Latest FTS
The Full Setup
Key Equipment
Living things I’ve added (not hitchhikers)
I’ll at least give you all my first name to make this place a little more personable. Hi, I’m Kevin. I’m in my mid 30s living the typical suburban life with a beautiful wife, rambunctious but adorable little boy, and two cats.
I’ve been keeping small aquariums most of my life. In fact, the last 10 years are the longest I have gone without an aquarium. I’ve kept a mixture of salt and freshwater aquariums, tons of different fish, plants, and corals. That being said, my favorite has always been saltwater corals.
Why a desktop reef?
Like many people, in March of 2020, I packed up my things from my company office and headed home for an indefinite amount of time. My home office was the extra room in the house where we stored things that didn’t fit in the rest of the house, you know… that room. After a few years of that, my wife had a wonderful idea to redo my office and make it my happy place. Since then, we’ve repainted, put in art and furniture, and organized all of the computer cords on my desk.
When thinking through other things that made me happy, I remembered my saltwater corals. I don’t have a ton of space and I don’t want to spend thousands on a large display and all of the equipment that come with a large saltwater tank. Then I stumbled on reefjar.com and was instantly intrigued. As many aquarists know, it would be crazy to keep a reef in a 2 gallon jar. No mechanical filtration? No skimmer? 100% water change 1-2 times weekly?!? What are you crazy? And yet, there were tons of examples of people having great success with setting up a micro eco system in a jar. I just had to try it.
The Full Setup
Key Equipment
- “Tank”: 2 gallon Anchor Hocking Glass Jar (thanks Walmart)
- Heater: Lifegard 50w pre-set heater (keeps between 77.9 and 78.4)
- Air Pump for water movement: Tetra Whisper 20g
- Other water movement: Aquaneat 80GPH adjustable pump
- Lighting: ABI Tuna Blue 12W Par 38 Bulb
- Salt: For now, standard Instant Ocean
- 7 Hour Light Period (no ramp up or down on this bulb)
- Weekly 90-100% water change
- 1 full rip clean in the books (March 2022) to rinse sand which I didn’t do at first
- Dose 0.3ml Red Sea Energy AB+ 3 times per week
- Feed corals once a week with Reef Roids the day before a water change
- 4/3 - added reef nutrition tigger pods
Living things I’ve added (not hitchhikers)
- 1 blue leg hermit
- 1 astrea snail
- 1 Trochus snail
1 yellow clown goby(started nipping SPS so back to the LFS he went)- No name Green head favia
- No name red and green favia
- Watermelon Zoas
- SBB Green Goblin Acro
- MattV Red Dana Acro
- SBB Jungle Juice Acro
- Super Man Monti
- SBB Sparkler Monti
- SBB Malibu Rising Mushroom
- SBB Eternals Bright Mushroom
- No Name Yuma Mushroom
- SBB White Walker Goni
- SBB Keroppi Goni
- SBB Carnation Goni
- SBB Cousin It Goni
- No Name Goni
I’ll at least give you all my first name to make this place a little more personable. Hi, I’m Kevin. I’m in my mid 30s living the typical suburban life with a beautiful wife, rambunctious but adorable little boy, and two cats.
I’ve been keeping small aquariums most of my life. In fact, the last 10 years are the longest I have gone without an aquarium. I’ve kept a mixture of salt and freshwater aquariums, tons of different fish, plants, and corals. That being said, my favorite has always been saltwater corals.
Why a desktop reef?
Like many people, in March of 2020, I packed up my things from my company office and headed home for an indefinite amount of time. My home office was the extra room in the house where we stored things that didn’t fit in the rest of the house, you know… that room. After a few years of that, my wife had a wonderful idea to redo my office and make it my happy place. Since then, we’ve repainted, put in art and furniture, and organized all of the computer cords on my desk.
When thinking through other things that made me happy, I remembered my saltwater corals. I don’t have a ton of space and I don’t want to spend thousands on a large display and all of the equipment that come with a large saltwater tank. Then I stumbled on reefjar.com and was instantly intrigued. As many aquarists know, it would be crazy to keep a reef in a 2 gallon jar. No mechanical filtration? No skimmer? 100% water change 1-2 times weekly?!? What are you crazy? And yet, there were tons of examples of people having great success with setting up a micro eco system in a jar. I just had to try it.
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