4 gallon pico thread

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by fishoholic

Cool! I have a new found love for pico tanks after starting my 2.5g. The Kessil looks awesome over it

Something about keeping corals in the minimum necessary setup is so appealing to me, I'm not sure why. I also love that when I really want it to look brand new, washing the inside of this thing out in the sink is no more difficult than cleaning a cooking pot. One of the reasons I haven't gotten the 8 gallon yet is that I think it will be more of a pain to clean!

Originally Posted by christyf5

Hot damn! That looks awesome (and I did see this before you posted the link in the TOTM quarterly thread ).

I love that you've tried all those lighting systems. When I first started it was with compact fluorescent, then t5 (tank is 12x12x12, 7.5gal or so) then I talked to Jeff at J&L and he figured LED wasn't worth it. Now the T5 setup is TU and they don't sell bulbs for the compact fluorescent setup anymore (can't find them) so I'm thinking of going to LED anyways. Wasn't planning on doing a Kessil but they seem to be the best bang for your buck. Did you find the flat rack LED system (4th pic down) ok? Thats the one I was looking at because it seemed the least costly but now I'm thinking maybe kessil or whatever is available to me more locally so I can see it before I buy it (I'm picky about color too).

Thanks, it's getting there!

To be honest I think smaller tanks is where LEDs really shine (get it, shine, see what I did there?). The good ones are so bloody expensive that lighting a big tank properly can cost almost as much as an undergraduate degree. But on small tanks you have so many more options and the cost is way more justifiable I think. The key is a) not over-doing it, LEDs are more powerful than they seem and b) getting the mix of colours that will really make what you're keeping pop. The flat rack fixture came with the tank and was pretty basic, the colours looked good, but it was really dim looking and it was soooooo flimsy, I was afraid to touch it, it felt like a cheap kids toy. It still managed to bleach one of my ricordias to within an inch of it's life, but it didn't seem to have the pop to make other LPS look good. It was probably sufficient and since it came with the the $150 tank, it was an extremely good deal, it just wasn't for me.

If you're looking at switching I can't speak highly enough of the kessil, one A150 would light a 7 gallon tank no problem, but you get no control over the brightness or colour mix so you have to make sure to buy the colour blend you like, or spend the extra cash for an A350 and turn the intensity way down. There's also some really cool PAR38 bulbs that are incorporating really innovative diode colour blends now too that could easily have enough power. But man I am in love with this Kessil. It's like having a metal halide over the tank, the shimmer is outrageous. There was barely any shimmer from the flat rack CADlights unit because the bulbs were evenly spaced across the fixture. Also the first two lights had noticeable colour separation, and the Kessil has zero. My only real complaint about the Kessil is the hanging options over such a small tank. I hate how massive the gooseneck is compared to the tank, and since my whole tank is only 10 inches front to back (7.5 inches of that is the display) I have to bend the gooseneck in such a way that the light is closer to the water surface than I want to get it to be properly centred over the box. Some sort of custom hanging situation would have been better, but I'm limited in that I can't put holes in the wall and the tank is sitting on a very small wheeled filing cabinet.

[asylumdown]

Alright, last night the green open brain got so heavy that it broke off it's super glue and epoxy base and fell. While that means it's growing, it also meant I had to take it all out and glue it back together, so I figured I'd document the process. This is what a pretty standard 'full-clean' of this system looks like. I normally do this once a moth, the other 3 weeks I just drain and replace the water.

Top down, prior to water change:


The equipment chambers:


As it looked today, the left brain fell and trapped all the extra goo from me feeding them last night under it. Bad news from a water quality perspective. The colours of the two bleached brains are way better now.


The powerbar that runs the whole thing. I can keep most of these cords hidden from view, but it makes it pretty messy behind the tank


Shut down, ready to go


Half drained, water enters the foam block box from slits near the bottom of the tank, and also pours down on top.


Pire repair! The brain that had fallen sprayed me right in the eye while i was trying to glue it back on to the rock. I also sliced my index finger something fierce on the skeleton of that dark coral.


If only cleaning my 275 gallon tank was this easy... Goodbye detritus.


If I'm going to be a while with the box, I usually keep some water that's going to get tossed for the rock, corals, and ceramic bio-rings.


Sparkling clean!

[asylumdown]

Setting it back up



I modded the Tunze ATO by breaking off the sensor holder and epoxying it to the glass. The emergency shut off float switch is actually sitting next to the unit's brain in a metal lip under my desk. Not the safest thing in the world, but I've had a perfect track record with those sensors working properly, so I'm not too worried.



There, all done! Wait, something's missing...


Oh right, water.


It takes less than 2 and a half of my red bucket (which is around 3 gallons) to fill this thing up


All done for real this time. The tank will look like it never happened in an hour

[christyf5]

Wow that is slick. I need to glue all my rocks together so I can do waterchanges like that. For some reason my rocks shed detritus like nobodys business. It would be way easier to do waterchanges like that rather than the classic siphon style

[subman]

Wow that's slick... I may have to go find a pico like that!

Very impressive!

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by christyf5

Wow that is slick. I need to glue all my rocks together so I can do waterchanges like that. For some reason my rocks shed detritus like nobodys business. It would be way easier to do waterchanges like that rather than the classic siphon style

You'd be surprised at how much bacterial mulm the stufff that lives on the rocks will produce. I think it's because the nitrosomonas are photophobic so they try to screen themselves by creating mulm to hide in.

I only do the whole clean once every so often, it's much faster to just siphon it out and pour the water back in, and way less stressful for the corals. The other benefit to taking everything out though is that I can really get in to the rounded corners of this tank with a sponge, it's hard to do them with a magnet. That pire is actually a piece of marco rock that I broke in to 4 pieces with a chisel and then put back together in a better shape with two whole tubes of super glue. I keep waiting for the day when the whole thing fails and the bottom piece falls off while I'm lifting it out of the tank. It would be the perfect excuse to go buy the 8 gallon

Originally Posted by subman

Wow that's slick... I may have to go find a pico like that!

Very impressive!

They are so much easier to maintain than I thought they'd be. It's more like a little piece of art than a tank really

ETA: and thanks!

[asylumdown]

If anyone's interested, I'm selling two of the corals from this tank:
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=97597

Three large open brains in a 4 gallon tank isn't going to work long term, so my least favourite is going.

I also moved my forest fire digi frag from the big tank to this tank. It hasn't grown at all (not even plating) since i got it, and has slowly been bleaching. It stopped extending any of its polyps about a week ago so I'm testing to see if it's my lighting, or the addition of coral beauty angel to my big tank.

[asylumdown]

egads. I just worked out how much I've spent on this thing.

$1137.00 all in, that's if I don't count the two open brains that were rescued from my big tank in to it.