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Pico frag tank? (1 Viewer)

redeclipse6049

redeclipse6049

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Hey , I'm not sure if this would qualify as an advanced topic, but i've been considering turning a small 2 gallon pico into a frag tank.

I'm just wondering what things to think about might be in setting this up.

I've got a PC light (I'm thinking I'd probably use the tank mostly for growing out frags of zoas)

heater, filter...

i'm not really sure how this is supposed to work regarding bio-filtration though, since every frag tank I've seen is bare bottom.

I know one option is to plumb it directly into your existing system, which COULD be an option, but I'm not really sure its worth the effort trying to make it work in a tank that small

My thought was to use broken up live rock rubble as a bottom (making sure there was good circulation so things didn't get trapped in it) and then have the frag rack about half way up ,and do it that way


I mean, basically it'll be a pico reef without sand or fish... that'd work, wouldn't it?
 
I have been using my 2.5 gallon bookshelf for a frag tank with much success. However the water depth is only 6 inches so it may have a lot of extra light. Check out the build.
 
redeclipse6049 said:
Hey , I'm not sure if this would qualify as an advanced topic, but i've been considering turning a small 2 gallon pico into a frag tank.

I'm just wondering what things to think about might be in setting this up.

I've got a PC light (I'm thinking I'd probably use the tank mostly for growing out frags of zoas)

heater, filter...

i'm not really sure how this is supposed to work regarding bio-filtration though, since every frag tank I've seen is bare bottom.

I know one option is to plumb it directly into your existing system, which COULD be an option, but I'm not really sure its worth the effort trying to make it work in a tank that small

My thought was to use broken up live rock rubble as a bottom (making sure there was good circulation so things didn't get trapped in it) and then have the frag rack about half way up ,and do it that way


I mean, basically it'll be a pico reef without sand or fish... that'd work, wouldn't it?
Click to expand...

There's not much room for error. I'm sure it could work... I've seen a few intense 10 g frag tanks on RC, but isn't bigger= better? Stability is key. I think you'd be better off buying a 20L and the $100 MH 150W MH from hello lights....
 
mrbeachbum2 said:
There's not much room for error. I'm sure it could work... I've seen a few intense 10 g frag tanks on RC, but isn't bigger= better? Stability is key. I think you'd be better off buying a 20L and the $100 MH 150W MH from hello lights....
Click to expand...

yeah, I just don't really have room for something bigger yet, so i was thinking about doing something smaller that'd take up less space...

I actually kind of started thinking about it when I saw someone (advanced aquarium) selling 24X24X12's for 20 bucks, which would have been great, but the whole living with my parents thing kind of throws a wrench into a lot of things that i'd like to do (my room is maxed out on tanks, and we don't really have any good spots for one anywhere else)

I was thinking since the bioload on a frag tank should be a lot lower than it would be if that tank had fish in it, keeping levels (at least for zoas and maybe other softies or something) shouldn't be too difficult and water changes wouldn't need to happen quite as frequently...

Eventually I'd like to do a proper frag tank (if I still feel like selling things in the future I suppose..) but right now its more just becuase i often try to frag things and then have nowhere to put them.... but I'm kind of addicted to frags, so just buying less new stuff and selling more old stuff would help too...
 
If it's just zoanthids, I wouldn't do a seperate frag tank especially a 2g as your that not much room for much anyways.

Just make the frags and place them in the show tank on the sandbed until they have attached then sell/trade/give them away.
 
my 2.5 gallon has been running for several months. It has several frags, some LPS, zoas, and softies. I have a damsel, emerald crab, and small brittle stars for fish/inverts.

Like I said the thing is really doing aweseme. My firecracker lost all of its heads except for one. I put it in the 2.5 gallon and the one remaining head is growing flesh back over the skeleton and the other heads are regrowing tiny little heads.
 
DG-

Yeah, I'm still kind of deciding if I really wanted to do it or not yet... The biggest problem is that both of my tanks are nanos, at 14 and 6 gallons, so there's room on my frag rack for 6 frags, and i've already got a couple monti up there becuase its fairly high in the tank, and just probably not the best overall spot for growing out corals, and it just takes away from the overall look of the tank...

putting things on the sand is probably the best way to go, but I think I might need to sell (because its covered in star polyps and a pulsing xenia) one of my rocks and some other corals to make enough room. (not that it'd really be a bad thing for me to get rid of some of the stuff i have... my tank is getting a bit overcrowded)

The benefit to setting up a dedicated frag tank would be that i could fit a LOT more frags in it, and maybe actually make some money in the process, while in the display tank, my fragging usually tends to be more of a 5 dollars here, 10 bucks there type thing, every couple months...

I dont know though.. I gotta think about this
 
Decided on using a 5 gallon for this. Just set it up today.

Thanks to Montiporalova (Pete) for his generous donation of lighting and egg crate for this! :biggthumpup:

The only immediate change ideas I have are possibly making the acrylic top (cut in my garage on a homebuilt CNC mill) a bit easier to take off. I drew it up so the filters would fit just right, but forgot to put any thumb spacing or anything in, so its kind of a delicate procedure taking the top off..

might possibly make the frag rack easier to pick up , its also fairly close to the tank size so moving rocks around under it is a bit difficult, but I shouldn't really have to do much with those rocks in the future anyway...

Also, not quite sure what the heater was rated for, so I have to look into that to see if i need to either a)buy a bigger one, or b) add a second small heater so the two don't have to work so hard.

Its going to be a pretty hard cycle for this tank becuase these rocks were used, then dried without scrubbing or acid washing, but hopefully I'll know for sure that its cycling then, instead of the somewhat confusing experiences i've had with cured live rock.

5275879690_d5e0eb9129_z.jpg


5275879008_e39e41bf93_z.jpg
 
For the top, just get a small piece of PVC and use weld on to stick it to the acrylic. Now it has a handle.
 
hypertech said:
For the top, just get a small piece of PVC and use weld on to stick it to the acrylic. Now it has a handle.
Click to expand...

yeah, I actually just thought of that (something similar at least) when i was out driving around tonight. I was going to just see if they had any cheap drawer handles that I could use plastic screws with, but yeah, PVC and glue is even easier
 
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