First Pico Experiment

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consreef

consreef

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Hi all, I'm a new member here looking for advice on a new project.

I've been in the saltwater hobby for around five years now and I've just decided to attempt a pico reef for the first time with an old Fluval Spec 3 (2.6 gallons). Plan so far is some zoas and other easy soft corals, maybe a shrimp and some hermits, nothing fancy. I'm planning keeping everything as low cost as possible, with a couple pounds of live rock and live sand, upgraded pump with a bit more flow, and using an Asta 20 LED light.

Does anyone have any recommendations for better pumps and upgrades to the filter compartment? I'm doing all the research I can to make this a great first pico! Right now I'm thinking of using chemipure with the original sponge block and might add in some chaeto just to be safe. Let me know what you think!
 
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As someone who has kept nanos and picos the past 10 years, your plan sounds good. I would add the Chempure Blue and Cheato(via reverse light refugium). I also run a tsp of Purigen as well in mine. I would also recommend a 1/4 sand bed to increase surface area for bacteria to help with bio filtration. I've had good success with my 2.6 gallon pico this way.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cheves-2-6-gallon-pico.401616/
 
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the exact formula to make that arrangement live twenty years or longer:

dont use external filtration other than an empty setup for motion, or an internal powerhead. making the rocks and sand the final filtration step is vital to longevity/ the extra doesnt hurt, but it doesnt help. any degree of live rock alone, not counting sand, can run the max bioloading you will ever stack into that tank on day one, its so powerful as live rock it doesnt need ramp up time. Your external filters are catch zones for waste, they arent helping they add o2 hungry bacteria we dont need

-you cannot run enough bioload in the tank to overcome what a quarter pound of live rock will oxidize, thats why extra filters aren't helpful, only for their motion. you can use powerheads that dont store up waste to get motion.

arrange the setup using coralline live rock from a pet store, pre rinsed live sand so its cloudless, this is skip cycle arrangement you dont have to test for anything. set it up, add a couple corals and a snail and see how you like it the first week before adding more.

when they ship live rock to you it has dieoff


when you move it home from your pet store, it doesnt, thats why its ok to skip testing we already do this in countless thousands of pico reefs documented/we skip cycle. we dont play by volume rules, why follow conventional snoozefest cycling rules...


practice topoff etc its not that hard, and the live rock is perfect instant filtration.

dont run chemi pure dont run any nitrate or phosphate removing items, keep N and keep P dont adsorb it

dont feed daily like a normal reef; feed only weekly and change the water out a little each time (weekly water changes of a third or so)

tied to the feeding, not independent from it-1/3rd water changes. the animals eat fine on scavenging during the interim, and live rock cured in another tank (signaled by coralline on the live rock animals, maybe a sponge or two etc) is food for a very long time by itself.

if you arrange it this way, it lives for good/ these reefs tolerate other ways of running them, but they wont be as stable, able to weather power outages (by not overdoing 02 hungry bacteria) and they'll have lots more algae problems than this arrangement above.

using dry rock, uncured, bottle bac, external filters, nitrate and phosphate media is directly opposite :) and more common agreed, but they aren't getting them decades lol they're getting them dinos.
 
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also handy tuner's approach: run it this way for 6 mos straight no veer

then at 6 mos, change to any degree you want it wont harm anything, then see if conditions change as neutral, better worse. algae + coral coloration deep/vs lightening are the specific warning signs in the comparative time setup there

its hard to imagine an empty filter compartment being better than a filled one. if we were running low on surface area, that wouldnt be the case. having access to every catchpoint for detritus removal is what prevents algae the best by month 4, when it really usually starts to take off, its planning ahead by designing access.
 
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