, skimmer, and hiding other equipment is nice. Sadly all the aquariums I’ve seen with unique dimensions have been AIO or custom builds. I remember seeing a Red Sea tank that was sold as an AIO but it comes pre drilled to be plumbed later on. I think it’s a 30 gallon. 

[Reddotreef]

Flat 6 has been up for 3 weeks, I already started dosing 1.5ml of AFR every morning. We’re cruising at a nice 7.9-8.1 dkh. Earlier in the week I introduced a candy stripe pistol shrimp and today a Yasha Goby! It’s been settling in near the pistol shrimps burrow so hopefully they’ll pair up soon. Along with the yasha, I introduced a small court jester goby and a Pom Pom crab. I’m a bit weary of keeping two gobies in a small tank but I’ll keep an eye out for aggression in the coming days. 

My frogfish passed away In my main display tank a few weeks ago. This has caused my Six line to reestablish territory and he picked the small Xmas tree rock as his primary victim. Luckily I haven’t lost any worms but It did force me to prematurely introduce the rock to the Pico. So far so good, the worms seem a lot happier extending out of their burrows without risk of predation. 

The pistol shrimp couldn’t have a picked a better place to setup shop!

I did change up the scape, removing the larger rock for a smaller branch piece. I think this layout looks a lot cleaner than the original and it helps optimize flow a bit better. I’ll touch on flow in a bit as it’s been the #1 problem I’ve run into. The top down view is great, very minimal with life all over!

As for corals, I got a new dragon soul torch as well as a tiny Red Devil mushroom! At first I put the torch in my 20g as sort of a quarantine and it looked like it had bailed out over night! Bare Skeleton with just a sliver of flesh left. Out of curiosity I tossed it in the pico, it blew up within 24 hours. Maybe it didn’t like the heavy flow as I primarily keep acros in my 20… 

The flow situation has proven to very tricky. All the power heads that get low enough are too big and all the power heads that are small enough are too powerful. I upgraded to a dual RFG, with the Micra Plus running at 160gph it’s not horrible but still a bit low. I ordered a Mighyjet Mini, hopefully I can dial everything in to point where I can rely on the return as the only flow in the tank.
 

I hadn’t thought of it much until today but, just about everything in this tank has some kind of commensal/symbiotic relationship… All in all I’m very happy with how everything’s going, it’s already starting to look like a reef tank!

[Reddotreef]

The Yasha and the pistol shrimp paired up quick, but there was an issue. There just wasn’t a ton of space for the yasha in the shrimps burrow. Both were having a difficult time since the sand bed is only an inch deep and pretty fine grain. I added a few squares of egg crate to each point of the rock and put half of a 35mm film canister under it. They got right back to work and by this morning they had made an awesome fort.

I did lose the court jester goby over night, I checked ammonia, it was undetectable. I’m guessing stress took him out. 

I think the goby/pistol pair with the other inverts is more than enough for this tank.
 

With the theme of commensal animals I found myself looking into panda gobies. Could be a cool addition in the future! 

[OCNcheffy]

I'm also running a build log here:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/reef-casa-flat-6-build.1014801/page-2#post-11929372

 

I use the MicraPlus with a random flow nozzle I 3d printed, and the flow seems pretty decent. I may upgrade to the AI Axis 20 however, to bump it up a bit. I'm going for a simple clown/nem tank I think now that my cycle is complete and the ugly phase is starting.

[SantaMonica]

Nice tank. Not seen this one before. I call these lagoon style tanks.

[Reddotreef]

On 11/23/2023 at 7:51 AM, OCNcheffy said:

I'm also running a build log here:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/reef-casa-flat-6-build.1014801/page-2#post-11929372

 

I use the MicraPlus with a random flow nozzle I 3d printed, and the flow seems pretty decent. I may upgrade to the AI Axis 20 however, to bump it up a bit. I'm going for a simple clown/nem tank I think now that my cycle is complete and the ugly phase is starting.

looks good! I recently upgraded to a IM mighty jet mini. It’s much quieter than the micra and really lets you dial it in. It just barely fits in the tank though, took me a while to plumb it in. With how crazy work has been I’ve been living under a rock, didn’t even know AI released new pumps… That axis looks very cool, only concern is the height. The mighty jet is 3.5 inches tall and that was quite the challenge.
 

[Reddotreef]

On 11/25/2023 at 11:41 AM, SantaMonica said:

Nice tank. Not seen this one before. I call these lagoon style tanks.

Thank you! I’m a big fan of lagoon tanks, prebuilt options are limited but I’m hoping Reef casa comes out with a larger tank with the same proportions. I’ve been wanting to move my acros to a 50 gallon and the only runner up is the IM nuvo. Nothing wrong with IM but it would be nice to see what other companies can bring to the table.

[Reddotreef]

6 week update:

we have a ourselves a reef tank!

At the 3 week mark the tank had a nasty outbreak of amphidinium Dinos. I’m no expert on Dinos and this obviously isn’t a Dino thread but here’s what I did;

 

I raised tank temp to 84F, daily dose of microbacter 7, fed phytofeast daily. After 5 days of treatment I tumbled the sand with a baster. I didn’t remove anything, just blew the top layer of sand so the patches of Dino’s got buried. The pod population exploded. The following week I had to replace filter floss every 3-4 hours as all the newly dormant Dino cysts went into the water column (at least that’s what I hope). It’s been 2 1/2 weeks with a crystal clear sand bed. No black outs, no water change, no UV.

With that out of the way, I recently upgraded the return pump to the IM mighty jet mini. It was the only DC pump I could find that would fit and it barely does.  It took a lot of adjusting but I now have all bases for covered for flow from softies to some less demanding sps with no dead spots. Almost too good to be true but those RFGs do wonders once you get them the right amount of flow.

 

The Yasha and pistol shrimp have made quite the burrow, there’s about 4 different entrances that they will come out of depending on the day. I had to glue down all the corals or put them on larger plugs to prevent the pistol from “stealing” them. I tossed in a bag of crushed coral and shells, that’s kept him at him busy enough to leave everything alone.

 

The Xmas tree rock is doing great, I feed them 1-2 times a week with a mix of reef roids and phyto.

 

 

Now that the system seems to be settling in, I’ll probably cut down to monthly updates. Not much to show until growth starts kick off.

[OTT0]

Really nice reef you've created here 👍

Can't wait for some more updates.