A Beginner’s 5 gallon Marineland Pico reef

[LegalReefer]

Hey all!

I’m brand new to Reef2Reef, just got a tank of my own! I’ve kept brackish aquariums for a job and my family had a reef aquarium when I was a kid, and I’ve always loved and been interested in the hobby and life forms associated with the hobby, being a huge nerd for marine wildlife.

I live in a space-restricted area right now, and settled on a 5 gallon tall Marineland aquarium with a Coralife light. I’m hoping to get into the hobby slowly, learning as much as I can as I strive to understand the intricacies of coral care. I’m going to be (hopefully) keeping softies, and am planning to start with GSP’s, mushrooms, and either zoa or pulsing Xenia’s in a few months, once everything is cycled and functional.

This tank is too small to keep fish comfortably, in my opinion, so I kick-started the cycling process with “fishless fuel,” pictured. Let me know if anyone has had luck with this, or if I should try another method. I have 6 pounds of live rock and a three inch sand bed; this may be too much but I want a very healthy biological filtration system so I can more readily and more safely keep plenty of corals. I’m new though, so please, any and all advice would be appreciated!




Edit: 4/2/2023

I’ve upgraded once, and am currently working on my second upgrade! From 5 to 10 gallons, and now from 10 to 20. Next it’ll be 40, then 80, 160, and I can only hope for bigger from there!


10 Gallons:

Doing well, with lots of coral growth! Never would have believed I’d see success keeping hard corals when I first started this.

20 Gallon Long:

This tank has a lot of potential, I can’t wait to see where things go from here!

 

[Poof No Eyebrows]

Welcome.
Love the sand bed. I'm a big fan of the deeper ones. Never heard of that product but I'm sure it will work. Looks like you have plenty of live rock so I would suspect your cycle to be very short.

 

[LegalReefer]

Thank you! And thanks for the welcome, as well! I’m glad to be here and looking forward to finally having a reef of my own

 

[Klyle]

Welcome! Nice tank. Good looking rocks. You will surely get tons of advice here and someone will answer any questions you may have! The r2r community has helped me a ton. My two cents- if you put gsp and / or xenia in a pico it will soon overgrow the whole tank, leaving you little room for anything else. I just set up my first pico this weekend and feel the same as you, not enough room for fish! I'm going to do some rock flower anemones. They will host sexy shrimp and porcelain crabs. I think an all invert tank will be awesome. I plan on keeping a feather duster and gorgonians also...if you do keep gsp put it on a small rock and make it an island that way it doesn't take over! Same for xenia. Good luck with your tank! I'm sure you will do fine

 

[LegalReefer]

Tank update! With as much live rock and sand relative to water volume as I have, my cycle has been going rather rapidly (I think). Ammonia has dropped to <1, nitrites are falling, and I think things are decent. Had a bloom of Cyanobacteria(?) and decided to pick up a nerite snail and Mexican red-legged hermit crab at my lfs, as well as a cheap zoa plug! I may be going too quickly but I really wanted to see more life than the tiny copepods on the glass. The zoas seem happy, fully extending and reaching for the light already, and I’m hopeful they’ll grow well. I’ve heard zoas actually tend to do a bit better in somewhat dirty water, so here’s to hoping they take off! For the time being this is all I’ll have, I’m getting some hopefully hardy mushrooms in ~2weeks from a reefer on here, so until then unless anything radical changes, this is where I’m at!

if anyone has advice or ideas, or knows what kinda zoas those are, I’d be appreciative!

 

[Klyle]

Tank update! With as much live rock and sand relative to water volume as I have, my cycle has been going rather rapidly (I think). Ammonia has dropped to <1, nitrites are falling, and I think things are decent. Had a bloom of Cyanobacteria(?) and decided to pick up a nerite snail and Mexican red-legged hermit crab at my lfs, as well as a cheap zoa plug! I may be going too quickly but I really wanted to see more life than the tiny copepods on the glass. The zoas seem happy, fully extending and reaching for the light already, and I’m hopeful they’ll grow well. I’ve heard zoas actually tend to do a bit better in somewhat dirty water, so here’s to hoping they take off! For the time being this is all I’ll have, I’m getting some hopefully hardy mushrooms in ~2weeks from a reefer on here, so until then unless anything radical changes, this is where I’m at!

if anyone has advice or ideas, or knows what kinda zoas those are, I’d be appreciative!

I set up a 6g pico a week ago today. Started with new Caribsea live sand and a 1/2 lb rock from my established reef. And 2g of tank water. No bottled bacteria. It's being monitored by Seneye. On Sunday, I fragged some gsp from the DT and tossed it in, along with 2 hermits and a snail...canary in a coal mine situation. On Monday, I built the aquascape with reef saver dry rock and put it in the tank. I've been feeding miniscule amounts of TDO pellets to the hermits, as I'm worried if the tank is cycled it will stall without some type of biological processes happening. I have the lights cranked way back too because without a doubt algae is on its way. The point of this being i have not seen NH3 go above .001 once this first week. I haven't checked trites or trates. I've changed out less than a gallon of water 3 times this week also, using new water. Not sure if any of this info will help or not, but I thought id share it anyways. It looks like you already have established rock in which case, if what I'm doing is working you will be fine!!

 

[LegalReefer]

I set up a 6g pico a week ago today. Started with new Caribsea live sand and a 1/2 lb rock from my established reef. And 2g of tank water. No bottled bacteria. It's being monitored by Seneye. On Sunday, I fragged some gsp from the DT and tossed it in, along with 2 hermits and a snail...canary in a coal mine situation. On Monday, I built the aquascape with reef saver dry rock and put it in the tank. I've been feeding miniscule amounts of TDO pellets to the hermits, as I'm worried if the tank is cycled it will stall without some type of biological processes happening. I have the lights cranked way back too because without a doubt algae is on its way. The point of this being i have not seen NH3 go above .001 once this first week. I haven't checked trites or trates. I've changed out less than a gallon of water 3 times this week also, using new water. Not sure if any of this info will help or not, but I thought id share it anyways. It looks like you already have established rock in which case, if what I'm doing is working you will be fine!!

I love how your rock looks and how you’ve got it set! You managed to fit so much rock in there, while setting lots of places for corals and good nooks and crannies. It looks great! Do you recommend a Seneye system? For $200 does it monitor all parameters of your water? Buying one would essentially double my costs so far, I’d love to know if you think it’s a worthwhile investment. At the very least it’s gotta be better than the API test kit I got

Update for my tank: Zoas seemed happy with the water, lighting, etc. and so I went and splurged on some softies! I got another frag of zoas that broke into two frags (lucky me!), a Kenya tree, GSPs, and a cabbage leather frag! The cabbage leather doesn’t look so hot but I hope he’s just adjusting. Everything else is looking pretty good! Also got a pic of my humble, hardworking nerite, Bartholomew. He’s been chugging along like a little tank since day 1, chowing down on all kinds stuff! I’m spot-feeding my corals with a diluted phytoplankton blend, they seem to be enjoying it. I’ve also got a growing culture of copepods coming out at night, large numbers living in the sand and showing up on the glass. Overall, feeling pretty good! My sand bed has bubbles forming in it, should I get some sort of sand-sifter to keep toxic gases from building up? Not sure the best way to keep the deep sand bed healthy.

 

[count krunk]

Inverts with a clown goby would be really cool.

 

[LegalReefer]

Inverts with a clown goby would be really cool.

Would a clown goby be able to thrive with so little space? I have a lot of rock in there. If you have any ideas for cool inverts tho, I’m all ears!

 

[count krunk]

Clown gobies require very little space, they are perchers. They are also very smol.

Like some others have said, sexy shrimp would be what I would put in this tank. As well as rock flower anemones for them to host.

Add in one or two soft corals and done zoa's I think you would be set

 

[LegalReefer]

Clown gobies require very little space, they are perchers. They are also very smol.

Like some others have said, sexy shrimp would be what I would put in this tank. As well as rock flower anemones for them to host.

Add in one or two soft corals and done zoa's I think you would be set

Sexy shrimp are what I’m gonna aim for down the line, got a rock flower anemone and some other cool stuff so hopefully the tank would be good for them

 

[LegalReefer]

Update time! Since last time around I’ve added... a lot. I bought some ‘shrooms from a local reefer, two orange ricordeas and a bunch of cute blue discosomas. Got a finger leather frag, a rock of zoas, a candy cane polyp, a beautiful rock flower anemone, and a gorgonian.

Don’t become friends with people at your LFS folks, you’ll feel compelled to buy when they give you really good deals! I’m loving the progress so far, it’s not been a long time but I’m starting to see some growth from my zoas, gsp, and cabbage leather! I may be moving too quickly, but I think I’m maxed out on corals and space at this point.

Loving it all though, I sit and just watch my tank when I come home from work, it’s so relaxing. My favorite coral is probably my little green cabbage leather, I’m so hopeful he’ll grow into a big awesome leather! Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved the leather corals, and that certainly hasn’t changed. I’ve half a mind to do a leather only tank eventually, I find them so cool. The gorgonian is also super nifty, has nice movement in the current and will hopefully add a cool vertical component once it starts growing.

I would love advice or suggestions for what to do from here by more advanced reefers, though! Don’t know if I should get a small power head or upgrade my flow somehow; my pump does 85 gph I think, and there’s decent flow, but I just don’t know.

 

[Patientman]

VERY NICE! +1 for giving a clown goby a try … would think it would do fine.

 

[LegalReefer]

Clown gobies require very little space, they are perchers. They are also very smol.

Like some others have said, sexy shrimp would be what I would put in this tank. As well as rock flower anemones for them to host.

Add in one or two soft corals and done zoa's I think you would be set

I plan on getting a clown goby if my plans for future pan out in a direction where I don’t have to move; I’ll find out in a month or two.

Wanted to get some sexy shrimp, but went on vacation (nothing died other than maybe my bristle worms, haven’t seen them since returning) and came back to lots of GHA and a few aiptasia. Instead ended up adding an Emerald Mithrax Crab (who’s been going to town munching algae), another nerite, and a peppermint shrimp! I want to add some red discosoma shrooms to go with the blue ones, and then I think this baby is all set to grow!

 

[fachatga]

Hi and welcome. Things look great so far. But be careful and go slowly. Small tanks like that are a lot harder to keep than a bigger one since the smallest miscalculation has a much bigger effect on the tank. They said looks like you’re off to a great start.

 

[LegalReefer]

Hi and welcome. Things look great so far. But be careful and go slowly. Small tanks like that are a lot harder to keep than a bigger one since the smallest miscalculation has a much bigger effect on the tank. They said looks like you’re off to a great start.

It survived me being away for two weeks, and some of the corals are even visibly growing, so I hope I’ve managed to get things off to a good start! I’ve doubled the number of blue shrooms I have, have grown a handful more zoas (that I’ve noticed), and have seen my little adorable cabbage leather put on polyps, so I’m hoping I’m doing it right. That said, my rhodactis shrooms are occasionally fussy, putting out mesenterial filaments and looking shriveled, but other times they’re great. I dunno, getting my water tested by my LFS tomorrow, wanna make sure everything is in good order. Thank you for the advice, this forum is so helpful! Any suggestions for additives and things like that?

 

[fachatga]

That’s great. It’s not impossible. Just something to be aware of. Seems it’s all going really well so far. Much better than I can say when I started

 

[fachatga]

Water changes in a small tank weekly can probably give you all you need for some time without dosing. At least IMO. That’s a positive of small tanks. But I would say for now test test and test. Keep a journal of when you tested during the day and what the parameters are and anything else you did. You’ll eventually see what your tank might need and can dose that. To add amino acids and other things I use redsea AB+ reef nutrition. Tropic Marin makes great additives and such lots of people here use too. Probably lots of threads here that will give you better advice then I can

 

[LegalReefer]

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this, almost two months actually! Things have gone pretty well, even with a week long vacation away! First and biggest update, I got my first fish! A shark nose goby, aquacultured. Cute little bugger who loves to perch on my zoa rock.

Additionally, almost all of my corals seem to be doing pretty well! My orange rhodactis shrooms have grown nicely and one split, giving me 3 beauties, my blue shrooms are slowly taking over the back of my tank, my Kenya Tree has grown enormously, GSP’s are starting to spread onto the back wall, green cabbage leather is putting on more polyps and mass, Zoas are growing nicely, all in all my softies are happy.

I have two LPS corals, a candy cane, and a Hollywood Stunner Chalice, and they’re... wishing washy. Candy cane I’ve had for months, and while it hasn’t died, it has withered somewhat and was starting to bleach and retract until I put it in a more shaded spot. Now it’s gaining some color back but isn’t really filling out its skeleton yet. Any suggestions?

The Hollywood Stunner is happier, but not growing much yet. Granted, I’ve only had it for two weeks, but I have yet to see any noticeable change in its mantle extension. We’ll see with time, I suppose. Still feeding everything, pellets for the RFA, ‘shrooms, fish and critters (speaking of my inverts, had to give my Emerald Mythrax away as he’d decided coraline algae and GSP’s were delicious), and dosing phytoplankton for my corals. Also using Coralife Nano A&B for trace elements and dosing, Alk and Calcium are at 11 and 420 respectively. Dunno if I should be doing more there. Anyhow, that’s it for now! I’ve gotta figure out how to transport this baby 250 miles in the next three weeks, wish me luck!

 

[LegalReefer]

And a photo of my cabbage leather because for whatever reason, this guy is just my favorite. It’s grown nicely since the start! My gorgonians are also doing alright, my photosynthetic stick has grown maybe 1/2” while my probably-NPS that I pulled off a dock has actually grown too, so I’m probably doing something right?