Marineland Portrait 5 gallon

[booth2010]

After being out of the hobby for a little over a year I have decided to get a tank to put on my desk at work. After a week or so of research and thought I have purchased a Marineland Portrait 5 gallon tank. It is supposed to be delivered Monday. Once it arrives I plan to leak test it for a week or so before moving it to the office.

This weekend I plan to head over to the LFS to pick up a small bag of live sand and possibly a small thing of tonga branches if I can find any that I like. If not I will dig through the dry rock that I have from my previous tanks and put something together. I am planning on having 1" of live sand and 3-5 lbs of rock in the display. There will be 1-2lbs of rubble in the back compartment if it'll fit and some filter floss to remove the large particles.

Once the tank has been moved to the office I plan to use a bottle of Bio-Spira to jump start the bacteria. I will add a bit of the bottled ammonium chloride to feed the bacteria and let the tank cycle for a week or so. At that point I will add the only fish to the tank, a Yellow Clown Goby.

Here is what I have planned for equipment:
-20 watt Mini-Therm heater by Cobalt Aquatics (if it'll fit in the back compartment)
-stock pump until it dies on me, I will likely buy a Quite One Pro 400 as a backup
-I will keep the stock LED on the tank until I am ready to add corals. At that point I will buy an A80 Tuna Blue made by Kessil.
-I have a Vortech MP10 I may add if I need it but I don't see it being necessary.
Since this is a desktop tank at work I don't think I will have any other equipment so I can keep power draw to a minimum.

I will post pictures as things come together and I will post my proposed livestock list tomorrow.

 

[JALIASC]

Looks like you're off to a great start, following!

 

[booth2010]

Looks like you're off to a great start, following!

Thanks.

 

[booth2010]

As promised here is the proposed livestock for the tank:
- Yellow Clown Goby
-Possibly, but probably not, a Peppermint Shrimp
-Dwarf colored feather duster - Pink
-The smallest CUC package from Reefcleaners
-Taro Tree Coral
-A mushroom or 2
-Some sort of leather coral
-And lastly a rock of GSP for a pop of color.

I may dabble with zoas instead of doing the GSP and depending on how the A80 does I may attempt to keep some LPS or SPS. Time will tell.

Since I forgot about the race in Daytona today I did not even try to make it out to the LFS. I will head out there tomorrow to take a look at their rock selection.

 

[dan987]

Planning on doing exactly this, right now. In the early planning stages. Glad to see I'm not alone. I have gotten a lot of negative feedback for trying to start a 5g reef, but I think the marineland portrait limits evaporation very well. We shall see.

Please keep this updated.

 

[Clydezilla]

I have had one set up for 4 months now. I do water changes every Sunday. The top is really good at limiting evaporation for 1 week intervals. I almost never need to top off. And the stock pump did ok, it's something like 50gpm. I was looking at wavemaker but even the nano and mini are large for the tank. And the mp10 is small but seems like a waste to me.

Hydor Aqamai KPS Wi-Fi Controllable Wavemaker Pump https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071FVBTKN/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_NwwmBb3KVB4HY

I did stick the hydor rotating water deflector on, but i took it off after about a day. Not a bad little gadget but it didn't seem to be much of a benefit to the tank. It rotates rather slowly. If they made one that went back and forth i would be interested. That being said, when i upgraded the pump every coral was happier. And it seems to be all that is needed for now.