5.5G aio style pico. (warning very long and pic heavy first post)

Discussion in 'I made this!' started by picoreefguy, Mar 8, 2014.

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  1. oldfishkeeper

    oldfishkeeper Giant Squid

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  3. dsmerf214

    dsmerf214 Fire Shrimp

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    I'm really interested in this… wheres the updated pics??
     
  4. picoreefguy

    picoreefguy Bristle Worm

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    ill snap some more pics when i get off work this afternoon around 3 or 4
     
  5. picoreefguy

    picoreefguy Bristle Worm

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    finally we have sand! this sand is much more coarse than i thought it would be. but it turns out its a blessing in disguise because its harder to blow around than the smaller grained stuff. i will however be selling the rest of this bag bacause i want to use a finer sand in my 40 breeder. there are a couple new corals in the tank as well a frag of acans, a small head of frogspawn, and some more zoas. and today i added a pair of sexy shrimp. the green clown goby has just vanished into thin air.i did my waterchange last wednesday and he was there and just fine before and after the wc. the next day i check on the tank and hes gone i lifter out the rockwork pulled out the pump and heater, pulled out the filter floss and carbon/phosgaurd bag and he was no where to be found. the only thing i didnt remove was the matrix and theres no way he got under it.
    heres a few pics the first is an fts with no lights. and the rest have lights

    fts no lights
    [​IMG]

    fts with lights
    [​IMG]

    lobo i just added
    [​IMG]

    blasto. ive never seen another one like this. the center is purple and the outside is a teal kind of color.
    [​IMG]
     
  6. picoreefguy

    picoreefguy Bristle Worm

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    by the way sorry it took so long to update. i spend most of my time on my local forum and end up neglecting this one.
     
  7. oldfishkeeper

    oldfishkeeper Giant Squid

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    looks great! love that blasto
     
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  9. picoreefguy

    picoreefguy Bristle Worm

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    So I haven’t posted in forever but i was digging through some old pics on Photobucket and came across a couple pictures of the tank that were around 9 months apart and decide to update you guys. I did unfortunately i did have to take the tank down in 2019 due to a small leak in one of the seams but i consider the tank a resounding success because i had it up and running for around 5 years with tons of coral growth. I tried several different fish in it and it was a huge learning curve for tiny guys that can fit in a tank like that. First was the clown goby which im honestly not sure what happened to, I can’t remember if i found him or not. Then next were a trio of mini dartfish gobies they were so cute and were a perfect fit for the tank but didn’t last long. They needed live foods like rotifers and zooplankton and looking back im sure baby brine shrimp would have worked but I didn’t think to try it at the time. So i tried feeding frozen cyclops and some of the bottled zooplankton and they would eat a little of it but if i turned the flow of for them to feed it would all fall into the sand and they wouldn’t get much and if i left the flow on it would all get sucked into the filter. So if i were to try them again i would definitely hatch baby brine for them. And the final fish i had was a flaming prawn goby. I had him for around 2 years and he was awesome. I’m not sure what their lifespan is but i know most tiny fish like that dont live too terribly long so i think two years is enough to call it a success. He also liked live foods but would eat prepared foods as well and since he lived on the bottom he’s always looking for stuff in the sand so the frozen cyclops worked for him most of the time. He would hide most of the time and there were a few instances where I didn’t see him for over a month and assumed he had died only to see him hanging out under the barnacles when i lifted the rocks out for maintenance. I would also occasionally catch copepods and amphipods for him from another tank and he absolutely loved that. I’d turn off the flow and pour them in behind the rocks and then he’d come out and start hunting after a couple minutes. He was one of the coolest little fish i had ever had.

    Anyway on to the pictures here are a couple of growth pictures to show how well the tank did. The first picture was taken on March 8th of 2016 and the second was on December 12th. You can see the blasto and lobo from the early days are there. The frogspawn didn’t make it but it got replaced by a hammer which did great. The birds nest didn’t make it and i moved the black sun coral to another tank and replaced it with a fathead dendro. I had some sort of strange bacteria come and eat away the paint from the filter box a year or so after i setup the tank. It didn’t seem to harm the coral or fish so i just wiped it away when it built up. I’ve since switched to using black acrylic for my aio filter boxes and i use black vinyl for the back glass. I hate that this tank sprung a leak because it was one of my favorite builds. But the good news is I’ve started another pico tank build so ill start a thread on that. Hopefully this time i wont forget about the thread and ill keep it updated.

    March 8th 2016

    upload_2022-8-12_9-9-10.jpeg

    And this pic was taken on December 12 2016.
    upload_2022-8-12_9-10-24.jpeg