Classroom Pico Reef

[Laniac103]

The shrimp will be fine for a week, I personally never target feed the sexies in my nano anyway! I’d personally be more worried about evaporation. Does the tank have an ATO? A very tight fitting lid?

Yeah it has a glass lid that seems to do a pretty good job at preventing evaporation. I hardly ever have to worry about topping it up. That's good to hear about the shrimp though, thanks!

 

[Laniac103]

I'm happy to report that everything survived the break. I was a little worried since the district said they'd be shutting the heat in the building off but I live in Texas so it never got so cold inside that my tank heater couldn't keep up.

The tank is now about 2.5 months old and is square in the middle of the ugly stage, I'm just counting the days until I start seeing some corraline algae but I don't think it's gonna be any time soon. At least the corals and the shrimp seem happy!

 

[Laniac103]

I've got a couple of questions for anyone following along who's willing to answer them. It seems like I spent a lot of effort building the AIO compartment in the back of the tank, but I don't actually use it for anything. It's nice to be able to hide the pump and the heater back there but other than that it seems like wasted space. Should I have some kind of added filtration back there? Does anyone with more experience with small tanks like this have any suggestions?

 

[Lineatus]

Mechanical filtration, like filter floss, could work well

 

[Laniac103]

Coming up on 5 months now and I'm very happy with how the tank is coming along. I had a rough patch with a nasty looking phytoplankton bloom, but a small UV sterilizer cleared it up and has kept the water looking pristine since then. My larger tank at home had a catastrophic failure, the glass cracked and I came home to a bunch of water and dead fish on the floor but I was able to save some of the coral and one of my clowns who lives in this tank now until I can figure out something better.

 

[Laniac103]

My one big concern is that I haven't seen any coralline algae growing in this tank yet. Is that something that just takes more time? Or should I be looking at kickstarting it with one of those bottles of coralline spores?

 

[DeniseAndy]

It will start as long as something had it when introduced. Like a frag or snail. Just takes time.

 

[Laniac103]

The clown seems to be hosting in the red trachy coral. He is constantly rubbing up against it and laying on top of it. Is this going to irritate the coral or prevent it from growing?

 

[Rjmul]

I would get a relatively massive ATO container under that desk

 

[DeniseAndy]

The clown seems to be hosting in the red trachy coral. He is constantly rubbing up against it and laying on top of it. Is this going to irritate the coral or prevent it from growing?

Most corals actually get used to it and can adapt fine. Some not so much, so keep an eye on it. Make sure it puffs up nice and eats. The clown may even feed it.

 

[Laniac103]

I would get a relatively massive ATO container under that desk

I've been thinking about it but so far it hasn't been too much of a hassle to just top it up manually every other day or so. It has a pretty tight fitting glass lid that reduces evaporation.

 

[AnotherReefHobbyist]

Sorry to hear about the cracked tank, this one is looking good though!

 

[kiswanson]

I've been thinking about it but so far it hasn't been too much of a hassle to just top it up manually every other day or so. It has a pretty tight fitting glass lid that reduces evaporation.

I love seeing the Pico tanks. I have a 3.8 gallon that is doing well. They really small gobies would do fine. I have a neon blue goby and a hairfin dwarf goby and the tank seems huge for them. Also thinking about a yasha goby and candy cane shrimp pair.

For filtration I use a little filter floss that I change twice a week, a chemi pure blue nano that I change once a month, and I have some media for biological filtration that I seeded with PNS substrate sauce and copepods.

If you ever decide to use an ATO there are some really nice nano sets. I have info about it on my build thread.


Thread 'Pico Reef Tank Build Thread - Lifegard 3.8'
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/pico-reef-tank-build-thread-lifegard-3-8.886826/

I have a mesh lid, so I lose almost half a gallon to evaporation a week, so for me it’s an absolute must. A tight fitting lid to minimize evaporation would definitely have been the cheapest option.

 

[Rtaylor]

You could upgrade your tank and have some fun projects for the kids (what age group do you teach?) with some diy learning activities. A couple ideas:

1. Making a gravity ATO is a relatively simple project and just needs an empty container of some sort and a bit of airline tubing. If you have older students you can build your own sensor based ATO (much more complicated)
2. Brine shrimp hatchery (tons of how to’s online)
3. Phytoplankton culturing and/or copepod culturing
4. Refugium build
5. Surge systems (might be a bit too noisy/messy)
6. Doser build (this would require more expense for the pumps and older kids)
7. Auto feeder

most of these projects use things like empty 2 liter bottles or a used (hopefully free) small aquarium and a bit of airline.

 

[Laniac103]

You could upgrade your tank and have some fun projects for the kids (what age group do you teach?) with some diy learning activities. A couple ideas:

1. Making a gravity ATO is a relatively simple project and just needs an empty container of some sort and a bit of airline tubing. If you have older students you can build your own sensor based ATO (much more complicated)
2. Brine shrimp hatchery (tons of how to’s online)
3. Phytoplankton culturing and/or copepod culturing
4. Refugium build
5. Surge systems (might be a bit too noisy/messy)
6. Doser build (this would require more expense for the pumps and older kids)
7. Auto feeder

most of these projects use things like empty 2 liter bottles or a used (hopefully free) small aquarium and a bit of airline.

I teach high school chemistry, I've used my Hana tests as examples for a few different reactions and am for sure planning on tying it in to pH and buffers when we get to that point later in the year. I'm not sure I really want that many hands in and around the tank though so I think I'll keep all the DIY projects to myself for a while.