Marks new pico adventure.....

[Stressed Eric]

Hey folks, well the bug has bitten again after many years and I decided to jump into the deep end with a 5 gallon (18 litre for us civilised folk)....

I got hold of a Dymax 5 and thanks to Aqua, got mature water and oodles of live rock with nice softies attached....

I've started her off with a aragonite substrate and have introduced some of the rock but it's far from final - there's a bit of rock-scaping to do...

The Dymax comes with its own led lighting, a far reach from the 250w metal halides I am used to....

For filtration I am not going too crazy, I have ceramics and a few mature bio-balls, and am running some filter floss and charcoal just to polish the water... The plan is to do weekly 10% water changes (2-3 litres) - the idea being to try keep the tank as stable as possible by doing frequent, small changes....

As usual, no thread is complete without pictures, right?

This is the aragonite settling in....

http://i1174.photobucket.com/albums/r604/aperfectimperfectionmark/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_20191129_122811_zpsbyocbqqr.jpg

First picture after adding the rock.....

http://i1174.photobucket.com/albums/r604/aperfectimperfectionmark/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG-20191129-WA0051_zps4svyeanc.jpeg

More to come with a better camera and maturity.....

 

[RiaanP]

new that is a pico tank. Extremely small.

Nice challenging setup.

 

[Stressed Eric]

Y'know, I thought pico tanks weren't that difficult... I mean, no skimmers and stuff, just a small weekly water change... Now I see the difficulty - we had a few warm days and I lost about 1-2 litres of water through evaporation... That's enough to take the salinity to danger levels in such a small tank! 10% water loss took my tank from 1.023 to 1.035... Hectic! So a pico sized ATU is on the priority list now....

Other than that, things are going well...

I have put a zetlight on the tank now, I wasn't too happy with the standard Dymax unit and had to do a little DIY jippo to get it to fit - but now the tank has come alive and looks just about perfect!

Plans are to get some Kenya tree and star polops in this weekend to get some colour, and look at introducing some monti through the next week.

 

[Stressed Eric]

An update, not too much of a change except for some macro that's just holding space until my quarantine tank has cycled... Then it's going to be pruned a bit....

 

[JpPaulKruger]

I have the exact size tank. Testing my ATO units I build myself on mine. So far so good

 

[Vleis Visagie]

Looking great so far bud, be warned. Hehhehe Just water changes does not keep level in check. DEPENDING on what u will be adding. Softies should be fine.....