Young_Reefer
Community Member
Hi everyone! This thread will be dedicated to documenting my re-emergence into the reef keeping hobby through the build and maintenance of a fish-less pico reef. This project began with my interest in the global coral bleaching crisis and I hope that it will instill a greater passion for reef building (hermatypic) corals in myself and others who follow along. These types of coral are generally categorized as SPS in the aquarium hobby although many LPS "build" a small skeletal system as well. So, my plan is to grow reef building corals from frags obtained from fellow reefers in a pico sps reef tank. Feel free to follow along!
P.S. I will start posting only the latest update in the first thread message because I'm long winded and I know it. The older updates will be posted in thread comments below.
03/06/2019
Stocked with SPS Frags!
Albrecht’s Chateau is looking good! Since the last update I have picked up 11 new frags including two acros, 2 types of zoas, a blasto merletti, and 6 species of montipora. With the addition of the new frags, I have also began daily alkalinity testing and have been successful in keeping it around 8-8.5 dkH. There have been a few challenges, the biggest being implementing 2-part dosing. I started by manually dosing DIY 2-part (Randy’s) at night. 1 ml of calcium and 2 ml bicarbonate per Randy’s recipe seemed to be working great. But, I had a trip home to visit family scheduled for a long weekend and used it as an excuse to build a Reef Pi doser “add-on” module.
The Reef Pi doser module I built houses two peristaltic pumps and the circuitry which is laid out in the Reef Pi guides. And it is powered by a 12 V supply, however, I chose not to use another Raspberry Pi Zero. Instead, I used some ethernet cable and two female ethernet ports to transfer signal from my “master” reef pi module to the doser module. Ethernet cables have 8 ports so it was the perfect fit; I needed a 5V power and ground and 6 signals (two to control the direction of each pump and one for the speed). I now have the doser set up and running and am playing with the amount to dose. It seems that the tank consumes somewhere between 0.3-0.5 dkH per day, but I need to do a more thorough study to nail this down (maybe 3 days without dosing and only testing morning and night?).
After dipping the new frags in Bayer, I decided to glue them all to live rock rubble I had in the overflow area. I did it outside of the tank after rinsing them, which allowed me to make sure the glue set and that I liked how they fit on the rubble pieces. I let them acclimate to the light for two weeks and then glued the rubble where I liked it in the tank. Three of the monti caps ended up on the back wall, I placed the across up high, and the other montis went on lower parts of the aquascape. I left the zoas on the substrate and the blasto in a medium height medium flow area.
I have started feeding more regularly also. I mix it up between reefroids and frozen mysis, always target feeding while the moonlight is on. The zoas and blasto will take pieces of mysis and Albrecht loves to get his anemones on some too. Interestingly, he actually lost or sat down his anemones for a few days… maybe he was molting? But they are back now and he is still very active at night. All the frags look great, except I lost my orange/yellow unidentified zoas. They seemed to just slowly shrivel up. All the sps have good polyp extension (especially when the moonlight is on), and the tank seems to be aging well (lots of new coralline).
I think the next few weeks I will focus on regular maintenance and growth. It will be tough, but I hope to refrain from buying any new corals. I have gotten all of my frags so far from fellow reefers and hope to keep it that way. Maybe I’ll reward myself if I can keep all of these in good shape for another month! Until then, Albrecht’s Chateau will be happily growing out!
Some Parameters:
o Temperature – 80 +/- 0.3 F
o Salinity – 1.025-1.026
o dkH – 8.0-8.5 (this has proved tough to manage)
o Max Kessil A80 Intensity = 80% for 4 hours
o Dosing ~ 1.5 ml Ca (3 seconds at 70%) and 3 ml Bicarbonate (6 seconds at 63%)
Dosing in the morning before lights come on
Equipment:
o Imagitarium 3.7 g tank
Glass glued to cover overflow except for the upper section (surface skimming)
o Kessil A80 Tuna Blue (~4-5 inches above water at a slight angle, timed by reef pi)
o 120 gph stock return pump
o 40 gph powerhead to break water surface (scheduled by reef pi for “random” flow)
o Prizm HOB Protein Skimmer (cut return to fit tank and sitting on small wood scraps)
Operating at approximately 70% flow (skimming wet)
o Standard dial heater and 2 in tank thermometers (monitored/controlled by reef pi)
o Some type of biomedia and carbon in the filtration inlet section
o Glass cover
o Wine Bottle ATO
o Reef Pi:
o 2 thermocouples and controlled heater
o Power strip controller
o Kessil A80 control
o Moonlight control
o 2-part Reef Pi doser based on Randy’s formula
Corals:
o 1 eagle eye zoa (6 heads)
o 1 colony of fire and ice zoas (25 ish heads)
o 1 colony of yellow zoas (10 ish heads)
o 1 red mushroom rock (4 shrooms, one detached and is now behind the large LR piece)
o 1 grey/green ricordea on frag plug (4 shrooms, 1 has two mouths)
o 1 blasto merletti (6 heads)
o 1 Recovering jingle bell cyphastrea
o 1 Joe the Coral Acro
o 1 unknown “skinny” tan acro with yellow polyps (ID Please? Its seen clearly in the Right Side View Image)
o 6 montiporas:
4 montipora capricornis (2 types of purple, light green, and orange)
1 orange setosa
1 green spongodes (ORA?)
Inverts/CUC:
o 1 pom pom crab (named Albrecht by Keri)
o 1 cerith snail
o 1 nassarius snail
o 1 scarlet hermits
Notes:
o Tune in dosing regimen
o Increase light intensity
o Add more live rock to filter area and maybe to the display (curing in bucket)
Pictures:
Full Tank Shot
Left Side View
Right Side View
Reef Pi Doser
Adapted Ethernet Port
Reef Pi Connected to Doser (not hooked up to tank... I will post a full "setup" shot soon)
P.S. I will start posting only the latest update in the first thread message because I'm long winded and I know it. The older updates will be posted in thread comments below.
03/06/2019
Stocked with SPS Frags!
Albrecht’s Chateau is looking good! Since the last update I have picked up 11 new frags including two acros, 2 types of zoas, a blasto merletti, and 6 species of montipora. With the addition of the new frags, I have also began daily alkalinity testing and have been successful in keeping it around 8-8.5 dkH. There have been a few challenges, the biggest being implementing 2-part dosing. I started by manually dosing DIY 2-part (Randy’s) at night. 1 ml of calcium and 2 ml bicarbonate per Randy’s recipe seemed to be working great. But, I had a trip home to visit family scheduled for a long weekend and used it as an excuse to build a Reef Pi doser “add-on” module.
The Reef Pi doser module I built houses two peristaltic pumps and the circuitry which is laid out in the Reef Pi guides. And it is powered by a 12 V supply, however, I chose not to use another Raspberry Pi Zero. Instead, I used some ethernet cable and two female ethernet ports to transfer signal from my “master” reef pi module to the doser module. Ethernet cables have 8 ports so it was the perfect fit; I needed a 5V power and ground and 6 signals (two to control the direction of each pump and one for the speed). I now have the doser set up and running and am playing with the amount to dose. It seems that the tank consumes somewhere between 0.3-0.5 dkH per day, but I need to do a more thorough study to nail this down (maybe 3 days without dosing and only testing morning and night?).
After dipping the new frags in Bayer, I decided to glue them all to live rock rubble I had in the overflow area. I did it outside of the tank after rinsing them, which allowed me to make sure the glue set and that I liked how they fit on the rubble pieces. I let them acclimate to the light for two weeks and then glued the rubble where I liked it in the tank. Three of the monti caps ended up on the back wall, I placed the across up high, and the other montis went on lower parts of the aquascape. I left the zoas on the substrate and the blasto in a medium height medium flow area.
I have started feeding more regularly also. I mix it up between reefroids and frozen mysis, always target feeding while the moonlight is on. The zoas and blasto will take pieces of mysis and Albrecht loves to get his anemones on some too. Interestingly, he actually lost or sat down his anemones for a few days… maybe he was molting? But they are back now and he is still very active at night. All the frags look great, except I lost my orange/yellow unidentified zoas. They seemed to just slowly shrivel up. All the sps have good polyp extension (especially when the moonlight is on), and the tank seems to be aging well (lots of new coralline).
I think the next few weeks I will focus on regular maintenance and growth. It will be tough, but I hope to refrain from buying any new corals. I have gotten all of my frags so far from fellow reefers and hope to keep it that way. Maybe I’ll reward myself if I can keep all of these in good shape for another month! Until then, Albrecht’s Chateau will be happily growing out!
Some Parameters:
o Temperature – 80 +/- 0.3 F
o Salinity – 1.025-1.026
o dkH – 8.0-8.5 (this has proved tough to manage)
o Max Kessil A80 Intensity = 80% for 4 hours
o Dosing ~ 1.5 ml Ca (3 seconds at 70%) and 3 ml Bicarbonate (6 seconds at 63%)
Dosing in the morning before lights come on
Equipment:
o Imagitarium 3.7 g tank
Glass glued to cover overflow except for the upper section (surface skimming)
o Kessil A80 Tuna Blue (~4-5 inches above water at a slight angle, timed by reef pi)
o 120 gph stock return pump
o 40 gph powerhead to break water surface (scheduled by reef pi for “random” flow)
o Prizm HOB Protein Skimmer (cut return to fit tank and sitting on small wood scraps)
Operating at approximately 70% flow (skimming wet)
o Standard dial heater and 2 in tank thermometers (monitored/controlled by reef pi)
o Some type of biomedia and carbon in the filtration inlet section
o Glass cover
o Wine Bottle ATO
o Reef Pi:
o 2 thermocouples and controlled heater
o Power strip controller
o Kessil A80 control
o Moonlight control
o 2-part Reef Pi doser based on Randy’s formula
Corals:
o 1 eagle eye zoa (6 heads)
o 1 colony of fire and ice zoas (25 ish heads)
o 1 colony of yellow zoas (10 ish heads)
o 1 red mushroom rock (4 shrooms, one detached and is now behind the large LR piece)
o 1 grey/green ricordea on frag plug (4 shrooms, 1 has two mouths)
o 1 blasto merletti (6 heads)
o 1 Recovering jingle bell cyphastrea
o 1 Joe the Coral Acro
o 1 unknown “skinny” tan acro with yellow polyps (ID Please? Its seen clearly in the Right Side View Image)
o 6 montiporas:
4 montipora capricornis (2 types of purple, light green, and orange)
1 orange setosa
1 green spongodes (ORA?)
Inverts/CUC:
o 1 pom pom crab (named Albrecht by Keri)
o 1 cerith snail
o 1 nassarius snail
o 1 scarlet hermits
Notes:
o Tune in dosing regimen
o Increase light intensity
o Add more live rock to filter area and maybe to the display (curing in bucket)
Pictures:
Full Tank Shot
Left Side View
Right Side View
Reef Pi Doser
Adapted Ethernet Port
Reef Pi Connected to Doser (not hooked up to tank... I will post a full "setup" shot soon)
Last edited:
I didn't realize how bad the coral bleaching had gotten until I happened to watch Blue Planet II and Chasing Coral on Netflix. Then I was just angry-sad. Hope everything goes well and you inspire many people. Also, if you're looking for an App to replace Excel sheets, Aquarimate is an ($9.99) option for iOS. While it has some UX annoyances, the parameter log works well and it produces graphs.
