My first tank, 2.5 gallon pico - everyone said it wouldn't work

[salty_dog]

Kept fish for about 2 yrs now. Started with a betta for my daughters.. found out there's more to a tank than painted gravel and Sponge Bob decor. Moved on to planted, shrimps, Walsted dirted tank. Have 3 freshwater tanks that are well planted and pretty much on autopilot.

My spouse said saltwater fish are prettier and wanted to start a reef. I said no way. I didn't want to be the one to take care of it and I thought it was too difficult. She said she wanted to get a big tank for Dory and Nemo. I don't think we will ever have enough space for Dory. But she still wanted to get other colorful fish one day. Before spending a fortune, I said let's compromise and get something small, if it works we can graduate to something larger.

I found a Facebook Marketplace 2.5 g GloFish tank $10. Has an overflow, so basically an all in one. We got some Instant Ocean, Fiji Pink, and an arch from CaribSea. Used API bacteria, ghost feeding, cycled sponge and bag of ceramic media from my freshwater tank to help it along. Used well water (TDS 500, Calcium above normal, PH 8.0 no nitrates or ammonia - data from a drinking water lab). Fed it cube of mysis and freshwater pellets. Cycled in 2 weeks. Then we picked up 2 small live rocks from All Things Aquatic. These were chock full of copepods and amphipods.


(The tank is 6 months old today, but I'm going to post things in order for my own reference. Also because I'm proud it survived and I think even thrived in this time. Every LFS said it was the wrong way to go, one store even refused to sell us live rock to start up the tank)

2/24:

 

[thrillreefer]

Every time a see a cool nano build like this I start eyeing the blank space on my desk at work…

 

[salty_dog]

About 3-4 weeks in:
I've had the GloFish light on for most of the day, tank sitting in a bright room. My thought was to accelerate the ugly phase and get it over with.. nothing yet besides some brown on the live rock and dusting on the glass.
Added my first corals and livestock. A branching hammer and pulsing xenia. Purchased from Animal Instincts in Fall River. Got a bumble bee snail because I thought I saw a vermitid snail on the live rock, though in hindsight, was probably an amphipod poking its head out. Took home 3 small red legged hermits.
Feeding freshwater micro pellets and algae wafers.
I squirted the coral with hydrogen peroxide for a moment then rinsed off before placing in tank.
After putting in the corals I added my freshwater Hygger light and placed on full power. Still using salt mixed with softened well water. Changing a quart every few days.
With API PH 7.8, Alkalinity 7, no ammonia, nitrite, and barely any color change with nitrates.
I was surprised the PH and alkalinity were both higher in my freshwater tanks at 8.2 and 9-10.

Next steps better light and if the corals last, buy more!

 

[afboundguy]

I love nano and pico tanks (prob why I haven't pushed harder to get a larger tank with wife) and enjoy that they require a little extra work to keep them stable but I feel that with a propee ATO with redundancy built in they stay quite stable.

My old 25 cube wasn't touched for over 2 years other than feeding and filling up ATO resevoir and the fish were fat and healthy and I still has several softies that were still alive between all the nuscience algea

 

[salty_dog]

The first few months. Adding Acans. Making mistakes.
In my eagerness to grow some coral, I bought Seachem Phyto feed. A shelf stable product.
Learned the very hard way to not use this as a spot feed. In my defense nowhere on the bottle does it say not to do this. Only the website. Apparently dead phyto is kept in citric acid and other harsh chemicals to keep it from rotting. This melted my acans. Harmed the hammer, toasted a goniapora, and caused the xenia and GSP to become stunted for weeks.

Xenia just got fed, and the Acans just before a puff of phyto:

After a squirt of Seachem phyto:

We tried a goni. Found a few hitchhikers with it. Some aiptasia. I superglued them in place. After 3 superglues... it died.

Also was spot feeding the phyto.

Luckily the hammer and other corals survived and rebounded. Made a coral purchase through World Wide Corals and things began to settle out.
All the while switched to distilled water, increasing lights on the Fluval Nano.

Hermits spawned:

About 3-4 mts in: and recovered. Time to get some snails.

 

[salty_dog]

8/31: Present day, 6 mts in. Increasing feedings seems to help the coral. Using Hikari Seaweed pellets, freshwater micro pellets, and fine powder First Bites which is a huge hit with the coral.

I find that I lack flow with just the return pump. So will add a 2nd pump over night a couple times a week which really clears things up.
Using Walmart pillow stuffing and carbon in the rear chamber. An Inkbird. And I installed an RO system with booster pump under my sink. Tastes great. TDS is around 5-9. Not planning to use DI. We have a softener and lots of calcium in the well so I expect this is some Na and Ca. It tested and neg for nitrates/ammonia.

 

[Jbissell1289]

Very cool little tank! If your wife tells you to get a bigger tank… you are probably in the minority of reef keepers and you should absolutely listen!!!

 

[salty_dog]

Very cool little tank! If your wife tells you to get a bigger tank… you are probably in the minority of reef keepers and you should absolutely listen!!!

Thanks!
I'm lucky I've been allowed to have 5 tanks set up at one time. Some are temporary such as one to hold some live rock for the future display tank we picked up, which is an older style 54g corner tank. I think having the kids really enjoy seeing our freshwater fish, snails, shrimp, and now the coral, and the peppermint shrimp nibbling their fingers, this has prevented any arguments. She has helped with the tooth brush once on the little tank

 

[Jbissell1289]

Wow pretty cool! My wife simply puts up with it. Though the only thing at home right now is my son’s planted beta tank. My reef and all my other reptiles are in my classroom.

 

[SnowTrillium]

Amazingly beautiful

 

[salty_dog]

Amazingly beautiful

Thank you!
Although it's been getting pretty hairy now, I'd be quite embarrassed to show an update pic. I've slacked off on water changes and using the tooth brush. I did start testing alkalinity. Noticing after a few days of no WC, it will drop from 8 to 5-6 per API test. The only thing I'm doing differently is feeding the tank more (probably too much, but I'm seeing coral growth from it.) Hikari First Bites almost daily, it's a powder high protein food, which the corals show an instant feeding response, even the green star polyp and xenia seem to react.
I'm sure the hair algae likes the extra food.

Wow pretty cool! My wife simply puts up with it. Though the only thing at home right now is my son’s planted beta tank. My reef and all my other reptiles are in my classroom.

Sorry for the delay. What an awesome class to be in!

 

[salty_dog]

Sexy time

L

 

[salty_dog]

New tank coming. Pro-Clear 90, which is a 60g display and 13 g sump, internal overflow. About $1800 including delivery from Saltwateraquarium.com. Aluminum frame stand with acrylic covered door panels and all plumbing included. I think a good deal. For the price it beats Waterbox and Innovative Marine tanks of similar size. Fiji cube is about the same price, however the stand is plywood.
Wonder if anyone has experience with this brand? No idea how I'm going to get it in the house.


Will keep the pico going, it's been consuming alk which I replace with water changes. Hammer has 3 heads now. Still has hair algae in the darker spots, but it does not spread or seem to irritate the corals. The GSP is taking off. Pulsing xenia does not really show any growth, has spread to other areas but nothing taken off. I can pull it easily with surgical hemostat or swiss army plyers. I feed fine powder fish fry food and a couple pellets every other day. If I don't feed I get cyano almost right away.
I may have something worse than regular hair algae, it's some brown stringy algae that appears at night on the sand bed. Goes away during the day.

Live stock: 3 sexy shrimp which hang out in the hammer and clean the algae around it. Howver they are nibbling on the pulsing xenia. 1 nassarius snall, 2 margarita snails, 2 astrea snails, and 1 peppermint shrimp.
Nitrates undetectable with API, phosphates are 0.0125 with Salifert (have to double up the water sample and reagent to see any color change)

Alk will drop to 5-6 after 1 week w/o water change. So I'm getting more diligent with 1/2 gallon every couple days. I am going to try to feed daily to see if that helps with the brown stringy stuff I'm seeing at night. The corals open well and show a strong response when food is in the water. Spot feeding is no longer possible as the peppermint shrimp will steal food from the coral, even when I give him his own pellet first.

My significant other attests she will help manage the larger tank. Which will be the first time we have saltwater fish. Will do a QT tank transfer with hydrogen peroxide bath in between like described on Humble.fish. Waiting on the display being set up and cycled before getting fish. For the larger tank using Natures ocean dry rock and their live 'ocean direct' style sand. I also have 20 lbs of rock that's been sitting in another tank for the past 5 months to seed it. I found Natures Ocean to be more affordable than Carib Sea. I can only find it on Chewy.

 

[salty_dog]

New display tank. First ever saltwater fish in QT.

 

[salty_dog]

I believe the peppermint shrimp has really been an imposter. He is no angel. He has been seen trying to eat healthy snails. May have been the cause for my Pom Pom crabs disappearance. I am wanting to get rid of him. Had a bit of hair algae given all the hermits are gone and only have astrea and margarita snails. So I got an urchin. It scraped the coralline and purple paint right off the rock! The shrimp tries to attack but can’t hurt the urchin.


In a 10g quarantine are two clowns, watchman, 6line, and royal gramma. Have given prazi and did 4 tank transfers with two hydrogen peroxide baths.

In the other 10g is some hair algae rock and a Molly acclimated for salt that is very good at eating that algae.