Pico Reef ideas? I'd love your input

[Doberman13]

+1 for the hipargero aquaknight light it worked great on my standard 10g and now it's on my 22g turned up with no issues. Just keep up with a WC schedule and testing and it should be fine. Obviously best to use live rock from your other tank to get it up and going fast.
I didn't like my 10 g because I had too many coral and was having to do so many WC(every 4 days) due to drops in alk. Now my 22g has 16g of water in the sump with a refugium and a skimmer rated for 220g(lightly stocked).

 

[Tanster2]

+1 for the hipargero aquaknight light it worked great on my standard 10g and now it's on my 22g turned up with no issues. Just keep up with a WC schedule and testing and it should be fine. Obviously best to use live rock from your other tank to get it up and going fast.
I didn't like my 10 g because I had too many coral and was having to do so many WC(every 4 days) due to drops in alk. Now my 22g has 16g of water in the sump with a refugium and a skimmer rated for 220g(lightly stocked).

Definitely a great idea using established live rock. I have a piece that would actually fill up a 2g nicely. I'm really leaning towards doing only softies now because of that very reason you mentioned; it's hard to maintain stable alk in such a tiny system without a lot of attention. If I do only photosynthetic softies, I can stock as much as I want into this bad boy

 

[Nifftiness]

I’ll take a pic tomorrow when the lights are on. My maintenance in the beginning was higher as I started with dry rock so cycled but now that it’s stable and established it’s bacteria it can go weeks with out a water change if I get lazy. Once every two weeks I use a scraper to clean the glass. And you can probably start with your established rock so you can avoid the cycle. I did have a weird algea bloom when I added the cheap pump and so I used a sponge in the chamber for about two weeks to catch any floating algea but that went away quickly. I do have substrate. I used the black sand which I find more like mini ruble. I tend to just use the turkey baster to suck out any gunk the snails leave behind once a week or when ever I feel the need. into a cup and then top off. The snails keep any Algea that sometimes pops up on the coral plugs. I try to cut the plugs off before anything goes in this tank now. The biggest pain in the ass is feeding the clown goby. He gets fed once a day. They can be finicky and spit out a lot of food so I always feel like I have to chop up his food tiny and over feed. Hence the abundance of snails I have in the tank. I’d like to try a different less maintenance fish for this tank but haven’t figured out a replacement. My last clown goby even ate my hammer corals. Then would spit it out. I had neon green bits floating all over my tank. No auto feed. I have seahorses in another tank so everyone gets there left over frozen Mysis and Brine shrimp for the most part. I have a rock flower Anemone in the tank and that’s my fav. I’d like to add more. The light really brings out the colors and the lights on a timer. My tank temp stays around 74 so I don’t have a heater. It just maintains itself. I spend the least amount of time on this tank. I’d like to add a pompom crab and sexy shrimp in the future. I try to keep all my tanks as easy as I can so I don’t dose anything. Just water changes. If I had somewhere to hide a top off bucket for Ato I would do that but I don’t have anywhere to hide it. So I do it manually every few days. Easy peasy

 

[triggerhappy]

Many moons ago, I had one of these on my desk at work. (http://www.jbjnanocube.com/contents/en-us/p10812.html) I didn't run any of the media in the filter so it was just for water circulation (too small for a powerhead). I eventually got a more powerful light (not sure I even needed it) for it but it was an awesome little tank. I had live rock, some mushrooms, a hermit, a snail and a sexy shrimp in there.

 

[Tanster2]

Many moons ago, I had one of these on my desk at work. (http://www.jbjnanocube.com/contents/en-us/p10812.html) I didn't run any of the media in the filter so it was just for water circulation (too small for a powerhead). I eventually got a more powerful light (not sure I even needed it) for it but it was an awesome little tank. I had live rock, some mushrooms, a hermit, a snail and a sexy shrimp in there.

Share some pictures! I'm looking for some inspiration here!

 

[triggerhappy]

This was back in 2007 before our phones kept permanent records of everything. I will take a look back on my old external hard drives and see if I can find any.

 

[Tanster2]

I'm going to pick up the tank today or tomorrow! I've decided to do an SPS dominated pico without filtration. I use instant ocean saltmix, which has calcium levels of 400ppm, and alk at 11 IIRC, so dosing won't be necessary with weekly water changes, at least until things get crowded!

As for tank ideas, I have a few on my shortlist, but perhaps someone has some suggestions? I want a tank that's taller than it is wide, so the corals grow upwards, and I can put some nice LPS that don't want a ton of light on the bottom

 

[Tanster2]

Here's a Google image of the look I'm going for!