Upsized to a Deskmate (Formerly a Pico 2 Gallon Jar)

[kevgib67]

Looks fantastic, these little pico tanks always amaze me.

 

[Landshark34]

I picked up a couple more frags. One purple green candy cane. The frag seems to have spots of brown algae on the bone. I tried to scrap them off on the day of purchase and fresh water dipped the bone part (out came a baby nerite or sundial snail? I chucked it to be safe), but they seem to have regrown by the third day... not sure if it is a source of concern.

I also picked up a sun coral frag , knowing the feeding challenges. I am keeping it on the frag rack, so it is out of the light and can be target fed daily. I made a plastic cylinder that I can drop in over the coral such that the clownfish can be kept away.

This is also where I am having a bit of setback here . The pictures below are Day 1 of purchase, and then the Day 2 evening where it started to open up more to feed. Thus far, I am feeding it small amount of food twice a day (once in the morning, once after lights out). However, on Day 4, the polyp which was damaged from the fragging process started to have receding flesh and not looking too good, while the other 4 polyps remains okay. For now I am just going to keep up the routine and see how it goes.

The rfa is well fed and expanding and making him or herself comfortable, and its tentacles are encroaching on the acans. I moved one acan away to the left and put a piece of dry rock behind the rfa as a wall for the second acan. The rockscape have a lot of holes, but not many that can fit a frag plug... What I should've done is drill my dry rock in the beginning to have holes ready to drop in frag plugs. O well, lesson learned for next time.

 

[Landshark34]

Looks fantastic, these little pico tanks always amaze me.

Your tank has candy canes and monti growing at the same level in the tank, which gives me hope that I can also acclimate my candy cane slowly upwards to take more light.

Right now my monti is barely growing right under the light, yet my candy canes suffered some bleaching when I had it mid way up the rock works.

 

[Shaina Carey]

This is really cool.

 

[Landshark34]

The RFA was on the move after lights out and I had to evacuate the acan directly above to make room! It ended up shifting 90 degrees and took over the acan's spot. Full tank shot below.

I am also having a real humbling experience with the sun coral. It is deteriorating rapidly, even though I had kept up feeding it twice a day . Will probably be the first coral that I killed.

 

[LegalReefer]

NPS corals are hard. I had a beautiful NPS gorgonian that I managed to barely keep alive for a few months, but it was in a constant and slow decline. Unless you have a fairly dedicated feeding regimen, it's difficult to keep NPS successfully

 

[TX_REEF]

looks awesome! How's the jar doing?

 

[Landshark34]

looks awesome! How's the jar doing?

The jar was decommissioned. I transferred absolutely everything from the jar to the deskmate except for the sand. The gsp was spreading across the whole main rock, would've taken over the jar and limited what I could put in it. If I were to do another jar, the lesson would be to not put gsp in there .

 

[Landshark34]

NPS corals are hard. I had a beautiful NPS gorgonian that I managed to barely keep alive for a few months, but it was in a constant and slow decline. Unless you have a fairly dedicated feeding regimen, it's difficult to keep NPS successfully

I'm not sure about my longggg term dedication, but for the 2 weeks that I've had the suncoral, I have been feeding it about 2 to 3 times a day. 4 of the 5 heads are goners, I was gonna chuck it in the bin over the weekend, but the last head is still alive and accepting food so I'm gonna keep up the feeding for now

 

[Landshark34]

Here is the latest full tank shot. I added more inhabitants. It's like playing Tetris with this tank to maximize the space and make sure everyone is happy with their light.

I added an ultra ugly rock flower. I picked poorly, it looked alright with a nice orange rim when it was scrunched up, but when it expanded, the inside looked exactly like a slice of moldy cucumber .
The seller asked me if I have any SPS, I said I just have a struggling monti. The guy was nice enough to gimme two free frags, one green pavona and one fire red digitata, said they are super easy and I can try them out with no risk. They now sit at the top of the rock work to get the most out of the lights.

One of the acans had been ticked off since the original rfa took over its spot. I moved it now to the bottom right corner, which is now the "hospital ward" where frags heals themselves back. The candy cane has healed up well and really fattened up compared to January.

I noticed there was a healthy population of filter feeders growing in my tank from my daily phyto feeding: pineapple sponges, spirorbid worms, a couple of colonial hydroid (that I will squish soon), so I added a white and pink feather duster.

Finally, the lone sun coral head that is still alive and taking in food.