My 5 gallon deskmate cube pico reef

[xeqtologist]

Hello, my name is Josh. I'm from Arizona and got super deep into the hobby about a year ago. I took a hiatus from everything for a few months and got back into reef tanks about 4 months ago.

For reference, this is an Eshopps Deskmate, and it has a Kessil A360W. I got this tank about a year ago but it sat dormant until early Sept. of 2025.
It's a barebottom tank running the berlin method, no filtersock or anything. I have about 8-10 lbs of live rock imported from fiji. I run salinity at .26 and I have a 7 acros in here, a forest fire digi, a sheet of GSP and a gold hammer, with a mini maxi carpet nem. I have two small skunk clowns in here and I run everything pretty tight ship. I test every other day and do water changes to maintain 10 nitrates.

I get about 300 par at top rock and 250 par at the middle of the tank. I run 14500k light spectrum
(dont mind the algae on the acryllic, cant scrape there lol)

Paramaters:
Alk; 8.3
PH; 8.1
Calcium: 450
Mag: 1400
Nitrates: 10

I wanted to go for more of a cove feel with the rock scape, especially with the abundance of rock I wanted to use.

 

[JumboShrimp]

Looks fantastic!