Need help with a pico tank/ecosphere! Struggling with water flow, and few other things.

[PoetaCorvi]

Hello!

To preface, I have not kept aquatic setups. I have lots of experience keeping terrestrial invertebrates and want to dip my toes in keeping marine invertebrates. So if some of my questions are silly, I am a beginner in this realm!

Currently my idea is to create a marine ecosphere. I’d be breaking a few rules by keeping it unsealed with a small sponge filter (and ideally additional equipment for water movement), and occasionally adding water as it evaporates, but otherwise following the same hands off concept.

Looking into cylindrical tanks/jars, will probably get something ~3 gallons.

I do not live close to an ocean, but there is a seller in maine who offers wild caught marine plankton. The idea was to get a high concentration of marine plankton and see which species thrive, and hope that some of the larval inverts grow into larger fauna.

The main questions I have are:

- How can I create a consistent circular current of some kind? This will be something with substrate and a hardscape so a kreisel tank won’t work, but I’m not trying to keep things like jellyfish alive. I just know plankton in general needs high water movement.

- Will live rock work for this setup? My main worry is that the plankton and live rock are probably not from the same environment. The tank will be unheated since the plankton comes from ocean near northern maine. I believe a lot of live rock is cultivated in warm oceans. What should I do here? My local fish store has live rock that I could probably buy a small piece of (since I don’t need the larger pieces usually sold) but i’m not sure where it comes from.

- Should I preemptively introduce older/adult microfauna? Some kinda small detritivorous crustacean or snail species mayhaps. Not sure if it might be beneficial to have larger detritivores from the start.

Any advice is appreciated!!

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hello!

To preface, I have not kept aquatic setups. I have lots of experience keeping terrestrial invertebrates and want to dip my toes in keeping marine invertebrates. So if some of my questions are silly, I am a beginner in this realm!

Currently my idea is to create a marine ecosphere. I’d be breaking a few rules by keeping it unsealed with a small sponge filter (and ideally additional equipment for water movement), and occasionally adding water as it evaporates, but otherwise following the same hands off concept.

Looking into cylindrical tanks/jars, will probably get something ~3 gallons.

I do not live close to an ocean, but there is a seller in maine who offers wild caught marine plankton. The idea was to get a high concentration of marine plankton and see which species thrive, and hope that some of the larval inverts grow into larger fauna.

The main questions I have are:

- How can I create a consistent circular current of some kind? This will be something with substrate and a hardscape so a kreisel tank won’t work, but I’m not trying to keep things like jellyfish alive. I just know plankton in general needs high water movement.

- Will live rock work for this setup? My main worry is that the plankton and live rock are probably not from the same environment. The tank will be unheated since the plankton comes from ocean near northern maine. I believe a lot of live rock is cultivated in warm oceans. What should I do here? My local fish store has live rock that I could probably buy a small piece of (since I don’t need the larger pieces usually sold) but i’m not sure where it comes from.

- Should I preemptively introduce older/adult microfauna? Some kinda small detritivorous crustacean or snail species mayhaps. Not sure if it might be beneficial to have larger detritivores from the start.

Any advice is appreciated!!

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

You’ll have some difficulty keeping animals from the Gulf of Maine long term in small aquariums, they need cooler water.

Planktonic creatures really won’t survive in small tanks like this. You should focus on algae and various hardy invertebrates.

I set up a number of pico reefs for a book I wrote on mini aquariums. I think it is still available on Amazon.

Jay

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

I'm definitely not an expert (so hopefully others will chime in for you here and correct me as needed), but here are my thoughts:

-Mechanical filtration can be pretty damaging to plankton, so it may be best to forego the sponge filter and stick with something like an air stone to avoid trapping a bunch of the plankton in the sponge.

-My thought for the flow (which I don't know if it would work or not) would be to put one, strong air stone in the middle of the tank to try and get what I've heard o2manyfish here on R2R call "mushroom flow," where, the flow goes straight up (like a mushroom's stem) and hits the top of the water, then spreads out and flows downward in a circle from the center (like the cap of a mushroom); my thought would be to take one, strong air stone to get that mushroom flow, and to take a second, weaker air stone right next to that first one but pointed directly down (so basically, I'd aim for one strong "mushroom flow" and a second, weaker, upside-down "mushroom flow"). Again, I don't know if it would work, but it's my best idea at the moment (I'm still learning about flow dynamics, so hopefully someone will have a better idea if this doesn't work).

-Given the small size of the aquarium, you may be able to figure out some unconventional cooling methods for the water (such as using heatsinks to cool the water), but getting it to look good externally could be tough.

-Brandon429 here on R2R has quite a bit of good info on pico aquariums as well, including sealed/semi-sealed pico aquariums, so he may have some good ideas for your setup here.

-For the live rock, since natural zooplankton is what you're after, I'd pass on the Florida and Australia live rock you can find and suggest possibly getting some substrate and rock from Gulf of Maine in addition to the plankton; it's true that they don't offer live rock like you'd get from Florida, but I'd imagine their shale and seabed cobble stones (in addition to sand and/or mud from them) would provide more naturalistic bacteria and more than enough biofiltration for a plankton-oriented tank (especially if you can ask them to get some pieces that are occasionally covered by the tide throughout the day).

-For the macrofauna, a small, shelled (like snails or hermit crabs), detritivorous or herbivorous species with algal growth on the shell would be my suggestion if you want to try adding one, but I probably would wait until the tank has been running for a few days/weeks first to try and give it time for food to accumulate for it.

-You probably would want to add some sort of macroalgae and/or a lot of rockwork with little nooks and crannies for the smaller zooplankton to take refuge in.