4 gallon pico thread

[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.

[asylumdown]

Sold two corals that weren't working for this tank. I had the intention of replacing one of them with an insanely coloured scoly or something, but the really nice ones are like $250 bucks, which is insane. So instead I picked up a couple of tiny little corals that I think are maybe fungids? I also took an acan frag that was getting bleached in my big tank and not growing moved it in and fragged (more like butchered) my small colony of red and green Aussie blastos to put a small piece in the little tank. It looks a little emptier now, but the corals in here will all grow and fill in and the whole thing will be much more colourful.

I did have a mishap taking the rock structure out to attach all the new stuff though... the top tier broke off (I mean it's just super glued together) and the bottom half landed hard face down in a bucket, splashing about a gallon of water on my floor and seriously damaging my two brains. I was afraid I'd killed them, but the injuries seem to have sealed up and they're fully extended today.