Chris's 5.5 Gallon Pico Pest Reef!

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ChrissFishes01

ChrissFishes01

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So, no Asterinas yet - I had a Harlequin Shrimp at one point, so I may have ended up pulling all of them out to feed that guy before I sent him on. I forget!

I come with pictures, though!

The Button Polyps seem to like the sunlight - they take on a nice orange coloration under it.



I just thought this lens reflection was cool - it looks like the lens is behind the hermit!

 

Karen00

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Hey guys!

So, I recently had a disaster in my hobby. My apartment had to be treated for pests, and I was required to remove all of my tanks from the apartment during treatment. During this time, I ended up losing about half of my livestock - including my beloved Peacock Mantis Shrimp.



I do really miss having a mantis shrimp - they such cool little creatures. Very interactive, inquisitive, and always getting into some sort of trouble in the tank. Reminds me of my puffers, in some ways! But I don't think I want another peacock right now - I want to try a different species. One I've had my eye on for quite a while.

The Wennerae Mantis, Neogonodactylus wennerae!

These guys max out at around 3", and are perfectly suited to small tanks. They're smashers (meaning they have modified claws to break open shellfish), just like my peacock was, but with much less power. These guys are able to hunt down crabs, shrimp, and snails, but are going to struggle to crack open anything with a thick shell.

I went to my LFS today, and picked up a 5.5 gallon Seapora glass tank for $16.99. It's a nice tank for the price - Seapora makes nice stuff, IMO. I rinsed it out, just to get any dust out of it, and this was it.



Next, I decided to paint the back black, since the tank wasn't going right up against a wall. I taped off the rim of the tank with duct tape, cause that's all I had lol.



I just use some Krylon Black Acrylic paint and a roller for this. I prefer spray painting but I don't have an area to do that here, so rolling paint on is the best I can do. It looks fine from the front side of the tank, but usually looks kind of "meh" from the back.



I did three coats total, which got me a decently opaque surface. This is what the tank looked like, pre-fill:



I added some sand from the Peacock Mantis tank, which has long been dried, but not cleaned. I'm hoping all that dead gunk in the sand will help get us a strong cycle in this tank. Whenever I filled it the first time, I ended up getting milk, basically. Gotta love aragonite.



I had just used plain freshwater to fill that time, though, so I drained the tank and added in the rock. I'm using a piece of marco dry rock that I had from a previous tank, a piece of well-seasoned rock that's got some life already on it (although, not much algae due to being in a bucket), and a piece of rock I got from the LFS.

Whenever I refilled the tank (with saltwater this time) I was careful to do it slowly to minimize cloudiness. The powerhead I bought (Aquatop MCP-1) was way too strong for this tank, and was blowing water around. So, I pulled my Koralia Nano 240 out of my 10 gallon QT, and switched them around. Each tank is better off, I think. Then, I tossed in a preset heater and a thermometer, and we're off to the races!



If you noticed the three chonky Aiptasia on the piece of rock on the left, good job! They're our first inhabitants for this tank. I'm going to be keeping a variety of "pests", and when I saw this rock in the store, I knew I had to have it. The LFS lady offered to kill them off the rock for me, but I told her I wanted them. She thought I was crazy! It also has a healthy helping of red slime, and lots of little pods and feather dusters on it.




Believe it or not, despite me owning several marine aquariums, I've never actually had these guys, and I've always been intrigued. I know that they're basically the devil, but that's kind of the point of this tank, right? Now, if I could only find someone who had Majanos...

The other piece of live rock (on the right) I chose because it's covered in these micro feather dusters. Not a pest by any means, and I love having them in my tanks. However, they do reproduce like crazy, and I figured they fit the theme fairly well. Plus, it's always fun to see where they pop up next! You can see some old, dead tubes on the piece of dry marco rock in the middle from it's last tank deployment.



I'm hoping to find some Majanos, but haven't had luck so far. I think they're gorgeous, personally. I'm also thinking some Yellow Polyps, Brown Palys, Caulerpa Prolifera, Caulerpa Racemosa, and maybe some other fast-growing macros might find a good home here. I'm always open to suggestions, too!

I'll be removing the rock scape and adding in some PVC tunnels for the mantis in a week or so. I didn't think about it until the tank was already wet. Oops.


Nice setup! I just started a 5g a few months ago and I'm still using the stock pump (it's fish only at the moment). I was looking at the Koralia Nano 240 but at 240gph I thought it would be too strong and would blast coral (and fish) all over the tank. Are you finding it OK? I've fell into a paralysis trying to make a decision on a pump for this size of tank.
 
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Nice setup! I just started a 5g a few months ago and I'm still using the stock pump (it's fish only at the moment). I was looking at the Koralia Nano 240 but at 240gph I thought it would be too strong and would blast coral (and fish) all over the tank. Are you finding it OK? I've fell into a paralysis trying to make a decision on a pump for this size of tank.
The Koralia Nano pumps have a really wide, gentle flow dispersion - so 240 really isn't that much on the pumps, imo. I think it's a great choice for these small tanks.
 

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The Koralia Nano pumps have a really wide, gentle flow dispersion - so 240 really isn't that much on the pumps, imo. I think it's a great choice for these small tanks.
Thank you so much! I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders now that my powerhead paralysis has been broken. Haha.
 
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Thank you so much! I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders now that my powerhead paralysis has been broken. Haha.
I'm glad! My only complaint with the Koralia pumps is the fact that they're somewhat limited in how you can aim them - you really aren't able to aim them at the surface at all (at least with mine), hence why I had to add the airline for surface agitation. Might not be a problem in an AIO, though!
 
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So uh... I just got home, and was looking in the tank. Noticed some diatoms growing, which makes sense because I dosed the tank. Then, I look down and see THIS:





It's got feet tubes like starfish and sea urchins do - is it a cucumber, perhaps? I guess it had to hitchhike in on that rock!
 

Karen00

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I'm glad! My only complaint with the Koralia pumps is the fact that they're somewhat limited in how you can aim them - you really aren't able to aim them at the surface at all (at least with mine), hence why I had to add the airline for surface agitation. Might not be a problem in an AIO, though!
Thanks for this! I will keep that in mind. I had narrowed my list down to Koralia and Coral Vue which is why I'm glad to see your setup and that it's working for your tank because I was just about to toss a coin to help me make my decision. Haha.
 

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So uh... I just got home, and was looking in the tank. Noticed some diatoms growing, which makes sense because I dosed the tank. Then, I look down and see THIS:





It's got feet tubes like starfish and sea urchins do - is it a cucumber, perhaps? I guess it had to hitchhike in on that rock!
yeah that’s a cucumber, that’s awesome.
 
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yeah that’s a cucumber, that’s awesome.
Cool!

I've looked on a few different ID websites and haven't seen anything that looked exactly like it - but, if I'm not mistaken, aren't most cucumbers suited to large, established tanks? He's very cool, but I'd hate to starve him. Plus, I'm not sure if they're macro-safe.
 

Uzidaisies

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Cool!

I've looked on a few different ID websites and haven't seen anything that looked exactly like it - but, if I'm not mistaken, aren't most cucumbers suited to large, established tanks? He's very cool, but I'd hate to starve him. Plus, I'm not sure if they're macro-safe.
Can’t help you there. Don’t know too much about keeping them. Lfs I go to has a small cucumber in a 10g bio cube I think it is. Don’t know if it’s happy, but it’s there still and it looks cool.
 

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Cool!

I've looked on a few different ID websites and haven't seen anything that looked exactly like it - but, if I'm not mistaken, aren't most cucumbers suited to large, established tanks? He's very cool, but I'd hate to starve him. Plus, I'm not sure if they're macro-safe.
Aren't sea cucumbers also poisonous so if they get attacked or stressed they release a poison which is powerful enough to wipe out a tank? I thought I just read a post where a member lost thousands of dollars in livestock when something happened to the cucumber (I don't know if it was attacked or died). I too read they were for larger/mature tanks.
 
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Can’t help you there. Don’t know too much about keeping them. Lfs I go to has a small cucumber in a 10g bio cube I think it is. Don’t know if it’s happy, but it’s there still and it looks cool.
Gotcha. I know basically nothing about them, since the only large tanks I've had were usually unsuitable homes for most species I came across.

From my (limited) research, it seems to be behaving like a Tiger Tail - it's got its rear-end anchored in the rock, and has an open mouth on the other side. It's maybe 4" long, max - doesn't look like any commonly for-sale species I can find. So I'm gonna say that it's probably a Holothuria species?

Aren't sea cucumbers also poisonous so if they get attacked or stressed they release a poison which is powerful enough to wipe out a tank? I thought I just read a post where a member lost thousands of dollars in livestock when something happened to the cucumber (I don't know if it was attacked or died). I too read they were for larger/mature tanks.
I've heard that if they get sucked into powerheads they can be quite deadly. If I end up keeping this guy, I'd have to figure out a guard for my pump...
 
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I think it’s Holothuria floridana.
I had seen that species and it looks very similar in shape, but not quite in coloration, at least to the pics I've seen online. I know colors vary, so maybe it IS Floridana.
 

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This was the first one I found online that looked like a match;
DB2878DD-4E03-4D1B-9A62-92EC1EC5B245.png
 
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This was the first one I found online that looked like a match;
DB2878DD-4E03-4D1B-9A62-92EC1EC5B245.png
That guy does look pretty close to this one. Most of the pics I had seen had featured gray/brown ones - I guess there really is that much variation.

Now, to do some research and figure out a plan - I doubt this guy will be cool in here for very long. Maybe if it was an older tank.
 
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Probably is best to find him a different home. Don’t think you’d get much out of selling him.
Really cool hitchhiker to observe for now though if you ask me.
Totally agreed!

From the research I'm doing, it seems as if most cucumbers are super slow-growing (and slow-moving) - so I may set up a larger nano (10-20 gallons, for now) with some established sand (if I can find some)) and make that his home.

This would be sooooo much easier if I had kept all my live sand wet. I'd have had like 3 different 40+ gallon tanks that would have made a good home, or at least been able to provide him with food.
 

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