2.5 gallons at 3 years 5 months

Sugar Magnolia

Mother of Dachshunds
Staff member
RC Mod
New camera, still don't know how to work the settings, so forgive the washed out pic.

This little tank goes through an overhaul at least once a year due to overgrowth of corals or overgrowwth of unwanted hitch hikers like vermetids and hydroids. It just got an overhaul about two months ago and still needs some filler corals, so stay tuned for further updates.

2-1.jpg


Specs:
Standard AGA 2.5 gallon tank
Current 2x18W Dual Satellite fixture
HOB filter
aragonite sand
Fiji LR
1 astrea snail
1 margarita snail
1 bumble bee snail (heavily encrusted with coraline)
1 sexy shrimp
1 peppermint shrimp
1 yasha haze goby (lost his buddy the pistol a few months back)
Various zoas/button polyps
Caulestrea (TY davelin - two heads when I got it)
Toadstool
Blue ricordea
Yuma Ricordea
GSP grwoing on back wall

Maintenence:
Weekly 2 quart water changes
Clean filter/replace carbon/poly pad biweekly
scrape front glass weekly
 
Thats the most established 2.5 I have ever seen. Glad to see you have such a good success for such a long time! What Filter do you have on the back. no fuge? thats amazing.
 
Great job for keeping that nano up for 3.5 years. A feat in itself to keep such a small volume of water stable and living.

I got a question, did the pistol shrimp ever have problems with the sexy shrimps? Also, give us a little description of what you do to keep your water clean. We can all learn something here.
 
:lol: I miss my little tank. The HOB filter was an Aqua Clear 70 converted into a fuge. The build for that is in the sticky at the top of the forum. If I ever did it over again, I would not have put that fish in there. That lead to the ending of the tank. The nutient input eventually overwhelmed the nutrient export and I ended up with a cyano outbreak that I just couldn't get under control. I got sick of the never ending battle and took down the tank. I transferred the contents into my 30g cube.

I still have that leather and the caulestrea. The leather is getting huge!!
 
Do you think that the digging contributed to the issues? What if you had choosen a different species?
 
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yes that did look its age per the pics, niiiice
hadnt seen an older 2.5 at any time my whole time on the web, all the excellent jaw dropping 2.5's that were totm's at nr.com wilted away in a shorter time so they never impressed me much.

This was great information regarding the effects of fish. I have yet to see a truly aged, non eutrophic pico reef that kept one anywhere past two years continually. Not that its impossible, with the ideas of changing out substrates, doubling up water changes etc but I think the fact is the work required to keep fish in picos for the true long haul is simply more than we are willing to accomplish. even keeping it alive that long, without fish, required some nice cleaning discipline but as you mentioned fish are usually the tipping point. Lastly, by extension, 3 gallons isn't much more to add so I am not seeing evidence at all stack up to say its smart to keep fish in 3 gallons and below no matter the design. thanks for input.
 
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hey your thread finalized my idea about how to care for my aged pico, and what might have helped this one considering the bioload

blast cleaning/saves me from having to take things apart to prevent wasting.

2.5s and smaller are ideal systems to be picked up, placed in a kitchen sink every once in a while and have ten or more gallons of fresh SW poured through them, cleaning out every pocket of detritus that could possibly exist. Might have to plug the sink in the case of a fish-pico lol but really this may make it work. Instead of changing out the whole sandbed, blast clean all the crap out of it and overflow it into the sink. I'll get on mine today thanks for the old pico pics
 
AFAIK Agu still has his nanos up and running. Maybe he'll chime in. There was a thread disucussing the age of some of the nanos in this forum a while back. It seems that many don't last more than a couple of years.
 
Thanks SM. Why don't you set it up again? I promise not to tell any of the loungers.

Brandon:
When you were discussing breaking everything down I started thinking about blasting the rock with a turkey baster and setting up some type of mechanical filter to collect the detritus instead of breaking it all down. I think if you started small say blasting a single rock per week may help get past any major issues.

One thing that I think about long term for our tanks are disturbances. These are natural and allow systems to "reset" themselves over time. Perhaps one reason why so many tanks fail is because people are afraid to destroy what they have worked so hard to reach.

Can you imagine if someone posted how they created a hurricane in their tank for the benefit of its health?
 
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hey thats smart man you could use powerheads aimed at certain places to blow up the detritus for mechanical removal, periodic hurricane effect, its also not impossible some of the floc would be coral food at the same time.
 
Thanks.

It would not be hard to hook up a mini jet feeding to a plastic container filled with poly fill (like the stuff for pillows) from Wal Mart. It would be like a temp. canister filter. Set it up, let it run for a few minutes, blast 2 or 3 rocks with a turkey baster, run for 15 minutes and repeat once every two weeks or so.
Anything missed would probably get used as food by something.

I did this on my 95 once every few months and I was suprised at how much crap I was able to pull out. Eventually this helped my tank get rid of HA that I had been fighting for a long time. It also let me clean my sump without too much effort.

I would shut the return pump off, set up the filter, blast the sump bottom and walk away for 30 minutes. I would come back and start all over.

One time I removed 3 16 oz dixie cups full of detritus in my sump over a few hour period.
 
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