my first pico

[mwirsche]

so my friend just got it all set up for me, he picked out some really nice pieces of rock from his work(thanks man) and got me a little (about 6x6x6 maybe a lil bigger) tank. got all the rock put in there and crushed coral in the bottom. thinking bout puting an inch of sand ontop of the 2 inches of crushed. i have a lil power head for circulation, and a little heat mat under the tank to keep it warm. it has almost 2 lbs of awesome rock, and a couple little snails and a hermit crab. and the tiniest kenya tree frag ive ever seen lol. im hoping it will make it through the cycling theyre usually pretty tough. anyways i plan to kepp this tank goin no matter what, so stay tuned! hopefully will have pictures soon!

 

[mwirsche]

oh and i have to bring it from his place to mine in like 2 weeks... guna be rough i think!

 

[Krish]

Good luck with the move!! As for the sand, if you pour it on top of the crushed coral, it will just sink to the bottom. If anything, it should be done the other way around with sand on the bottom and crushed coral on top because that's how it will end up eventually anyways.

 

[user 26995]

Hey thats so cool. Looking forward to pics.
Another great little critter you could put in there is a phantom anemone shrimp. I have had one in my pico for quite a while now. They are fun to have. I found an emerald crab too that his shell is only 1/4" diameter, at the moment, and put him in there.
Picos are a lot of fun.
You will enjoy it. So easy to take care of.

 

[user 26995]

oh and i have to bring it from his place to mine in like 2 weeks... guna be rough i think!

This should be no problem.
Take half the water out with some of the rock and put in a tupperware contianer with a lid, then put a couple layers of clingwrap over the tank and set it in a larger plastice container, just in case it splashes water and drips, no need for a lid. It should transport just fine.
Then you can add more sand before you put the rocks and water back in.

 

[mwirsche]

right on thanks you! i gota carry it like a block lol so i guess it shouldnt be to bad! and il check out that shrimp, it sounds nifty. how big is your tank? and how long have you had it going? it seems most of the problems people have are not doing water changes or start with base rock. im thinking i should be able to sloly add some frags in about a month or so. my friend tossed in a couple lil mushroom frags and they seem to be doing ok. im super stoked on the pico cuz ive had larger tanks, but havent had the room for one for awile now. i couldnt use that as an excuse for this lil guy!

and i figured the sand would makes its way to the bottom, but i was thinking itd be better to put on top as not to disturb the cruched coral since itl have been going for 2 weeks or so by the time i get to bring it home. but i guess if i gota pull everything out for the move anyways

 

[mwirsche]

and im also thinking about one of those lil yellow fish that kinda attach to stuff lol i cant remember the name of them tho... any ideas?

 

[Krish]

and i figured the sand would makes its way to the bottom, but i was thinking itd be better to put on top as not to disturb the cruched coral since itl have been going for 2 weeks or so by the time i get to bring it home. but i guess if i gota pull everything out for the move anyways

Why don't you want to disturb the crushed coral? You will want to disturb that weekly when doing water changes to vacuum out all of the detritus/waste/fish poop/un-eaten fish food etc that gets trapped in there. If you don't, then it will accumilate, rott and degrade water quality. If your plan is to go with a deep sand bed, then you wouldn't want to disturb the lower anaerobic regions, but dsb's are usually carried out using a finer grain sand than crushed corals that is very coarse.

 

[mwirsche]

i was thinking the dsb route. the crushed coral just got put in there by my bro that set up the tank. i mite just replace it with sand when i do the move. which method do you think would be better in this tiny lil pico? its got like 2 inches of cruched coral now but i have no problem going with sand if that would be a better direction

 

[user 26995]

If you want sand in it, do it. When you make the move, just put all the water and the rock in a container. The tank is still young enough it shouldnt hurt to just remove the crushed coral. I would put some water in first. Then put the sand in slowly. Then replace the rock and fill it up. Before you put the sand in though, rinse it 3 or 4 times in fresh water. Otherwise it will turn the water cloudy for a long time.

I have a 3 gal pico. 1.5 gal display area.
Here is the link to my pico thread
http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/f204/my-new-pico-tank-60362/

 

[mwirsche]

right on i will definately do that! and il check out your tank forsure!

 

[mwirsche]

just a lil update with hopefully some pics if i can figure it out lol. tanks doing great so far, besides the lil piece of xenia i put in that melted with a day... did a lil water change cuz of that. added a singly paly and a couple of little 1-2 polyp zoa frags, and a few tiny lil mushrooms u can barely see lol. so far so good tho!


i named him hermis from futurama lol



jus a lil better picture. pics were before the new additions. you may be able to see the lil blu mushroom in the middle kinda close to the chaeto the light im runing is a lil tetra led i cant remember the name off the top of my head.


and my friends who got me the setup has this 136. (i think he named it the tide pool to poke some fun at me lol)

more to come soon!!!!

 

[mwirsche]

if it didnt work would anybody give me a refresher on how to do that for next time? i think i just made a link to it or something?

 

[mwirsche]

so last night when i went to switch the crushed coral for black sand, i noticed my tank was kinda chilly therm. said 68 and i noticed my heat mat wen out. im guessn it got wet or sumthing, so in quick fix fashion i lit a candle next to it with sum aluminum foil going from the tank over the candle to catch some heat.:nerd: i watched the temp go to 74 and stay there for 4 hours. right before i left for bed(after roasting some marshmellows on the candle lol) i added some foil side skirts to trap more heat. tank was a nice 76 early this morning. anybody know of any heaters small enough for my tank? if i have to il just go to dollar store and by 20 candles lol

 

[mwirsche]

just a little update, got a lil 10 watt heater a few days after the heat mat incident, changed to some diffrent leds still waiting to order some real led lighting found my little blue mushroom, the red ones doing great. temp is 75-78 doing weekly water changes right now, 50% last one and 25% today. killed(hopefully) some little white anenome things that liked to grow from 1 to 3 in two weeks lol. starting to get a slight algae bloom but so far all the critters are doing good! i feed the hermit crab a couple mysis shrimp and a lil flake every few days or so he seems to enjoy it.

 

[Krish]

The little white anemone things sound like aiptasia. If it is that, you will want to deal with them now otherwise they will take over your tank...Literally. They can be a huge nuisance and can spread like wild fire. If you can get a picture of it, post it for a positive ID so you can know what to do from there.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[user 26995]

Thanks for the update. Thats soo cool. Picos are so much fun. Sounds like your enjoying yours.

 

[mwirsche]

they are white and have lil bubbles on the tips. i stabbed em with some boiling water yesterday, thinking about doing again tomorrow, they werent to happy.

and yes im definately enjoying it! itd been a few years since my last tank and it was definately time. i scored a 2.5 gal freebie today debating between moving the (actually .72gal) into it with the .72 behind for sump, leaving it alone and setting up the 2.5 seperate, or building a would be shallow 5 gallon square tank out of/with another 2.5 with a plexi bottom and drilling it to do a corner over flow down to the .72 gal giving me around 5.8 gallons to work with. any ideas?

if i use the .72 as a sump, id want to get some type of filtration in there, besides bio filtration. ive heard good and bad things about hob filters, and ive also heard alot of bad things about small sized skimmers. any ideas here?

thanks for the replys