Sub-gallon stacking system .123G PICO

[Wonderboy]

@JasonK84 lol - the new LFS in town has a bunch of small frags, and they're thinking of fragging even smaller just to help with tiny systems like this; moreover, I have been thinking of building another type of pico. We'll see what happens.

Speaking of frags - stocking and layout update:



Another cyphastrea (on the right) and that favia? (in the middle) are the newcomers. I removed that shell on the substrate thinking lps may need to go there; after too much effort, I got the shell out, but I could not get anything else down there - haha. Did my best to move the lower light demanding stuff to the sides - the patience required for shifting things around in here is unfathomable - I wouldn't recommend a display less than 500mL with a hardscape to anybody. Maybe Antman.

I'm still testing for appropriate CO2 output on this thing - not far from success:


Also, the cal reactor is filled with Brightwell Coralazarus and Neomag (11%) - will be installing it on the system tonight.

A future concern of this is the water inlet or outlet becoming clogged - I am planning on implementing a particular practice during water changes that should help clear the potential for this up. I am going to try dosing 1mL of 3% H2O2 into the display water supply nozzle coinciding with powering off the pump - I might be able to keep the inside of the supply line, calcium reactor, and the pump clear when the display water is siphoning through the supply line.

Going to get the video up next and more pictures soon.

 

[Wonderboy]

This finally:

 

[Wonderboy]

I made this alternate hardscape a few days ago in preparation for when the current hardscape becomes unworkable:

 

[Wonderboy]

Well that was expectedly fast... I am done with the cerith pushing stuff off the rock; I don't want to epoxy/glue things in here, so I replaced the hardscape:



There's still not very much room (still not even a little easier to tweezer in here), but at least the sand bed is more available - also, this time I made sure to construct it so I can lift out the new hardscape without the return line interfering.

 

[Wonderboy]

New addition
Lemon lime favia or sector 001 favite?


FTS


Here's the hammer; it looks damaged today... I don't recall bumping it or anything while placing the favite:


Doing a big water change now and checking old parameters. Test fitting a new specimen (anemone crab); hoping it's not that.

 

[Wonderboy]

Alkalinity was low <7 and moved the little anemone crab just in case - GH probably my fault; the calcium reactor isn't online full time yet, and I hadn't changed very much water out in a while (need to keep that up until the reactor is running all the time). The hammer is looking better this morning - I moved it down last night as much as I could to reduce some (if any) light intensity as well. Lastly I finally, "what some might call", housed a full spectrum led array from the internet and got it running overhead:

 

[Wonderboy]

Here's a visual update of this nonsense.

The DIY CO2 is a little too finicky for me; I can get it to work, but it's not much longer before I switch to pressurized. It will probably end up on a FW planted tank somewhere else in the house.

The 2nd chamber of the calcium reactor keeps disconnecting itself and prompting small leaks - I have the entire calcium reactor removed from the system right now and will be recomposing the connection between the chambers tonight - I already know what I need to do.

I put the Nano Glo on. It seemed a little powerful, so I covered it with some red vinyl tape (not sure if this will benefit or detriment algal photosynthesis, but it was freaking bright from the front and ime, living things grow with even just ambient light). Then it warmed the system up to 82.7, so I taped a strip of thin packaging styrofoam to the light that sits between the diodes and the glass - it's still quite bright though. The temp is now maxing at 79.2, but that's during "night" times. To counter this, I am considering raising the entire systems temp to 79 - 81.

I mounted the cooling fans to the tile, no more bumping them.

Aaaaand the worst news: I noticed white, salt-creep-like corrosion (underwater though) on the back of the mini pump at its edges. I have no clue if this is the cause of the hammer damage, but I don't trust it. I have a replacement pump pre-sealed with 3M marine 5200 stuck to the wall curing - 5 more days

...just in case, 100% water changes about twice daily until then.

 

[Wonderboy]

Have been going through a diatom bloom since replacing the rocks and increasing the temperatures, but everything was still doing well until the Bayite temp controller failed - it's stuck on cool because the probe is reading over scale - the system reached almost 60F a few nights ago (snow outside), and the heater on its own accord (with the fans running) brought it to 88F... I put all the coral into my 10G - except the cyphastreas (encrusted to rock) and ricordia (tolerating everything fine). I have a different controller on the way. Running at ambient temps now.

 

[Wonderboy]

New temperature controller by Poniie up and running. Going to leave everything that I moved to the 10 in the 10 because they all (favia, favite, lepto + hammer) look semi-melted from the temp swings. The Nano Glo is working great; chaeto is dark green and getting dense. Thinking of putting it on a cycle timer so that it has less influence on temperature. Going to let things run for a couple weeks.

 

[Wonderboy]

Starting to stock this thing again. Added a stomatella and little blasto to the display. Found that the nassarius I thought was hermit food is actually still very alive. Calcium reactor not running - switching to pressurized asap. Light hours switched to 12-7:10am refuge, 7am-12:15pm display, 12-7:10pm refuge, 7pm-12:15am display. NH4, NO2, NO3 all constant 0. WC >50% weekly until reactor up.

 

[Wonderboy]

 

[Wonderboy]

Calcium reactor still down and now clogged with algae - result is increased flow in display and plenty salt creep; recently grabbed a Fluval 45g CO2 kit, will get it running quite soon. The system really needed some overdue maintenance:








Scrubbed the display, poured out all vessels for a 100% WC - everything took aprx 20 mins - all cleaned up:








Opting to get more coral in here asap so the algae has less room to thrive; I did add two itty-bitty blue leg hermits on the top floor - we'll see if they can keep up. Now to find some spare tiny shells...

 

[Wonderboy]

This thing is still running strong. I feed it pretty heavy for such a small tank. I have recently observed 100+ baby dwarf cerith snails in the refugium and equipment chambers. Going to manually collect as many as possible for other systems when I find time.

 

[scriptmonkey]

You are nuts! But a good kind of nuts. People like you keep pushing the boundaries of this hobby into areas that were once unthinkable. This has to be the coolest build yet I have seen.

Bravo!

 

[High ICP]

Weird

I like that the float is half the volume of the sump

 

[Wonderboy]

YES MY THEME SONG!

Haha - yeah the float mostly floats above the volume of water in the sump, so it displaces hardly a tbsp of water. I can also unscrew the float for access, but I have not needed to. I do also have to fit a ph probe in there quite soon somehow...

Picture updates soon

 

[Wonderboy]

April 23 update: Our house had been going through a couple warm/hot spells due to equipment issues - the blastos were losing flesh-volume and color fast - I pulled the entire scape out, dipped it with CoralRX and put it into my ten gallon nano (trust it the most for coral recovery); also, during so, I noticed that there are many baby stomatella in the system, so I move the two large stomatella to my 68G "retro reef". The blastos have since recovered nicely - all heads present and well. Calcium reactor remains dormant - I'm still missing the electronics behind it. Everything else (hermits, snails, ricordea) is still kickin' - will be moving the scape back into its home soon, probably with coral additions, finally.
-------------
As of last night, I got the hardscape back in place - added a few zoa polyps here and there - hard to see cause some are still recovering and the LED, sorry:

 

[Wonderboy]

Just for the memories - this is the hammer that was originally put in here once upon a time (in the ten gallon):



I took the time to grab some close-ups of the additions - pictures are edited to try representing what the actual colors look like in person:



-watermelons


-pink diamonds


-rasta (best shot I could get)


-bam bam polyp 1


-bam bam polyp 2


-and these two polyps of IDK. Seriously can't even find where I got these from right now.


Here's a shot of the blasto from last night - seems to be content so far:

 

[Wonderboy]

Conceptualizing Fluval CO2 cartridge placement combo FTS:



That bright white glare is the top to this thing - I made it a hat to reduce the intensity in the DT and to minimize light exposure on the acrylic walls.

 

[Wonderboy]

-Not much differnet, changed the top a litttle, and sorry about the reflections (the LED over this thing is overkill, but plants near the pico like it - there's much sun, too) I removed the zoas in the middle because they were stretching too much. Added some type of red macro to the back right corner DT. I haven't scrubbed the acryllic at all since last documented; the breeding cerith snails, stomatella snails, munnid copepods, and planaria are keeping flat surfaces 90% clear. It's becoming nearly mandatory that I get the last of any stoney stuff placed in here pretty quick - zoas are growing...