My pico reef 2 gallons - day 1333

[corpusse]

I've really been getting back to reefing lately, not that I haven't always had tanks running, but let things go for a while and the past few months things have been going well. All along the way I've had this 2 gallon dymax iq3 pico I bought as an impulse buy 3 and a half years ago.

At the start I jammed many corals in and quite a few got overgrown by others, but now it's gotten to the point where almost everything is doing great and there is no room at all for anything new. I bought a little rock flower anemone on the weekend then couldn't find anywhere to put it it ended up in my main display but took some more photos of the pico.









This chalice is growing up 2 sides of the acrylic, unfortunately that means the bottom faces out.








The tank is lit by a par30 bulb. I replaced the cheapo return pump with a mini jet. I had to take the covers off the pump to jam it in. I also drilled an additional hole in the false wall (while the tank was running) to put a zoo meds powerhead in for additional flow. Finally there is a red sea pico power filter which has fliter floss and one tablespoon of carbon and half a tablespoon of GFO. Since it's not exactly tumbling I'm not sure how much good it does. I still get algae in the tank, but it does get a lot of natural sunlight, however I like this. The natural light likely helps my mangrove survive but not really thrive it only has 7 leaves despite approaching 4 years old. I'm debating pulling the bottom rock that has the GSP on it so I can put something new in, but the tank is doing well don't want to mess with it much. Besides changing the floss I do 1 gallon non religious weekly water changes. The carbon and gfo is replaced every 2 weeks. Originally this tank did have a small sandbed but it's such a detritus factory it was very counter productive. Now after having this tank for years I firmly believe no sandbed is the key to success in pico aquariums. While I certainly dislike the look of bare bottom tanks as much as the next person, you can hardly tell this is a bare bottom tank