It's time to start a new(isn) thread on my new favourite toy.
I bought CADlights 4 gallon all in one reef system last november with the intention of it being a permanent SPS quarantine. You can imagine how long having an empty box of water sitting my desk lasted. It's the second pico tank I've had, I got in to them after reading the article on Ecoreef One on reef builders, and seeing its detailed write up on advanced aquarist (
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2010/4/aquarium). I did the first pico tank while I was technically homeless between selling our last place and our new house being move-in ready to tide me over on the tank front. Here's a pic of the first pico I ever did:
It was incredibly simple - 5 gallon box, a small heater, a small submersible filter that also served as the only source of flow with a floss and carbon filter sections, cheap chinese LED fixture (that broke almost immediately and was a total POS), no water testing except for salinity and temperature, 100% weekly water changes and no fish or motile animals - just corals.This system thrived for 5 months, with all corals growing significantly. However, seeing as I didn't have an R/O unit at the time, mixing 5 gallons of salt water using store bought distilled water and temperature matching it to the tank once a week (a process that involved a stove, and half an hour of careful salt measuring and mixing) was a total PITA, so once the big tank was up and running, everything that you see in that photo was migrated and the system was shut down. I'm happy to report that the frogspawn, one of those acans colonies, all of the ricordias, and the clam are still with us.
This gave me confidence in the near zero maintenance method of 100% water changes on a pico system, so when I got the 4 gallon tank from CADlights, I almost immediately started trying to figure out how I could make maintenance on it as a 'permanent' reef more manageable. I realized that I could piggy back off most of the systems that run the big tank, and the only other thing I would need was a single large source of pre-mixed salt-water for water changes, as (perhaps not surprisingly) it's way less effort to make 40 gallons of saltwater once every couple of months than it is to make 5 gallons of salt water once a week. A trip to home depot and a 44 gallon garbage bin with a lid later, and I was in business! The other thing that was a real downer with such a small system was constantly having to top it up, which I would often forget to do on the first tank leading to crazy spikes in salinity, but with this new pico I was able to mod a Tunze ATO that I had bought for a QT system I'm no longer using, so I never have to think about it. The 2 gallon reservoir bucket is hidden under my desk, and I can forget about it for well over a month before needing to worry about topping it up with RO water. Also, since this is an all in one system, all the equipment is hidden from the display area. It's still following the super dressed down 'eco-reef philosophy' in terms of maintenance, but the equipment is a little higher end. Here's what runs the system:
- Stock return pump
- 25 watt heater
- large block of foam in the first chamber of the back-end overflow
- small bag of ceramic bio-rings that came with the tank in the middle back-end chamber (same place as the heater)
- Modified Tunze ATO
- Kessil A150 - this is the third light I've had over this tank, and is my favourite.
Enough talk, here's some progress pics:
The tank when I first got it - this is when I thought I could keep it as an SPS QT system. HAH! It had woefully under-powered stock lights for SPS.
Shortly after building a Marco rock pire for the LPS/softies this tank is now about
The floating tupperware was filled with berghia that I was harvesting and selling from the big tank. I was using the pico to keep them warm.
Around christmas I ordered a better light than the one that came stock from NanoBox Reef. The light itself was spectacular, but something about the colours in it just didn't work for me, I felt like they were to cyan-y.
The two open brains on the right and left were rescued from my big tank, which has lights that are FAR too bright, and nutrients that are far too low to maintain colours on many LPS species. Over months they bleached out to near transparent, and I rescued them to the pico. They have improved drastically since those photos were taken.
A month or so ago I picked up a Kessil A150 Ocean Blue. I was originally going to use it to spotlight a troublesome anemone in my big tank to try and get it to stay put, but on a whim hung it over my pico tank first and fell in love. I'll keep it until something as good or better comes along.
Those are the most current pics I have, but since I took them, the left and right most open brains have only gotten better and better colours. I'm hoping they'll return completely to their pre-bleaching glory in this system. That ricordia in the last picture is actually a baby that fissioned off one of the ricordias from my first pico that grew up in the 275, and has now been transplanted back to a pico. It's in the process of fissioning.
This tank thread was something of a whim so I don't have pics of the whole set-up and it's guts, but I'll take pics of everything in a few days. I have to admit that now that I have 40 gallons of pre-mixed salt water in my garage, the only parameter I ever bother checking upon my weekly water change is salinity. I don't even try to temperature match anymore. The 44 gallon garbage bin is in my garage that is kept at 19.5 degrees, and the water seems to hover around 20 degrees. There's no crazy sensitive corals in this tank, and the air temperature in my office is kept at 21, so I figure that when everything is exposed to air during the 100% water change they all cool to around 20-21 degrees anyway. After the water change it takes less than an hour for the heater to bring the water temp of the pico back up to 24.5, and within 1.5 hours, all the corals look as if it never happened. I've taken to feeding everything that accepts food a healthy dose of Acans plus mixed with whatever else I feel like a couple of days before each water change.
Water changes take about 10 minutes, unless I want to really scrub down the display glass, in which case I take that rock pire (it and everything on it are all super glued together), put it in a bucket with the filter foam and bag of ceramic rings, and then give the tank a good scrubbing with a sponge and soapy water in the sink.
Future plans - upgrading the tank to an 8 gallon Innovative Marine all in one. Drool.