MarkSolovyev
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2020
- Messages
- 2
- Reaction score
- 5
Hello everyone!
My name is Mark and I’ve been browsing this forum for years and recently I’ve joined your forum because I finally moved from a planted tank to a Pico reef tank.
Well here’s a little story of how that went. I ended up on an impulse buy going to Petco and picking up one of their Imagitarium 3.7-gallon AIO aquariums for like $50. I always loved the Nuvo 10-gallon AIO’s but never pulled the trigger because of its size. I already have a 29-gallon planted Iwagumi tank taking up most of the little to no space that I have in my room. So, I thought this tank was the perfect size for a desktop system.
So my impulse purchases just doubled.
I currently got a small RODI set up in my room so water shouldn’t be an issue… went to home depot and got a 5-gallon bucket with a lid. Put in a small 50-watt heater and a small pump to get some circulation. Now that I had a salt mixing setup, I needed to figure out the actual tank.
I picked up a ten-pound bag of Caribsea Arag-a-live sand in the Bahama Oolite size and ordered 7lbs of reef saver rock from BRS (Ordered way more than I needed so I could fiddle around with the aquascape. Plus it was pretty cheap since I didn’t need that much.) I picked up some new Fluval bio-media that I had experience with and a baggie of Seachem Purigen. The aquarium came with a large coarse foam filleter that I moved to use as my primary mechanical filtration.
So now the back of my aquarium goes like this; water flows in through the overflow and flows down the coarse sponge and through the Purigen, then flows into the second baffle that just contains bio-media. In the third chamber, I put in a 50-watt Aqueon adjustable heater (Looking into upgrading to a Cobalt NeoTherm 50 watt.), a thermometer, and the stock pump and stock outflow.
For lighting, I didn’t have enough money for something like an AI Prime so taking into account the small size of the tank, I purchased a Hipagero 30-watt LED light. I had to cut the mount to fit it onto this tank because the baffle walls were too close for the mount to slide in. The lights super powerful and floods the tank (I had to turn down the strength to prevent algae growth.), and approximately four inches from the top of the tank. I ended up really liking the color of the light and was happy with the purchase.
While I was waiting for my rock to arrive and everything sat in pieces in the corner of my room, I went to my LFS in Portland OR, where I met an amazing team that helped me out. I picked up some Fritz-Zyme Nitrifying Bacteria to start cycling my tank and picked up a bucket of Seachem Salinity salt. At first, I got really anxious because when I went shopping for salt I wanted something like Red Sea Reef salt or something that I've heard of, but the shop only carried the Aquavitro Salinity, Normal IO Salt, and some other salts that I cant remember. Having experience with Aquavitro for my planted tank, I trusted them and picked up the bucket. Well when I came home, I read a bunch of negative and positive reviews. People loved the accuracy of the mix and the labeling but hated the sediment and cloudiness, and as a new reefer, I got really worried that I bought a good salt but was going to end up with a cloudy tank.
So, I filtered 4 gallons of RODI water and added the appropriate amount of salt and found it to be super cloudy for the first 24 hours but was surprised that it was perfectly at a specific gravity of 1.026. There was heavy sediment on the walls and bottom of the bucket, but the water got consistently clearer. I then purchased a set of SunSun 580 gph powerheads and set them up to create a mild vortex in the bucket. This fixed the issue of mixing time and lead to less sediment since the water had good flow.
I finally ended up setting my tank up after weeks of purchasing and waiting for shipping. I was super happy with how it looked and was ecstatic that I finally made the choice to progress in the hobby. So, after a couple of days of constant research, I realized that I wasn’t happy with the setup. I really wanted to keep some SPS corals and in researching their care I realized my tank had good lighting, but super poor flow. This became a huge problem since I had the smallest amount of space to work with. The baffle for equipment is 3”x3” and already had a heater.
I ended up accidentally breaking the stock outflow and since it was a weird size decided to replace the pump and outflow all together. I purchased some ¼ inch locline and NPT fitting. Then ordered a ¼ inch RFG from Vivid Creative Aquatics. After that, I ordered a 160 gph Hydor Pico Centrifugal pump. After installing everything with some ½ inch CPVC pipe replacing the stock rubber hose connectors, I finally thought I could leave the tank alone and allow it to cycle.
Well, I was wrong. The flow was pathetic. It was very weak and although the pump was double the power of the stock one, I couldn’t tell. So now, I had a real obstacle. I was already pushing the limit of space in the back of the tank and putting in a powerhead was going to take up too much space. I thought of purchasing a Vortech MP10WQD and turning down the power, but it was way too expensive for my current budget. So, I ended up picking up the Hydor Pico 300 gph pump not knowing if it would fit or not. Well to my surprise it fit pretty well. I had to mess with the piping, but I got it to work. The flow is amazing. It's random, and powerful, and eliminated any dead spots, without throwing any of my sand around.
Finally, I am at the end of my build and cycling the tank by adding a couple of drops of ammonia that the owner of my LFS gave to me. For the next four months, I'll be doing weekly 50% water changes and slowly reducing the ammonia dose until the bacteria have cycled and I have no ammonia in the tank. The lights are staying off for the four months until I am confident that the beneficial microorganisms have the high ground. Once I switch the lights on Ill be using Vibrant as a prophylactic measure to combat the ugly stage and only when my water is stable, and I have consistent coralline algae growth will I add my first corals.
If anyone took the time to read this full thing and has any suggestions, tips, tricks, or criticism, feel free to respond and possibly help out a newbie reefer.
Thanks!
My name is Mark and I’ve been browsing this forum for years and recently I’ve joined your forum because I finally moved from a planted tank to a Pico reef tank.
Well here’s a little story of how that went. I ended up on an impulse buy going to Petco and picking up one of their Imagitarium 3.7-gallon AIO aquariums for like $50. I always loved the Nuvo 10-gallon AIO’s but never pulled the trigger because of its size. I already have a 29-gallon planted Iwagumi tank taking up most of the little to no space that I have in my room. So, I thought this tank was the perfect size for a desktop system.
So my impulse purchases just doubled.
I currently got a small RODI set up in my room so water shouldn’t be an issue… went to home depot and got a 5-gallon bucket with a lid. Put in a small 50-watt heater and a small pump to get some circulation. Now that I had a salt mixing setup, I needed to figure out the actual tank.
I picked up a ten-pound bag of Caribsea Arag-a-live sand in the Bahama Oolite size and ordered 7lbs of reef saver rock from BRS (Ordered way more than I needed so I could fiddle around with the aquascape. Plus it was pretty cheap since I didn’t need that much.) I picked up some new Fluval bio-media that I had experience with and a baggie of Seachem Purigen. The aquarium came with a large coarse foam filleter that I moved to use as my primary mechanical filtration.
So now the back of my aquarium goes like this; water flows in through the overflow and flows down the coarse sponge and through the Purigen, then flows into the second baffle that just contains bio-media. In the third chamber, I put in a 50-watt Aqueon adjustable heater (Looking into upgrading to a Cobalt NeoTherm 50 watt.), a thermometer, and the stock pump and stock outflow.
For lighting, I didn’t have enough money for something like an AI Prime so taking into account the small size of the tank, I purchased a Hipagero 30-watt LED light. I had to cut the mount to fit it onto this tank because the baffle walls were too close for the mount to slide in. The lights super powerful and floods the tank (I had to turn down the strength to prevent algae growth.), and approximately four inches from the top of the tank. I ended up really liking the color of the light and was happy with the purchase.
While I was waiting for my rock to arrive and everything sat in pieces in the corner of my room, I went to my LFS in Portland OR, where I met an amazing team that helped me out. I picked up some Fritz-Zyme Nitrifying Bacteria to start cycling my tank and picked up a bucket of Seachem Salinity salt. At first, I got really anxious because when I went shopping for salt I wanted something like Red Sea Reef salt or something that I've heard of, but the shop only carried the Aquavitro Salinity, Normal IO Salt, and some other salts that I cant remember. Having experience with Aquavitro for my planted tank, I trusted them and picked up the bucket. Well when I came home, I read a bunch of negative and positive reviews. People loved the accuracy of the mix and the labeling but hated the sediment and cloudiness, and as a new reefer, I got really worried that I bought a good salt but was going to end up with a cloudy tank.
So, I filtered 4 gallons of RODI water and added the appropriate amount of salt and found it to be super cloudy for the first 24 hours but was surprised that it was perfectly at a specific gravity of 1.026. There was heavy sediment on the walls and bottom of the bucket, but the water got consistently clearer. I then purchased a set of SunSun 580 gph powerheads and set them up to create a mild vortex in the bucket. This fixed the issue of mixing time and lead to less sediment since the water had good flow.
I finally ended up setting my tank up after weeks of purchasing and waiting for shipping. I was super happy with how it looked and was ecstatic that I finally made the choice to progress in the hobby. So, after a couple of days of constant research, I realized that I wasn’t happy with the setup. I really wanted to keep some SPS corals and in researching their care I realized my tank had good lighting, but super poor flow. This became a huge problem since I had the smallest amount of space to work with. The baffle for equipment is 3”x3” and already had a heater.
I ended up accidentally breaking the stock outflow and since it was a weird size decided to replace the pump and outflow all together. I purchased some ¼ inch locline and NPT fitting. Then ordered a ¼ inch RFG from Vivid Creative Aquatics. After that, I ordered a 160 gph Hydor Pico Centrifugal pump. After installing everything with some ½ inch CPVC pipe replacing the stock rubber hose connectors, I finally thought I could leave the tank alone and allow it to cycle.
Well, I was wrong. The flow was pathetic. It was very weak and although the pump was double the power of the stock one, I couldn’t tell. So now, I had a real obstacle. I was already pushing the limit of space in the back of the tank and putting in a powerhead was going to take up too much space. I thought of purchasing a Vortech MP10WQD and turning down the power, but it was way too expensive for my current budget. So, I ended up picking up the Hydor Pico 300 gph pump not knowing if it would fit or not. Well to my surprise it fit pretty well. I had to mess with the piping, but I got it to work. The flow is amazing. It's random, and powerful, and eliminated any dead spots, without throwing any of my sand around.
Finally, I am at the end of my build and cycling the tank by adding a couple of drops of ammonia that the owner of my LFS gave to me. For the next four months, I'll be doing weekly 50% water changes and slowly reducing the ammonia dose until the bacteria have cycled and I have no ammonia in the tank. The lights are staying off for the four months until I am confident that the beneficial microorganisms have the high ground. Once I switch the lights on Ill be using Vibrant as a prophylactic measure to combat the ugly stage and only when my water is stable, and I have consistent coralline algae growth will I add my first corals.
If anyone took the time to read this full thing and has any suggestions, tips, tricks, or criticism, feel free to respond and possibly help out a newbie reefer.
Thanks!
