Building a pico reef tank - suggestions

[Narideth]

Howdy all. I have a Marineland contour 3 gallon that I currently have set up as a desktop freshwater planted tank, but the draw of building a pico reef is getting pretty strong. Too strong to resist!

The tank is home to my gorgeous crowntail black and silver betta at the moment, and will remain so unless I decide to move him to a different tank (possible) but that's sort of moot. This is a project for the future one way or another. My question is, what kind of stock, what kind of equipment, what kind of anything would folk put into a 3 gallon pico?

I'm not planning on any fish, my original thought was to source a single really gorgeous rockflower and pair it with sexy shrimp and a few corals. I felt like I could try super easy pest-level corals like pulsing xenia since I don't have it in any of my other tanks but the movement is so mesmerizing.

Some notes about the tank currently - I've torn out the AIO back portion to take advantage of the entire space available, an upgrade I was very happy with. I already filter with a sponge filter, so I'm considering using an air stone as water movement and allow rock/sand filtration instead of mucking about with a canister or external filter. The light I upgraded to grows freshwater plants pretty well, has white/blue spectrum, but it otherwise very basic. It might work for the lowest lighting required corals. Maybe. I'd be fine with replacing it, but space is limited where the tank lives. Heater is pretty standard nano heater, keeps the tank in the mid 70's. I am also curious about using black sand as the substrate. I've seen it in a couple of small tanks and it seems like an interesting choice. I keep black sand in almost all of my freshwater tanks. Thoughts on that?

Thanks for the input!

 

[GatorGreg]

You can pretty much do whatever your heart desires coral wise. SPS may be a chore in a tank that small but it’s been done before. Fish, theres a few awesome fish that would do fine in a tank this size. I’d recommend leaving your beta tank alone and buying the eshoppes desk mate bundle from BRS. It’s an absolutely fantastic deal and comes with pretty much everything you’d need. Buy it when it’s 249 though. Don’t buy it at 299.

I’d also recommend starting out with the pico treasure chest from TBS to throw in with some of that dead dry rock. You may have a few aptasia to deal with but I promise it’ll make your tank way more stable and dependable from the get go. Aptasia isn’t anything to kill off in a tank this size easy peasy

I can tell you. The pico is going to be a lot of work. I work on my tank every single day.

daily routine:
AM: top off pump chamber and turkey baste rocks and stir sand. This keeps everything clean and gives all the corals a chance to eat.
PM: feed tank a little bit for the inverts and clean filter sock. Top off pump chamber again and finally clean glass once lights go out with magnet glass cleaner.

Weekly I am doing a 2 gallon water change and dosing nitrates and phosphates into the new water going in to replenish what I’m taking out so there isn’t a massive swing in nutrient levels. I’m watching closely the algae levels in my tank and will back off if they start appearing to get a little out of control. Reason for doing this is that I don’t have fish and the only feeding going on is the corals once a week. So I have to dose nutrients to keep the tank from being nutrient starved. Right now I monitor my corals closely and they tell me when they’re happy and when they’re not by the way they look. I also smell the tank daily as a sanity check to make sure nothing suspect is going on. It should smell fresh and your water should be crystal clear.

after my coral feeding weekly I was noticing a bacterial bloom happening like clockwork. So to remedy this I purchased a UV and I run it for the next 2 days after a coral feeding.

it’s a fun little tank and I’m going to run it for the next year. After I score some more of that Aussie rock I’m probably looking to start a 12 gallon long. I thought the 4 gallons would be enough. But it’s not for me. I’m wanting a fish lol

 

[GatorGreg]

This routine is going to get a little more complicated next month or 2 for me as well. I’m about to adopt a program that worked very well for someone with a 10 gallon. So I’ll have to tone it down a little bit because I’m half of that gallon wise. But I’m going to pack this thing with coral and then slowly switch over to that method for stability. I’ll have to keep up with consumption of trace elements and nutrients once this thing is filled with corals. So my current routine wouldn’t work that well. It’d probably be starved of trace Elements and have swinging alk and calc.

that and it should be a seamless transition to the 12 gallon long. Next year or 2

 

[Narideth]

Some good suggestions and information there! Thanks for that.

I do not have the space/desire to purchase a new tank. I have two empty ten gallon tanks just sitting that I've been trying to sell, and I downsized the number of tanks I have overall (From 8 to 6 even with the addition of my newest saltwater tank) so I could better manage them. This has been a good decision for me, and the remaining tanks all receive better attention and care because of it.

I'm in no hurry to set up something new, but the planning stage is really enjoyable to me. I want to try and keep this tank simple and enjoyable. Nothing terribly high end, probably all softies with maybe some easy LPS. It also helps me budget over the long term. I'd love further suggestions!

 

[GatorGreg]

Well that’s ok too. Your light won’t have to be anything crazy then

 

[Ef4life]

I think live rock is a good idea, necessary? no not really, you can start with dry rock too. But ime a tank started with dry rock really takes about 18months to settle in. Pests can be a thing with live rock to so there isn’t any best choice here imo.

if you already have a 10g, I’d just use that. Cost doesn’t increase much with the minimal size increase and the size will make things easier in the long run. I set up my original 5g with a nice aquascape, but to effectively clean the tank I had to remove everything. It was a pain and the corals didn’t really like the invasion. I ended up swapping everything into a 10g and now it’s easy, plenty of room to get a hand in the tank if needed, not worried about knocking a coral off etc.

As for my methods - Since my tank is now 10g I do a weekly wc of 5g, takes about 10 minutes, it works out to about a 60% w/c, I use a kamoer x1 as an ato, just figure out a daily average evap rate and set the doser to just under that. No ato floats, sensors, or electronics in the tank taking up space. I kept mine bare bottom, so nice no sand to worry about, no build up of funk anywhere (but I also feel this will also make the tank take longer to get settled in. Detritus is easy to remove during the w/c. No real need to dose any alk/ca with that volume of water change, but it would help keep things consistent on the day to day, early on I did dose some all for reef, but it was too early in the tanks life to be really necessary, I’m planning on starting up again as my coral has grown quite a bit.

He is an older video, it’s currently looking very similar, just with more and slightly larger corals. If you noticed the tile on the bottom of the tank, that was the size of the original 5g tank so the aquascape didn’t have hardly any clearance between the glass.

 

[AIRDADDY]

Howdy all. I have a Marineland contour 3 gallon that I currently have set up as a desktop freshwater planted tank, but the draw of building a pico reef is getting pretty strong. Too strong to resist!

The tank is home to my gorgeous crowntail black and silver betta at the moment, and will remain so unless I decide to move him to a different tank (possible) but that's sort of moot. This is a project for the future one way or another. My question is, what kind of stock, what kind of equipment, what kind of anything would folk put into a 3 gallon pico?

I'm not planning on any fish, my original thought was to source a single really gorgeous rockflower and pair it with sexy shrimp and a few corals. I felt like I could try super easy pest-level corals like pulsing xenia since I don't have it in any of my other tanks but the movement is so mesmerizing.

Some notes about the tank currently - I've torn out the AIO back portion to take advantage of the entire space available, an upgrade I was very happy with. I already filter with a sponge filter, so I'm considering using an air stone as water movement and allow rock/sand filtration instead of mucking about with a canister or external filter. The light I upgraded to grows freshwater plants pretty well, has white/blue spectrum, but it otherwise very basic. It might work for the lowest lighting required corals. Maybe. I'd be fine with replacing it, but space is limited where the tank lives. Heater is pretty standard nano heater, keeps the tank in the mid 70's. I am also curious about using black sand as the substrate. I've seen it in a couple of small tanks and it seems like an interesting choice. I keep black sand in almost all of my freshwater tanks. Thoughts on that?

Thanks for the input!

It's a fun little experiment but it can go south in a hurry if you don't keep a close eye on it. I wiped out my CUC in 5 minutes by spilling dirty shipping water in the tank while acclimating. If you can keep a very regimented husbandry schedule it will thrive!