MrGone's Picotope

[MrGone]

I've had it packed away for a couple years now and couldn't resist so I set it up again. I am currently running stock filtration (thought about doing the Aquaclear 70 and modding it but I'd have to run it off the side or pull the book case/shelf the pico is on about 6-8" off the wall and I'd rather not). Also the black background hides the temp probe and heater better than I anticipated (it's been a few years since I've had equipment in a display tank).

I grabbed a few frags out of my big system and some rocks out of the sump along with two blue-legged hermit crabs. I think I might add a couple more frags since there is some room.

I've always loved Nano's and Pico's, probably because that's where I started. I feel like you lose a lot of the details in the large tanks and they are just a lot of fun. Hermit walking over the purple haze

I'm currently running a Coralife 12" 36w PC fixture but one of the bulbs is burnt out. I built a LED fixture with the pico in mind a few months ago but I've noticed some pretty drastic color shifts with the corals under the setup I built for my Dad so I am hesitant to run it. I'm not sure if I need to add a UV or Red LED to it to prevent the shift. I put 4 cool white and 3 royal blue LEDs on an old socket 478 heat sink and learned a little lesson about spacing them out for lenses, although at the time I wasn't planning on running it with them. I'm leaning towards not using the LEDs but haven't made up my mind.

 

[MrGone]

Ok I couldn't resist, I added a few more

 

[dtd87]

That looks really nice! I want to do one similar but freshwater with cherry shrimp ;3

 

[fall0n]

What's the water volume? Looks great!

 

[user 26995]

That is soooo great. Beautiful!

 

[MrGone]

That looks really nice! I want to do one similar but freshwater with cherry shrimp ;3

Thank you! Nice, a friend of mine has a freshwater pico and she has some kind of shrimp but they don't look as cool as cherry shrimp. I can't wait to see pics

 

[MrGone]

What's the water volume? Looks great!

Thank you! The pico itself is 3 gallons and there is probably about 8oz of water in each powerfilter

 

[MrGone]

That is soooo great. Beautiful!

Thank you!

I tinkered around tonight with mounting the LED fixture I made and I really like the coloration but I am concerned with the SPS colorshifting in the long term which I have experience with the lighting setup I made for my Dads tank. After some more research and talking with Brie at Barrier Reef confirmed, I'd like to build a fixture with a wider variety of LEDs in it. This one just has cool white and royal blue, I'd like to add the lighter blue, the mid-day white, green and red leds to it. I'm going to keep my eye out for some new heatsink material. I would like to experiment with them as well, but I think ultimately I might modify the coralife PC light fixture with LEDs in addition to the 36w of PC light to prevent color shift. The ideas are still rattling around

Here is what it looks like tonight

I'm also going to try to bury the heater if the rocks will provide enough space

 

[justforfun]

is that a stealth heater??? looks like it they have a full recall on them take it to petsmart get a new one....they burnt some ladys house down

 

[MrGone]

is that a stealth heater??? looks like it they have a full recall on them take it to petsmart get a new one....they burnt some ladys house down

I believe so. Thank you for the heads up! I had noticed they are no longer sold.

 

[MrGone]

I still haven't gotten around to contacting the heater manufacture, I'll try to do it this week.

Barrier had their customer appreciation sale today and I picked up a purple maxima clam. Sorry for the lower quality pic, I just used my phone. I have a few larger clams in my big tank but I'm having a lot of fun tinkering with the pico again.

I also did my first water change today. The rock with the green hair algae had just a little bit of stubble on it when I picked it out, I wasn't sure if it would choke out or grow, it's growing. I think I'm going to add some GFO media to one of the power filters. I added two new bulbs to the coralife fixture but I think the ballast is on its way out unfortunately. The green branching monti on the mushroom/kenya tree rock started encrusting, I'm thinking about swapping that rock out and just doing full SPS and zoas, the tree and mushrooms are going to take over and I'd rather them not.

Otherwise there has been great growth on it, especially for only running on one 18w bulb until a few days ago. Today I put feet on the coralife fixture to help combat rising temps when summer really hits, but it doesn't appear to have made much of a difference. I think I'm going to make a small chiller using a aqualifter or maybe some other small pump and a bunch of airline tubing and an old dosing container, or something like that. I still am very tempted to do a modded aquaclear 70 filter but I don't have room for it where I currently have the picotope. I was hoping Barrier would have their small sapphire tanks on sale, but really it is the last thing I need to start right now

I also picked up a par meter and will continue to experiment with LEDs as I get around to it in my free time.

Oh I also added some really small clean up crew critters from an order my friend placed online. 5 nassarius snails, 4 more blue legged hermits (one of them is the smallest I've ever seen, I have copepods much larger than it) and 4 cerith snails. But again they are all very small, about 1/4" at the largest. I'm going to pick up some larger ones from Barrier tomorrow. I was planning on getting a bunch today for all my tanks but it would have been too much of a pain to deal with acclimating them (and I was shopping for a couple people who were out of town and I can't be in three places at once haha, luckily Barrier offers rain checks which really took the pressure off and let me focus on buying other livestock).

I haven't had green hair algae or much of any other algae besides film algae since I first started with my 10 gallon nano and I'm surprised to see it growing because there aren't any fish in there and I haven't been feeding the tank other than some Koral Color and some other coral foods I picked up at barrier a year or so ago. I don't dose my large tanks but I find I experiment/tinker more when I have small tanks which is what makes it so much fun for me. I'm wondering if it is just a result of the bulb I replaced a few days ago being older/having more hours than I remember on it.

 

[MrGone]

I added another clam, I couldn't resist.