My pica reef, and lighting Qs

[mooman]

So against my own advice to customers I have entered the saltwater realm in the smallest way possible. I have been maintaining a 1g reef tank in a TOM Beta Cube for about a week now, and everything seems to be going fine. Daily topoffs are keeping my slainity between 1.022 and 1.024 every time i've measured it (using a refractometer). The 1.5lbs of liverock is coming alive in more ways than I can count, and the two blue leg, and two left handed hermit crabs (the tanks only macro residents) are doing well.

anyway, the hermits (left handed ones in particular) have me glued to the bowl. A piece of liverock breaks the surface and the hermits love to scavange on it. My plan is to find a glass dish that holds about three gallons, and is only about 6-8 in high, and transfer everything into that (along with additional live rock and sand). Filtration will be accomplished by two red sea "mixing pumps". Live rock will be stacked in a laggon type formation with the rock breaking the surface in numerous places to simulate a tidal pool where the hermit crabs can haul themselves out of the water. I haven never seen anything like this, and think it would make a pretty neat little display. If I can keep this set up stable, they i would like to try some coral frags, and will need a second 7w compact light to accompany the one that came with the beta kit. Where's the best place to get these? Any other advice or comments welcome.

please limit flaming to two sentences or less to conserve bandwidth :o

[mogurnda]

Despite my best efforts, I can't come up with much reason to flame you. I have been intrigued by the idea of setting up a tidepool, with maybe a surge device.

The lighting is a little tougher, because I am finding it hard to imagine the exact layout. My initial guess is that you'll want more light than the 7 watts for just about any coral.

[mooman]

Nice String! Where can I get one?

I'm trying to find a containter with a footprint a couple inches larger than a standard piece of paper (about 100 square inches or so). height isn't so much of a concern as I can just not fill it all the way. A decent viewing surface would be nice, but primary viewing will be from above.

The light I have is one of the clip-on types. I was thinking two of these positioned near the center (the rock will be arranged in a loose semicircle around an open sand area) should be enough for some soft corals and polyps (there's no way I'm going to try any kind of dosing other than weekly 20% WC) in this "tank" so hard corals are probably out.

I never even thought of having some kind of "surge". Any ideas on how to accomplish this in such a small space without turning my couch and end table into a tidal flat?

[wwildcats04]

Ryan, I have a near perfect idea for you that way you wont get the three gallon thing you want now and than decide that you want something better. You can get a 10g that has an incadecent hood and get 2 of the 20 watt 50/50 PC bulbs to put in it. Im doing an order at bigals and can order those for you at the same time. that would give you 4wpg and actinic lighting. Next use as big of an AC as you can get and put your little clip light on that and set up a refugium and get the little protein skimmer that we have on the nano reef. There you go all set. All you'll need is a powerhead or something to get better flow. I can tell you how I made my refugium if you want. PS the 10g that I speek of is at petsmart and is the goldfish starter kit

[mooman]

Sounds like a plan (in fact it sounds remarkably similar to the plan I suggested for your tank ;) , but I'm really starting to get geared up for creating something different. I like the idea of having only 4-5 in of water, and being able to view it primarily from the top. It would be tough to get alot of emergent live rock in a 10g unless I only filled it half way, and then you'd have to look through the glass. That would take away from the whole "open air" concept.

Either way, I can do nothing untill next paycheck. Thanks for the offer to piggyback on your order though.

Still looking for suggestions on a way to create an intermitant surge on a really small scale. Come on DIYourselfers help me out here.

[Crown Royal]

http://www.melevsreef.com/pico.html